This summer is the first in a while that I have had all the kids home with virtually no camp. Since I am back to full-time teaching and am off during the summer, it doesn’t make financial sense to the send the kids to camp. So this year, it is “Camp Mommy.” I have been winging things for the past week, having just finished school at the end of May. But now my older son is off, too, and we really need some sort of schedule. So last night and today I have gotten to work on this! (By the way, I have three 5-year-olds and one 9-year-old, all boys.)
I created a schedule for the day of what we will do when. The schedule includes time for indoor play, outdoor play, snacks and meals, movie or TV time, and excursions. Crafts, cooking, reading and academic review will fill in the gaps.
Then I have been putting together our summer bucket list – those excursions we will take. With four kids, staying in the house all day will not work! I had seen a few resources here and there and put them together in a useable way. One idea that I really liked was having slips of paper that you draw from each week to make a schedule. I think drawing each day one at a time would be difficult, especially since some excursions are more timely than others and have varying costs.
Here is what I came up with:
A fill-in schedule: Summer Bucket List schedule form
Cards with activities for day & afternoon excursions and evening outings:
- All purpose version: Summer Bucket List cards 2013
- For St. Louis readers with a few St. Louis specifics: Summer Bucket List cards 2013 StL version
The instructions to use these are as follows:
1. Modify the attached schedule for your own needs.
2. On the excursions file, add in local excursions that you would like to visit this summer (color coding denotes cost).
3. Take a look at the starred cards, which are timely activities. Decide if you want to research these ahead of time and then take them out of the weekly drawing and manually put them on your schedule as they occur OR just figure it out as they get chosen.
4. Print the schedule and activity cards.
5. Sort the cards based on color-coding. You may want to have envelopes or buckets for each type.
6. Write in any events you already have on your schedule for that week – like summer library activities, family events, camp, etc.
7. Pick the number of cards that work best for your family from each color category. (I plan to leave space for one library and at least one park trip a week. My kids still nap so I might use shorter activities or trips to the park or library in the afternoons. If your kids are older you may spend a whole day at one activity or choose two per day.
8. Lay the cards down on your schedule and create a plan for the week.
9. You may decide to discard the cards you used that week or reuse those that you would like to do again another week.
I hope these directions are not too complicated. Please give me your feedback so I can edit it or change it to be more helpful!
Hope you like them!
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