Wednesday

our summer plans : routine

Here's my current draft of our summer routine.  I'm 100% sure I'll be adjusting and tweaking and adding things here and there, but this is generally how our days will go.  I'm more of a routine "order of operations" girl, instead of having a rigid time when we do things - I find that stresses me out!  Except meals, of course.  I can't skip those!


AM - 

family scripture study/reading
(walk)
breakfast - 8

then each kid will do one of the following and rotate, I think. Each activity will last maybe 20 minutes before moving on to the next.  I'm not sure how we'll pick each day, but I'm leaning toward popsicle sticks or rocks that they will pick out of a jar that tells them which they do first of the following -

chores
read (to yourself or a younger sibling)
draw/write (depending on your age)
math game

free time!* - following that rotation the kids will be free until lunch.  Each kid will have a day to help me make lunch, and maybe all meals.  I love this one on one, working side by side time, and find it especially valuable in the summer when all the endless fun seems to pull them away from me day in and day out!

lunch - 11:15

lunch cleanup - everyone helps, and this is a great time to blast music!
garden time - we will all head out to spend 15 minutes tending to our area of the garden.  Each of the kids picked a vegetable to plant, and they will be primarily responsible for the weeding/de-bugging in that part of the garden.  We'll try to keep this short and sweet!

free time!*  - even though we have this loose structure of this routine, I still really, deeply believe in the benefit and need for kids to have a lot of free play time.  There will be hours and hours of free time every day for outside play and friends.

dinner - 6 - I find it really hard to get everyone to get their bodies inside for dinner during the summer.  We have bright sunshine until late in the evening, and there's just not that cue from the sun going down, so of course they want to run and play still!  But, I really want this family time, and we make it happen.
clean up - as a family.  again, blast some music!

read - (we may head outside for another hour or two after clean up, but before bedtime we will come back together as a family and read our current book series.  Right now it's Harry Potter - we're reading the Goblet of Fire - but after this series is done, Tyler will read the Lord of the Rings series to us.)

bedtime - 8 - our routine is jammas, teeth, wash up, family prayer, tuck in, songs or stories


* depending on the activity of the day from our Mission : Impossible theme, we might spend the morning or some of the afternoon free time doing that activity.  This is when the big, extra-fun stuff happens, for the most part.




So, I'd love to know - do you have a routine?  Maybe a more rigid schedule?  Do you do school work kinds of things with your kids over summer, or do you have them work hard on chores and home projects?  Or maybe you just set them free and let them do whatever they want?  I think all of those approaches to summer have benefits, for sure.

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