Wednesday, May 25, 2022

I struggled with my blog title and I’m not sure I picked the best one, but I wanted to maybe help some of you trying to get into your summer groove with young children at home. I dug into my photo archives – real albums with real printed out pictures and humor me with my “older mom wisdom” if you will!

I have twins and I am a teacher. The daycare/preschool we used allowed us to pull our kids out in the summer without having to pay or lose our spot.

Bucket lists became all the rage at the tail end of my kids’ childhoods. I think they are great. I love that a family can sit down and make a list of things they want to do. It’s very intentional to me. I don’t think they should just be for summer, nor should they just be for kids. In fact, I do plan on making an adult summer bucket list!

What’s funny is that we sometimes think our kids want the extravagant vacations or expensive theme parks, but I bet if you asked them to make a list it would include the simple and wonderful things of summer.

I felt so lucky to be a teacher in the summer and on the same schedule as my kids. My goals were to have a great summer for my kids, not break the bank, and to keep learning but in a much more laid back way.

I know that working parents really struggle in the summers. It is so much to juggle when your kids are too old for daycare, yet not old enough to stay home alone.

Maybe my ideas can help babysitters as well as stay at home and working parents?

A pool membership is absolutely worth it. What a pool membership does is enable you to go for a couple of hours in the evening with working parents, get to know other kids and their moms, and just give you hours of exercise and entertainment. If you had to pay as you go, you might not do that evening swim. Also, many pools have entertainment and family activities.

I love the pool. I was the mom who got in with my kids because I’m a kid at heart, but I’m not gonna lie. I remember how amazing it felt when I could let them go off while I read on my lounger. Does it get any better?

If you have a grandparent who asks, you could say you would like money toward your membership or that could even make a great Christmas gift. You would always think of Grandma’s generosity at the pool!

Take your kids to the farmer’s markets! My city has a ton and they are so popular. There is even music at many of them. You can buy breakfast!

Take them to pick strawberries! I will never forget when we were making a bucket list and my twins were maybe 10. I asked, “would you all like to pick berries?” and Mason replied, “No, thank you. I’m not really into agriculture.” Um, ok, Mason, I wasn’t asking about your career goals.

Feed your kids outside! Less mess and I always found that it led to them wanting to stay outside and play! We took picnics to parks, too. Our kids are seriously nature deprived – even at the high school level.

We had our cousins over once a week in the summer and that was the day I generally stayed home and did a few things like laundry. The cousins were wonderful for entertaining my kids and I think they all have special memories. As they got older, we did crazy things like the Mentos in the 2 liter soda bottle outside, those pop it fireworks things outside, slip n slides and stuff like that.

Hammocks are wonderful and we read in ours a lot!

I did some things with my friends and their kids like the zoo!

We almost always had an afternoon movie before dinner.

Take the toys outside! They loved playing with cars outside.

Join the library summer reading! Go to the library story hours and FYI, the library offers so much more. Our library had a guy who made fighting robots. There was a raptor rehab program and they got to see those up close. Basically, get on your library email list or website and pencil all of their activities in.

For many summers, I dropped my kids off for 3 hours at their daycare once a week for my errand or appointment day. It was absolutely worth it. I was able to be fully present on the other days. I took them on the errands that I thought were fine for kids and pushed everything else to Wednesdays. You could also do the same with a sitter or a family member.

We did crafts at least once a week.

I would get out an old forgotten toy and leave it on the table for them to see when they woke up. That bought me some morning coffee time! Ha!

I let them play “car wash” where I got some buckets of soapy water and they washed all the bikes and riding toys outside. This idea came from my friend Katie!

Another thing that I did that they really loved was…we picked a different school playground to visit each week. There are some really cool playgrounds and they loved exploring new ones. Cheap entertainment!

We had someone over for a playdate about once a week.

Our movie theater had a $1 movie at 10 am. We went to that a few times.

We had a good balance of staying home and going out to do things. I think a lot of kids really just want to be at home. They are going, going, going during the school year.

What ideas do you have for my readers? Do you struggle in the summer?

Amy