I saw this great blog post about keeping your kids active and engaged all summer. It’s by Katie of wellnessmama.com over here. I’ve adapted it to fit our homeschooling goals of keeping academic skills sharp during summer. I am giving my kids “Adventure Points”, inspired by Katie’s blog, for doing their 3 R’s everyday (reading, ‘riting’, and ‘rithmetic) with points for other engagement with our learning materials on top of that. I have four kids at home. The goal is for them to each get 50 points a day, to make 200 total Adventure Points a day, with at least 1000 by Saturday afternoon. 1000 points earns them a trip hiking, swimming, or something similar on a Saturday afternoon. 4000 points accumulated will get the kids a bigger outing like a trip to the zoo or a swimming hole far away with a natural waterslide. I am so excited to try this out!

So head on over and read Katie’s post with her activities and assigned points. Then make your own list adapted to the needs of your family. I certainly am giving more points for weeding than playing a card game! Include points earned for playing with and taking care of younger siblings. Like for reading a book to them, changing a diaper, playing a game, or taking the baby on a walk. Also include chores that you know need to be done that are hard for you to get to, like deleting bad photos from your computer’s hard drive or transferring tapes to mp3 files. I am going to reward the kids richly for learning digital photo editing skills!

Here’s to a happy, minimal screen time summer!