As a mom, are you dreading summer? Or you excited about having a blank slate of relatively free time? Whatever place you are coming from, this list may benefit you. These activities will help your children have some structure and rhythm to long summer days, which minimizes meltdowns and tears. My ideas cost little money and involve no screens. They are sustainable practices that you can default to for any day at home. As fun as they are, not every summer day can involve swimming pools and amusement parks, especially if you have lots of littles. These ideas come from my 32 years of mothering 7 children. Take what works for you and leave the rest, as they say in La Leche League.

1. Use a Morning Basket. Go here to learn more.

2. Use a Spark Station, as developed by Mary Ann Johnson. This is such a wondrous thing, especially if you homeschool. If you don’t homeschool, you can use it on days when your children are home all day and you want to encourage a love of learning outside of school. Not just in the summer but all the time. If you do homeschool, this is something to use as part of your homeschool day to encourage wonder and the practice of academic skills on a daily basis, year-round as well. Start now and continue on with it in the fall when your new school year starts. Go here to learn all the details. The Spark Station involves 5 rules from Mary Ann Johnson so that children keep engaging with it. How fun for the current season to fill it with things that have to do with summer and the great outdoors. Below are suggested topics/types of items. I’d add to it whatever else your children are interested in learning more about. Remember, you can get the books from your public library, and some libraries have games and educational toys for circulation as well. So filling the Spark Station doesn’t have to break the bank.

If I had under 10s, I’d also add in some fun colorful things to encourage phonics decoding, handwriting, and math skills like dry-erase books, Learning Wrap Ups, flash cards etc.

3. Spend time outside. Listen to the 1000 hours outdoors podcast for motivation. Start tracking your time, as a family, or encourage your children if they are old enough to individually track their time. Maybe even have an awesome outdoor event when you reach the goal.

4. Start/continue nature journals. I started one decades ago and wished I had kept it up. Iv’e been very sporadic with it, as shown by my latest entry below. I’m going to pick it up this summer! Listen to this podcast as you drive to our outside destinations.

5. Have each child make up a Daily Dozen, Daily 6 or Daily whatever number you want chart/list of things to check off every day. These are daily chores that are important to keep the home running plus individualized activities to acquire more knowledge and skills. This prevents the “summer slide.”

Free time is allowed (screen time, time with friends, free play inside or outside) after these things are done. Here are ideas:

-getting ready for the day personally (make bed, morning prayer, dress and groom, eat breakfast)

-reading from your core book/scriptures on own

-math (the same program you used during the school year or some other program to keep math skills fresh)

-logic and puzzle solving skills. For example, do one page a day of Sudoku or a crossword puzzle book, or one or two challenges a day from some solitaire game, such as those from ThinkFun or SmartGames.

-sustained silent reading, see #7 below. Ask your children, “What books do you want to read on your own? What are you interested in learning more about?” Show them the lists over here, let them pick out some books, and put them on hold at your local public library or buy them. Then get them each their own inexpensive basket from a thrift store to hold their books in their room.

-music making skills

-physical fitness skills

-art producing skills (drawing, painting, sewing, dancing, crafting, acting, etc.)

-chore to bless the family

-act of service to bless people inside or outside the home

-weeding the garden

Depending on circumstances you could even have each child have their own morning basket, or funschooling basket, which you keep inside the Spark Station, to be used only when the Spark Station is open. (For me when my children were all at home, the Spark Station was open generally between breakfast and lunch after we did math in Mathusee, about two hours.)

Find inexpensive baskets at thrift stores, Hobby Lobby, or Ross, one for each child. Fill each basket with things relating to their Daily Dozen: books, a harmonica, lap harp, flash cards, kits, games, puzzles, songbooks, handicrafts, etc. The Thinking Tree Press has great books to guide children’s studies. Above and below from Sarah Janisse Brown, creator of Thinking Tree Books, are two videos showing basket contents for a teen girl and a ten-year-old boy. In each example, a homeschooling handbook/journal from Thinking Tree Press guides the contents for the funschooling basket.

6. Plant a garden and tend to it daily. Translation: assign each child to weed in it for a certain amount of time, and work along side them.

7. Read aloud to your children for at least 5 minutes every day. If this is a new thing, start at 5 minutes and add five minutes each week until you are reading 15 to 30 minutes or more, whatever works for your family. You can do this during Morning Basket time, while the kiddos are playing with items from the Spark Station, while they do dishes, while they are weeding, in addition to the popular bedtime. (I’ve used all those times.)

8. Have a quiet reading time period right after lunch as a chance to regroup and refresh and give mom a break from supervising (relatively speaking of course) with her own quiet time. This is when babies and toddlers nap, and older children stay in their bedrooms reading books on own, or listening to audiobooks while playing with quiet toys. (Hello Yoto player!) Watch Sarah Mackenzie of readaloudrevival.com explain the concept above.

9. Visit Little Free Libraries on a regular basis, such as once a week. Go here to see the map and plan a route, visiting however many you want in your allotted time. Then end up at a park with a blanket and snacks under a tree to read from the books you just got and share what you learn

10. Make a list of hikes you want to make with your family and friends. Do a different one each week.

11. Make a list of playgrounds/parks to visit as a family with or without friends on a weekly basis, packing a picnic lunch, lawn games, books and your nature journals.

12. Make a list of places within a 1-2 hour drive from your home (or whatever your limit is) that involve water: lakes, reservoirs, springs, hot springs, waterfalls, ponds, creeks and streams. Do an internet search and talk to friends and family to scout these out. Visit a different one each week, every other week, or month, as your schedule allows. Let the kiddos explore while you sit and read a book and sketch in your nature journal, and/or explore with them.

13. Have a weekly visit to the library. Don’t plan anything else after you come home. This idea comes from Marcie Holladay of singlemomonafarm.com. Bring home your books, sit around in a shady spot or cuddle on the couch inside and have a reading party for a set amount of time. Share what you are learning. You can expand this idea so it lasts through dinner time with substantial finger food and plenty of napkins and wipes to keep fingers clean so they don’t damage library books.

14. Engage in a summer reading program. Public libraries often offer this. Go here for one from redeemedreader.com, and Jennifer Flanders has a page here of reading rewards programs.

15. Go letterboxing. I detail all about that here. It’s like a treasure hunt!

16. Get this summer bucket list from Jennifer Flanders over here for more suggested summer activities.

Happy summer!