Organizing Your Way » Summer Schedules

Question of the Day: What’s the Biggest Challenge to Your Summer Schedule?

Mandi Ehman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:39:58 +0000

source: Matei Lascar

As we finish up our series on Summer Schedules and Stress-Free Vacation Planning, I’d love to hear from you:

What is the biggest challenge to your summer schedule?

Is it simply having the kids out of school and without a regular routine?

Is it all the extra activities and events?

Is it going on vacation and then trying to settle back into your regular routine?

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Making Summer Plans: A Step-by-Step Guide

Mandi Ehman — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:40:24 +0000

source: Andreas-photography(catching up)

On Wednesday, Shaina talked about planning a summer calendar for your family. Today, I want to talk about some of the steps for getting ready for summer and all the fun and extra activities it offers.

Your Summer Calendar

To start, pull out a calendar and add all of the camps, sports, vacations and activities you’ve planned for your family this summer (not to mention weddings and graduation parties you might have been invited to this month!). As you decide on additional activities, you’ll be able to quickly refer to your calendar to see what dates will work and which are already booked.

Pack a Summer Diaper/Activity/Pool Bag

Whether you have babies and preschoolers or older children, having a bag packed and ready to go that contains all the necessary summer items will make your daily routine easier because you won’t have to worry about finding those items scattered around the house. Your bag might contain sunscreen, sunglasses, hats, bathing suits, handheld fans or whatever else your family needs.

Write a Shopping List

As you look out over the activities for the next month, make a shopping list of items you need to get ready for the pool or day camp as well as any educational workbooks or activities you want to pick up for the summer. You could also include gifts for any of the weddings or parties you’ll be attending as well. You may not get everything in one shopping trip, but at least you’ll have a master list to work from.

Register for Activities and Camps

If there are any sports, activities or camps that you haven’t yet registered for, now’s a great time to get those finished and off your to-do list. You don’t want to wait too long, as a lot of places have higher fees the longer you wait. There’s always the risk that they’ll close registration as well, which could lead to a lot of disappointment for everyone.

Rotate Seasonal Wardrobes

If you’re in a colder area and haven’t yet rotated your winter clothes out and summer clothes in, set a time to go ahead and do that so that you don’t have to continue to dig through the boxes to find warm-weather clothing!

Clean Up and Repair Outdoor Toys

If you haven’t already, take an hour or two this weekend to pull out all of the outdoor toys, inflate tires and balls, clean off ride-on toys and sand boxes and check for missing or broken parts. Be sure to check bicycle helmets to be sure they fit properly!

Prepare Medical Forms for Children

And finally, if you’re children will be traveling out of state – or if you’ll be taking a kid-free vacation out of state – be sure to prepare a medical form so that each of their caregivers will be able to make medical decisions in an emergency. Here’s a sample I found, but you may want to look around for others.

Other Resources for Planning Your Summer

For more information on planning your summer, check out Lorie’s post on The Clutter Diet Blog, “Are You Ready for Summer?” as well as Frugal Dad’s list of “14 Fun Summer Activities for Frugal Kids“.

How do you feel about your summer plans so far? Do you feel like you have a handle on it or are you rushing to get ready?

Making Summer Plans: Planning Summer Schedules for Your School-Age Kids

Mandi Ehman — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:38:55 +0000

source: StormyDog

Because my oldest is only four, summertime doesn’t look much different than the rest of the year for us. However, my friend Shaina, who blogs at Food for My Family, shares her summer planning process below, and she includes a lot of great ideas and hints for making the most of your summer!

Summer schedules can be difficult to organize because there are so many variables involved. Whether it’s sports, swimming lessons, camp schedules or vacations, having kids home from school all day or in a summer program, there are so many things to consider.

For my family, summer means my oldest is home from school and my four-year-old is suffering from preschool withdrawal. The summer does away with school schedules, but it brings with it sports, camp and vacations to work into the mix. Because I work from home, my kids are with me anytime they aren’t in school, and adding a nine-year-old to our everyday routine has definite changes on the dynamic of the everyday here.

A few things to consider when planning out your summer schedule with your kids:

:: Are your kids at home or in a summer program or at daycare during the weekday?

:: Do your kids participate in extracurricular activities such as sports or summer camps?

: Will you have a summer learning program in place?

:: Are there different chores in the summer versus the school year?

:: What vacations do you have planned?

Scheduling Activities

The first area I looked at when considering our summer schedule was working vacations and camps and sports into the weekly schedule. With my four-year-old eager to start sports and my nine-year-old attending two weeks of summer camp through our local university, I was already beginning to feel stretched in more than one direction.

1. Set a limit to the number of activities. For us, this meant limiting the weeks of day camp for my daughter and letting her choose only one extracurricular activity outside of that. Because my four-year-old son is so young, we signed him up for an introductory sports program that teaches both basic soccer and baseball skills. He’ll be participating in two sports, but the time commitment is the same for this as it was if we just picked one of the sports, and this way he’ll still be able to decide which sport he’s more interested in as we look to the future.

While it would be great to be able to have your kids do everything they ever wanted to do over the summer, setting a limit on the number of activities will be less stressful for you and your children. You won’t be running from dance class to swimming lessons and rearranging work schedules and carpooling every day of the week, and they’ll be able to run through the sprinkler in the late afternoon and ride their bike down the street to the neighbor’s house during the day.

2. Schedule free days. When looking at our options for sports, we had to choose from a list of possible days and times. One thing we made sure to do was to give ourselves days where we had nowhere to be. We want to be able to enjoy the weather and have the ability to spend a lazy evening, grilling in the backyard, taking a walk around the neighborhood to our local Dairy Queen. The balance of free days with scheduled days will help you appreciate the summer months and give everyone a chance to relax. They are also a wonderful time to schedule any random family outings you may have planned as a staycation.

source: Shaina/Food for My Family

3. Decide what your priorities are. When looking at violin camp for my daughter, I realized our vacation schedule coincided with the final concert at the end of the session. She was also going to miss three of the 4 of the 14 days of the camp. After pouting, I decided it was probably not worth our time or our money to enroll her because of those things. While I could switch our vacation days, this would not change the other four days she would be missing, and seeing as our time is limited by the weekend and other people’s availability, it would eat into our four-day weekend significantly. Additionally, the vacation is something the entire family looks forward to each year. As upsetting as it is to not be able to attend violin camp, there will be other violin camps in the future.

Choosing one thing over another is never easy, but looking at all of the people involved and determining the overall importance of an activity can help you decide where it falls on the priority list. If that means saying no to some things, try to look for alternatives. In our case, I will be teaching my daughter violin basics to make up for the missed information she would have gained at camp.

Educational Activities and Chores

The other aspect of summer schedules that we find critical is the everyday routine we have at home. As I said before, I work from home with my four kids. During the school year, my kids have regular routines and responsibilities, but the summer changes things some. There is a whole world beyond the patio door that can be added to things to take care of, and I am a strong believer in the importance of involving my kids in the nature that we find all around us. I’m anxious to begin reading Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder as part of the Simple Mom Sound Mind, Sound Mom Book Club next month.

Not only do the possible chores change, but we also have a whole host of things to consider when we take into account continuing some form of education when school is not in session. We strive to keep our children’s minds active at all times, and we have a list of educational activities they can choose from on a daily basis. One idea I took from Mandi is to do nature observation journals. She has been doing them with the tadpoles near her home, and I recently started some for the morning glory seeds my kids are growing in the backyard.

This summer we’re trying a point system for both the educational activities and the chores. Each day is worth five possible points, and each activity/chore is worth one point. We’re looking for a split of two educational activities to three chores. At the end of the week, the points are tallied and added towards a grand total. The points can be traded in for the monetary equivalent (five points per dollar) or for certain activities and outings that we have selected with the kids.

We have been trying to teach our four-year-old and two-year-old the meaning of money and how to save for something larger than a $0.92 Hot Wheels car, so this system gives them a way to earn money and “bank” it until they reach a goal.

I found wipe boards at Michael’s on clearance a few months ago. They have a glass front that the kids can use a dry erase marker on. I printed out the weekly sheets and now have a place where they can mark their points daily and total them at the end of the week.

I’ve made the chore chart and list of possible activities into a downloadable/printable spreadsheet for you to use as well.

What does your summer schedule look like? How do you find the right balance of activities and free time for your family?

Making Summer Plans: Thinking Through Your Needs

Mandi Ehman — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:41:04 +0000

source: Chris_J

I was pretty sure that 2009 had just started, but it turns out we’re almost halfway through it already!

As we prepare for the start of summer, we’re going to spend the next two weeks talking about making summer plans – adjusting to new schedules, daily activities and routines – as well as planning vacations and staycations so that you spend more time enjoying them and less time stressing over them.

What About the Children?

If you have school-aged children, summer probably means all new routines and schedules to get used to. Preparing ahead of time and having a basic idea of what your new daily routine will look like will make the transition easier on everyone.

:: Will your children be home during the day? Or will they be attending a day care or other formal program throughout the summer?

:: Are there lots of free-play opportunities in your neighborhood, or will you be looking for more structured activities?

:: Are there any community activities you want to take advantage of (story times, $1 days at the movie theater, VBS, etc.)?

:: Will your children be taking any lessons or attending any camps?

Staying Home or On the Go…

:: How does having your children home change your daily schedule and routine?

:: How will summertime affect your grocery budget? Your eating out budget?

:: Rather than school backpacks, will you need a summer bag or a diaper bag that contains different things than it does during the school year?

:: What things to do you still need to buy or pull out of storage for summer activities (bathing suits, pool accessories, sports gear, strollers, slings/carriers, etc.)?

Vacations and Staycations

Although we’ll be focusing more on planning your vacation/staycation next week, let’s think through the basics this week and how they’ll affect the daily routines and weekly schedules of summer. For this purpose, we’ll use “vacation” to describe all vacations, staycations and weekend getaways.

:: Do you already have your vacation(s) planned? Have you confirmed the time off at work for yourself, your spouse and/or your children?

:: If you haven’t picked a date yet, are there options to choose from that don’t conflict with the other activities and schedules you have planned?

:: Are there any day trips or weekend getaways that you want to try to plan as part of your summer as well?

Have you started making your summer plans and schedules yet, or has summer snuck up on you? What is your favorite part of summer? Least favorite?