After a whole lot of hee-hawing on my Instagram story, I FINALLY put the finishing touches on my Summer System and IT LIVES!! HALLELUJAH!
So here's the situation - summer in our house is a LITTLE crazy. We're not quite to the sleeping in and playing outside until dark or lounging by the pool while the kids wear themselves out jumping in after diving rings stage. In our current life, it's all hands on deck because everyone needs a set of eyes on them at all times and everyone always needs something. The end of school also doesn't extend wake-up time for us. In fact, if history proves anything, it's the opposite - up at dawn and ready to be entertained. By a couple weeks into summer, I'm starting to wear myself out agonizing over what I can do to entertain them that isn't turning on the TV and fending off 100 snack requests with popsicles before noon. And let's be honest, with a 5, 3, and 1 1/2 year old, they still thrive on routine - they want to know what's coming up next. So, since a lack of routine can really send us into a spiral here, I've been working on our 2019 Summer System - we're going to be maximizing fun while staying healthy and sane. Come along with us…
For this system, I've done three things - a daily schedule, a weekly schedule, and a snack (or food) schedule. Obviously, this is subject to change at any given moment since with three tiny wannabe dictators, flexibility is everything, but this is the general idea. Since I'm lucky enough to have help most days, I've aimed to be able to spend some one-on-one time with each girl at some point each week as well.
Let's start with the daily outline first. It'll get hot as blazes around here in no time (or already…hello 94 degrees!), so I aimed for morning outdoor activities or outings and afternoon downtime and pool. This is a rough outline of what I hope the schedule will be:
7am - Official start to the day
We have a Hatch Baby in both rooms so everyone's "light" turns green when it's ok to wake up and come out.
7am - 8am - Breakfast & Morning Responsibilities
8am - 11am - Morning Activity
10/10:30am - Snack
11 am - Lunch prep & Folder Time*
12:30 pm - 2pm - Rest Time
2pm - Snack
2-4pm - Pool or Afternoon Activities
4-5pm - TV time & Dinner prep
5 - 6pm - Dinner & Bath (or more pool…)
6-7pm - After-Dinner Summer Activity
7-7:30pm - Story & Bedtime
This is the daily schedule chart that hangs on the refrigerator. Each activity has a velcro tab so that they can be easily moved and changed out. The bottom of the chart functions as a behavior chart and this has been so motivating for my girls - if you’re looking for something to help motivate good behavior, a clip chart has done wonders at our house.
There is a Morning Responsibilities chart in the big girls’ room and they think it’s so fun to get to move their clips when they’ve completed one of their responsibilities.
*Folder Time - we started folder time last summer as a way to buy time to make lunch and it was a hit! I made each girl a folder and in it I put a couple learning worksheets (usually one reading-focused and one math-focused) as well as a coloring sheet. The girls sit at the kitchen table and work on their folders while I (or Abi) preps their lunch and it keeps them occupied and not whining while lunch is made. If they have additional activities to do, we let them finish them during rest time. Since Virginia doesn’t nap anymore and Kate is questionable, I plan on taking each one for 20-30 minutes during rest time and working on some reading skills like sight words, letter and word recognition or just reading together. I want to keep them motivated and learning during summer break so they’re ready to go when school starts back in the fall.
Alright so now that our daily schedule is out there, let's move on to what the weeks will look like. We have our go-to activities that we enjoy as well as some camps scattered throughout the summer. When it's a camp week, it's usually from 9-12:30pm so those weeks, the girls will have camp as their Morning Activity and go straight to some Rest Time when they get home. When it's not a camp week, here's what the week will look like:
Monday - Zoo Day (this may be a little aggressive but I let the girls choose an animal to “feature” each week and have been researching books to check out from the library and downloading coloring sheets for each animal - we’ll see how long this lasts)
Tuesday - Library Day (storytime, art activity & new book checkout)
Wednesday - Art Day (I’ve been scouring Pinterest for simple and not too messy art projects to do - any and all suggestions are welcome!)
Thursday - Playground Day (we'll try to hit a different playground each week to keep it fresh)
Friday - the girls usually spend Fridays with Mason's parents so we will either head up to their property where they can run around outside, ride the pony, play in the garden, and drive the Gator or they will come to our house and Mason's mom (a former 1st grade teacher) always brings a bag of goodies with very fun learning-based activities. A win-win for me either way!
Saturday - Farmer's Market (each girl gets to pick one new food to try at the market each weekend and we'll look for a recipe to make with that food together during the week - teaching locality and seasonality, variety, and getting the kids involved in the kitchen!)
Sunday - Church & Rest (and I'm sure plenty of impromptu pool parties ☀️🎉)
Finally - what you’re all most likely here for…how we’re going to handle snacks this summer. I get no less than 100 snack requests a day and that is just not going to fly this summer. I posted my Summer Snack List last week, but I wanted to quickly go over my approach for snacks. I’ve set aside specific snack times in the schedule - since my kids are all under 5 they still very much fall into the needing/wanting to eat every 2-4 hours - young kids generally eat every 2-3 hours, young school kids every 3-4 hours, and teens 4-5 hours. Our eating schedule looks like this:
7am - Breakfast
10am - Snack #1
12pm - Lunch
2/2:30pm - Snack #2
4:30pm - Vegetable Tray set up for any pre-dinner snacking
5/5:30pm - Dinner
Each girl has a box (one in the pantry & one in the fridge) with her name on it and the snacks that are available to her for that day - this means that there is variety and once they’ve eaten something, it’s gone. I’m hoping this cuts down on multiple cheese snacks or bars or applesauce pouches, etc. For snack #1, they can have a serving of fruit + something from their snack box and for snack #2, they can choose something from their box. Then I plan to have a vegetable box ready to go that they can snack on while I make dinner - I’m guessing this one may take some getting used to but I’m ready for the fight.
That’s it, ladies and gentlemen! I can’t believe I got it ready and I can’t wait to put it to use staring tomorrow! I’ll let you know over on Instagram how things are going and if you try any of these things or something similar, let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts/ideas!
