Sunday, August 8, 2010

Summer Blues

We are encroaching school very soon and my kids are getting blue.  There just seems to be a little more whining about doing their jobs and a little more fighting.  I wish I had a simple solution to keep spirits up but I'm lacking for ideas.  Please post your ideas in comments to keep summer fun until school starts.  Here is a few that I've found that have helped.
1.  Make a daily plan with your kids.  This works well in the morning to talk about the things they want to do that day.  If its play with friends, go to the park, have a picnic, go on a bike ride, do sprinklers in the backyard, or make cookies together.  I have also tried this when the kids have had play dates with friends.  I tell them I want them to be able to do a variety of fun things.  One day my oldest and his friend made this plan.
--Play Lego Star Wars (on the Wii)  for 1 hour
--Make a treat and eat it
--Play outside
--Play Lego's in my room

It worked so well, no fighting with the boys, they had a great time and they enjoyed doing a variety of things.

2.  Work on Scout Requirements.  If your boys are 8 years or older they had so many scout requirements that work well to do in the summer.  You could have them choose one thing to do a day for the rest of the summer.

3.  Do a little bit of school readiness everyday.  Math facts, spelling, handwriting are all going to be a part of their day all day in just a few weeks so help them prepare by doing a few worksheets everyday.  I have a new favorite website for homework help.  It's called spellingcity.com.  Make a parent account and you can make your own spelling lists for the kids and it saves them for you.  The kids can play games with those words and later get quizzed on them.  I'm totally going to use this during the year with their spelling lists.

4.  Make a family goal to accomplish something before school starts.  It could be a book you read together as a family, have a family walk every night, a work-yard project, not use your car as much as you can, getting every ones teeth brushed everyday, whatever it is.   And then you can have a reward for the family for accomplishing it.

OK this is all I have, I'm needed some other ideas for my own sanity, please... anything has got to help!  =)
Happy August to all and enjoy the rest of this time with your children.

1 comment:

  1. My kids have some math work books they brought home from school that they work on. I made a summer plan and feel great that I've stuck with it. We just talked about vultures and did you know they have no sweat glands? The pee to cool themselves off, gross I know but I'm learning so much with them ha ha. I have to admit with school coming up in a few weeks I feel like I've laid off telling them to do so much because they only have a little of summer left. See you tonight!

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