Summer Break

Because I homeschool during the school year, I take summer break really seriously. I look forward to it, probably more so than my kids. I set goals I want to accomplish, projects I want to complete, books I want to read, and more. We only take off the months of June and July for summer break. To accomplish everything I want to, I have to be strategic. I have found three keys that work for me to have a productive summer.

Key #1: Make a List of Goals

Before summer starts, I write down my goals for what I want to accomplish. Summer goes so fast! If I don’t take the time to write down my goals, summer will be over and I won’t have accomplished anything I wanted to. So before summer started, Matt and I used one of our date nights to write down what we want to accomplish personally and what we want to do as a family.

Key 2: Make a Daily Schedule for the Kids and One For You

I know that if I want to get anything accomplished this summer, my kids need to know what to do and when to do it. Otherwise, they will drive me crazy all day with… What can I do? I’m bored. What’s for lunch? What’s for supper? Can we go outside now? We made a summer schedule and placed it on the refrigerator so the kids know what they can do all throughout the day. We are a few weeks into our schedule, and it seems to be working really well for us. Instead of them coming to me every two seconds, they go look at what they should be doing.

If you are interested, you can see our kids’ schedule here and my personal schedule here. You can also print off your own summer schedule to fill in here. If you check out our schedules, you will see that Sunday and Monday are not on there. On Sundays we have church, and Monday is a Sabbath Day for us.

Key 3: Make a Meal Plan

One of the keys to sticking with the schedule is to have my menu planned out for the week. If I don’t, I will spend valuable time trying to figure out the next meal or fielding questions about it. I use this simple menu printable from iheartplanners.com. You can access it here. I printed off several copies on different colored paper. I fill in a new one each week on Sunday. It makes such a difference! Our days have run so much smoother since incorporating a meal plan that the kids and I can see.

These three keys have made a difference already in our summer. Use these three keys to give you and your kids the most productive summer yet!