After we were finished our brainstorming, we busted our butts for about 2-3 hours and CLEANED the heck out of the house! Daddy was QUITE impressed when he came home. I can't explain why, but I clean much better when someone else is home, even if it's the kids. If I have the house to myself, I tend to be less constructive. Hence, the messy house
Tonight I took the time to make checklists for the learning that we want to do this summer. One checklist is just for reading. I am requiring 3 chapter books and 50 short books over the summer. When this is done, they get a jumbo sized candy bar. (Side note: please, no one fill them in on the fact that these only cost $1 and they could easily buy one themselves if I let them. They think that getting a jumbo candy bar is like the best thing EVER, so let's just keep them believing for a while!) Claire has already read 14 books, Garret, 10 and Gavin, 8.
The second checklist includes all the other learning stuff...journaling, mad minute tests, art projects, worksheets, etc. On this checklist I put a box for each subject, each week. Most of this stuff is required...and not very hard to accomplish (2 of the categories are "Play on coolmath.com for 30 min" and "Play on toytheater.com for 30 min"). I haven't decided on the reward for completing every task, but it will be a biggie! Maybe Kings Island. Something that we would possibly do anyway, so by making it the reward we're not out extra cash. ;) I also added one "lofty" goal to the list, which is learning multiplication tables. I put a checkbox for x1 through x12. I'll be happy if they learn through x5, elated if any further! Since x1, x2 & x5 are pretty easy, it's really only x3 & x4. They should be able to memorize that and get a jump on 3rd grade math!
Since the kids were tiny, I have always assigned colors to them...pink, blue and green. Sometimes purple can sub for pink. Sometimes yellow for green. Bottles, sippy cups, backpacks. Anything that is picked out by color will automatically be assigned to a certain child. Because I'm all about efficiency (and if it weren't in my DNA to be that way, then having triplets would have probably forced it onto me) we had 3 sippy cups. I found the brand and style that I liked, bought our 3 colors and washed and reused the same 3 all the time. We didn't have any other sippy cups in our house, until we were given 2 other randomly colored cups (same brand and style, but not color). These 2 cups eventually disappeared. I don't have proof, but I am almost certain that one of the kids (probably Claire, who is most like mama) threw the rouge colored cups in the trash! I didn't mind. To be honest, I had thought about doing the same myself. I used our long-standing color-coding system on the reading and learning charts.
For chores, I was able to re-instate our "chore card" system. I don't make the kids do many chores during the school year. They have to clean their rooms, bring down and put away their laundry and do anything else that we ask of them (most often that is load or unload the dishwasher). But no standing, daily chores. They are only home for a few hours and I don't want them to spend the whole time working. But during the summer....now that's a different story. With 8 extra hours to fill during the day, I feel no guilt in making them help out. We came up with the chore card system when the kids were in kindergarten. We have several index cards in a magnetic holder on the side of the fridge. Each card has a different chore written on it. Before anything else is done for the day, the chore cards have to be done. This helps solve more than one problem because my early-rising boys are less motivated to get up early when they know they will be doing chores before they watch TV or play video games. However, to encourage them to do the chore cards, I added in "watch 1 TV show" and "play 15 min. of video games" as two of the chores. They are willing to do all the other chores without much fuss just to get to those 2 cards. That idea had to be given to me by God, because it has worked like a charm all these years.
I have one last thing yet to do. I have to make some sort of FUN checklist. I've seen a few ideas on Pinterest - a bingo board or a simple "bucket list". Last summer, Claire and our neighbor tried to come up with a point system, a la "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer", but it was too complicated. And she made it on a dry erase board...which, of course, got erased. I'm gonna have to reel the kids in a bit on their lofty ideas of a fun summer. We can only afford so many excursions to expensive locations. Today we tried to come up with more relatively easy and free/cheap ideas. A few of those are...
Science Experiment Day (finally do all those fun things that I've pinned)
Bubble Day
Cookie Baking Day
Water Obstacle Course Day
Hike at local parks
Picnic
Movie Day (watch movies and eat popcorn ALL day)
Fair Food Day
Water Balloon Fight
Stay up REALLY late
It's the start of a new summer! I really hope we make some lasting memories this year. And keep most of the knowledge they gained in second grade. I'm sure there will be many days where they don't feel like doing anything constructive and neither do I. That is perfectly fine with me. I'm cool with a big part of the summer just being summer. No work. No plans. Just go out - or stay in - and play! However, I think by doing this little bit of thinking, planning and prepping up front, our summer will be much more productive and fun overall. I love having my kids home and want to make every moment count in some way!!
I don't think there's a way to attach an excel document to a blog (or if there is, I'm clueless), but since most or all of my followers personally know me, feel free to send me a message (comment, facebook, email, text, whatever) if you'd like me to e-mail you the documents to edit and use as torture for your own children!
