featured image

[caption id="attachment_172110" align="aligncenter" width="1180"]"Fuel your summer" by Kate Taliaferro (CatholicMom.com) Image: Pixabay.com (2013), CC0/PD[/caption]

Normally at this time of year we are finishing up the school year and already sending each other memes about how we will survive the summer. Kids home all the time? What are we going to do when it gets too hot to even go outside? How am I going to keep everyone entertained and still keep the house clean? Will we survive so much togetherness??

However, this year is unlike any other year. Our kids have already been home for months. While the middle of March felt like we would never get a handle on the new reality, now that it’s May I feel like most of us have gotten a schedule down. It might not be perfect, but we’ve been at this long enough that some new routines and habits have formed in our homes.

Now the next challenge is upon us. Summer. What routines we’ve found around online schooling are going away. What will you do to fill the void that our incredible teachers have managed to still fill, even at a distance? I’d like to offer a few suggestions.

These are some of the things I’m planning for my own kids as we head into the summer months. Some of these will be things we will do all together, others are for the kids to do on their own. As best I can, I’m going to try to keep things roughly the same time everyday to continue building on habits and routines we already have in place.

  • Reading - especially styled after Sarah Makenzie’s Read Aloud Revival. Her podcast and booklists are fantastic! I plan to read aloud while the kids engage in legos, puzzles or coloring for at least 2 hours during the week. This will be broken into chunks, of course.
  • Jeff Cavins’ Great Adventure Bible Timeline - for Kids! You may be familiar with the wonderful adult study program by Jeff Cavins, but did you know he and his wife made a kid’s version? Complete with memory cards, a coloring book, and the maps. I’m so excited to share these materials with my kids! Once a week I plan to pull these materials out and dive into the timeline.
  • Virtual Tours - there have been many many many virtual tours put up during these last few months. There’s no way you’ve exhausted them all. Aquariums, museums, zoos and all manner of institutions have flooded the internet with some incredible opportunities for our kids. We’ve especially enjoyed the Hit Play Chicago. Mayor Lightfoot of Chicago has been going on 30-minute field trips of the major Chicago museums and attractions and uploading the trips on a weekly basis.
  • Learn something new or continuing to practice skills - Our girls participate in ballet and jazz. While their studio has put up a few videos, we have discovered Sam Cam’s dance videos on YouTube and they have been a hit. If you have younger kids who love Disney and may be interested in dance, this is a great time to explore that. All of our kids and myself practice Tae Kwon Do. We receive instruction through a local church that is part of a larger organization. They have put up some great videos going through different steps and drills.

    • A note about the Tae Kwon Do videos. This organization based at a local Baptist church and the majority of their videos will include a Bible lesson toward the end.

  • Kiwi Crate (or other subscription crates): Just as the internet is exploding with virtual tours and field trips, there is an ever-increasing number of subscription boxes. Our family was gifted a Kiwi Crate subscription and our kids love it! There have been a variety of topics and activities which have been both educational and just a lot of fun.
  • Two years ago for Christmas I asked the grandparents to gift our kids a Kids Cook Real Food. We have loved how thorough this program is, how thoughtful, and how empowered our children feel in the kitchen. There are 3 levels to the program. You can purchase just the level that is age appropriate for your child(ren), or purchase the whole program and have access to all the material and videos as your children grow.

Not everything needs to be purchased or cost money. Maybe you are going to have chalk Mondays with different challenges for things to draw or create. Perhaps you’d like to memorize a few Robert Frost poems or psalms. Maybe this is the perfect time to begin a family Rosary or lectio divina habit.

There are so many possibilities for this summer. I encourage you to think about the schedule you already have in place and see how you use that to fuel your summer.

[tweet "Think about the schedule you already have in place and see how you use that to fuel your summer. By @KateTaliaferro"]


Copyright 2020 Kate Taliaferro