Establishing Summer Routines with Check Lists

Summer is here! I am so excited to enjoy the sun, read good books, have some fun family outings, and plan for the next school year! Summer is a great time to teach new skills, reinforce good habits that have slid over the school year, and establish new routines that will help the next school year run more smoothly.

This last week, we spent an evening with the kids coming up with our summer bucket list and writing it out on a big blackboard (Home Depot $10 deal!). The kids had a blast, as you can see from the photo.

I like to use summer to do some deep cleaning and decluttering around my house, tackling tasks that I can’t get too during the school year. I make a master list of various areas in the house that need my attention: closets, reorganizing kids clothes (storing away clothes that are too small or out of season that have just been accumulating on closet shelves), deep cleaning kitchen cupboards, and reorganizing our homeschool resources (tossing old workbooks, buying new supplies, and reorganizing our homeschool storage space), etc. I might wipe down doors, baseboards, and the like.

I also like to take summer to make a new chore chart for the upcoming school year. I will shift chores around as new helpers join the ranks and train the kids in new tasks. I’ll share more about this in my next post.

Helen (4) has her own summer list with drawings to help her remember each task. She’s very proud of herself!

To ensure we keep some good routines going during the summer, I like to make each child their own daily checklist. I want to maintain basic reading, writing, and math skills over the summer to prevent summer slide while keeping it fun and engaging, so we make our own summer reading challenge with fun outings as a reward (for every 5 books read by all), and utilize math facts wrap-ups or online math programs to keep up the skills (khan academy, math seeds & reading eggs). I want to keep helping the kids establish the habit of their own personal devotion time as well as memorizing some Scripture over the summer that is specifically chosen to address various character struggles they are experiencing, so that’s included on their list. We took this check list idea and the free printable from Jordan Page at Fun Cheap or Free.

We have the checklists hanging in our kitchen in a visible place they walk by every single day. Each day, they will take their list and check it off as completed. We will erase at the end of the day. The list must be completed before they have their 15 minutes of i-pad game time or play dates with neighbors and friends.

So their lists includes:

Bible - We use this Kid’s Bible Reading plan, and our non-reader uses Jesus Storybook Bible (Read and Hear version for i-Pad in Apple Books and then she listens to Psalms 23 read aloud through ESV Study bible app).
Memory Verses
Chores (they each have two chores to complete each morning)
Writing (10 min) - We picked out some fun journals to encourage free-writing/journaling over the summer. They can write about their day, write a letter to a friend, or write about what they read in their current book.
Math (15 min) - Wrap Up’s (math facts review), Math Seeds, or Khan Academy
Reading (30 min)
Typing (10 min)
Act of service: Find one way to serve someone practically (in our family or neighborhood).

Eden (7) with her new writing journal. She is very excited about it!

It’s looking to be a fabulous productive summer!