The Kids Make Their Summer Vacation Plans

It’s been raining for days and days here in Wisconsin. Just take a look at what happened in Wisconsin Dells which isn’t too far from me: FEMA Tours Damage At Lake Delton Thursday.







We’ve been having rain, rain, and more rain and more is on the way. We’ve been under flood watches for the past several days and the Wisconsin River is right in front of my house. (it doesn’t look too bad right now, though).

So this weekend I’m going to work with the kids to create a summer activity journal. I decided to make this as simple as possible and just purchased some spiral bound sketch pads for them. As we go on trips and do the various things listed in my summer activity planner the children can draw pictures or write journal entries about where we went and what we did. (Read about our Summer Activity Planner)

I also want them to make their own list of things they want to do or accomplish this summer. When they have their lists completed I will have them attach them to the front of their journal. Each week I’m going to set aside some time for them to look over their lists and make sure they are accomplishing the things they wanted to do. On the inside of the back cover of their journals I attached the list of activities that we are planning to do this summer. This will help them to see what is coming up and be able to look forward to these special days without bugging me about what we’re going to be doing.

After the past several days of nothing but rain the kids are already moaning about nothing to do on rainy days. So I’m going to have them create a rainy day activity jar. Deborah Taylor-Hough created an incredible 200+ Summertime Activities for Kids. I’ve printed this list out for my kids and we’re going to cut apart all the ones they want to do on rainy days and then we’ll put them in a jar. When the kids get bored they can simply pull an activity out of the jar and voila’ instant fun! (I hope!)

I homeschooled my kids for 7 years and even though I’m not able to homeschool now their education is still an important goal to me. So I do everything I can to encourage them to pursue anything educational. I’m also very aware of the declining writing skills of children in public schools and since I love to write it is very important to me that my kids have very good writing skills. So we are going to create a journal jar filled with writing prompts for them to write about or they can color a picture instead. I found a list of over 200 prompts at Teacher.net. I copied and pasted the prompts into a document to have the kids cut them out and put them into a jar. They’ve already been doing really good with their daily school lessons and so now since they are in that routine I want them to write a short bit every day as well.

For the most part that’s our rainy day weekend plans. We’re also going to be taking my step-dad out to Golden Corral on Saturday for Father’s Day and for his birthday as well. We also have a kids birthday party to go to in the afternoon. I hope everyone else has a great weekend too!

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out my weekly Suviving Summertime newsletter. You can be sure you’ll find some great ideas!