Summer Time Planning!

Hi everyone! Summer is here, and aside from planning tasks for work, we all have busy home planning tasks to take care of as well! I thought I’d share a few summer activities that I do, and how I use my planners to organise my home life 🙂 I have a 13 and a 10-year-old, and when summer holiday comes, we still need to keep them busy with ideas.

Using a planner to plan for activities are a great way to keep my summer holidays stress free. We use a calendar and fill the six weeks off school.

Rather than have a massive list of activities to do, I find it useful to have the activities scheduled into a calendar. This way the family has something to look forward to, and stop that famous statement “what are we doing today, I’m bored!”

I start with a monthly calendar to map out the activities from a bird’s eye view, such as soccer camp week, swimming classes, etc.. These are the “must dos” that the kids need to understand 🙂 After that, its time to start filling the rest of the days with fun summer ideas!

Here are a few ideas that I start with in my calendars:

Start with scheduling new parks to explore

on every Saturdays, look at a map, and choose parks that you have never been to, grab a picnic lunch and go. Our family enjoys Geocaching, and we try to coordinate a geocache to the parks we are going to explore. Outdoors and treasure hunting adds an excellent adventure to the day.

Plan for family dinner outs!

Choose a genre of food, and preselect a few new restaurants and schedule them on your calendar. Invite one of your kid’s friend to join; we find that this is a great way to keep communication open, and to learn more about their friends!

Plan for movie nights

at home, at a theatre, or even a drive through! Any movie can be a good movie with candy, popcorn and soda 🙂 We are fortunate enough that there is still a drive-in cinema in the area that opens only during the summer, and our kids LOVE IT!

Weekly board game nights

is always a hit with my family. I know one may say that this is geeky and old fashion, but this is TRULY an enjoyable family experience. We all enjoy sitting around a table throw some dice, talk and have snacks. Just in case you want to know, some great board games are:
– Talisman (epic game)
– Carcassonne (simple tile building game)
– Munchkins (card game)
– Clue (yes this one too)

Put that summer vacation on there!

Again I find that seeing this visually, and having something to look forward to makes me “feel fabulous” and gives me a sense of achievement in my life because the future seems bright.

Use colours and graphics throughout the calendar

to bring fun into it. Who wouldn’t t want to see a beach umbrella doodle on a beach vacation or a pair of Mickey Mouse ears for a trip to Disneyland 🙂 Have fun with it!

If you need to get more detail on your days, choose a weekly planner that covers all seven days, with morning and afternoon sessions. I usually have a section each day reserved for meal plan idea. I find that this keeps my week simple for grocery shopping and not having to stress about what to make for dinner that night.

Have all your ideas written/doodled on a calendar, and post them on your fridge for all to see. This way they can refer to it, and possibly add ideas they want to do as well! Managing time for the family is just as important as managing time at work; these have to work together to bring balance to your life.

Have fun and happy planning 🙂

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