Monday was the last day of school for our kids, and they “escaped” school, eager for some fun. While their friends all headed off the camp the very next day, it was left to me to make sure that each day had some new adventure planned, all while keeping house and working from home.
Fortunately, there are a lot of great resources to help me. Our local community, for example, provides a number of free and low-cost activities. On Tuesday, the kids learned about cave painting and created their own art through a library program, and they also got to do some harvesting at the local CSA farm we belong to.
Wednesday was movie morning. The kids got to watch a $1 summer movie and then do a craft.
For Thursday, we stayed close to home and relied on fun ideas from magazines and the Internet. The library is also a great source of books and magazine that offer fun activities for kids. My oldest son got some cooking skills in and made everyone breakfast, and then we continued the theme with everyone making ice cream in a baggie later that afternoon.
Friday was a beautiful day, a perfect summer day, so we took advantage of it to have a nature scavenger hunt in the backyard, followed by a free outdoor concert at a local botanical garden. There are a number of websites that offer scavenger lists to print.
Each day also includes a number of set activities. There is their summer reading time. They have to log the number of minutes of reading for school, and they are also signed up through a library program that rewards them with prizes for the number of books read. They also have some chores, and we concentrate on learning new self-reliant activities, based on age.
Activities can always be tweaked, depending on what is available and the family schedule. I like the idea of each family being able to provide a wealth of fun activities during the summer, without spending a lot of money.