smart summer calendar: fun, focused summer plan for ANY family

Hip, hip HOORAY!

Summer’s finally officially here!  Woo00-hooo!

My melancholy, revved-up, emotional kiddos finally seemed a little less anxious today.  Though Owen would not believe that he passed Kindergarten until he read it himself, he was, indeed, promoted to grade one, and we have, thank goodness!, made it through yet another school year.

And now Maddy’s officially a third grader. Impossible.

She had just turned five (five!) when I started this blog, and looking back, I find her walk through early literacy and math–and her first few years in school–completely amazing.  I could weep at how fast time flies.   More than anything, I am amazed at how much we all have changed in the last few years and how this bloggy-blog of mine has captured it along the way.

Before I get all weepy on you, I wanted to share something I created so that Maddy, Owen, Cora, and I are not spending the next twelve weeks bored, frozen, lazy, and weepy.  Or hysterical, argumentative, angry, and hyper.

It’s–in my mind–the best of the best of the best summer calendars because it’s realistic for us.  

I really think it will give us the outline for a fun, focused summer that any family could use.

Here’s the skinny. . .

• Smart Summer Calendar–Fun, Focused Summer Plan (for any family!): That’s just it–it’s a simple calendar that incorporates the necessities like those summer work packets and content basics along with some really cool stuff in between.

Yes, I want my kids to have a long and lazy summer. But I also want to keep their brains moving a bit and I want to have their summer work packets from school finished well before the late August due date.

checking out the plan for summer 2012

I wanted to build in:

• ways to use the incredible and fabulous we teach: summertime learning eBook that the fabulous and incredible members of we teach have created;
• a longtime fave of ours, Summer Fun Cards;
• ways to keep our kids digitally savvy  (but at the same time. . .);
• cool reasons to put pencil to paper and do some old fashioned writing;
• a lot of freedom with reading choices;
• distinct time to read and options for recording books;
• a whole lot of free-bird, open-play, nothing-planned, blank-slate time to themselves;
• indoor and outdoor learning fun;
• time for our already-scheduled swim and dive;
• lots of sneaky learning;
• a plan to finish school-issued homework packets early, early, EARLY in the game;
• some activities from other programs I believe to be worthwhile;
• flexibility of each week’s plan;
• definite math-fact fun (somewhere, somehow. . . );
• and some serious ownership of the summer--I want the kids to make decisions as often as possible!

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So here it is–our teach mama smart summer calendar 2012:
teach mama’s Smart Summer 2012

I absolutely cannot wait to share tomorrow’s piece, as I’ll intro it with the kids and share in the evening: Everyday Journal. 

The grown-up cousin of our Everyday Name Books from the past few summers, our Everyday Journals–I really think–will be so totally cool. I love them.  Already.

And I hope that the kids do, too.

Here’s to a super sneaky, mom-won’t-lose-her-mind-this-summer-darnit-because-she’s-got-a-PLAN, summer of 2012!

fyi: Want another option for summer fun? Check out last summer’s Smart Summer Challenge posts! You can still–always–use that calendar and adjust for this year!