Tips on Tuesday: Summer To Do List

It's back....

For those of you who read through this site often, you may recognize this chart. It all started last summer when I read about this idea on a friend's blog. I took it and ran with it thinking it would be a little something fun for the summer.

Not only was it great summer fun, but we ended up doing a Fall version, a Winter/Spring version and now we're back with Summer 2009.

What is this little something? It's a Summer Fun Chart/Checklist! As a family, we make a list of all the things we want to accomplish over the summer. (Mom gets final veto power and can add whatever she wants.) I make sure reading and naps make every list. Hooray!

This summer brings back many of our favorites--I think the Children's Museum makes every list. We carried over Chuck E. Cheese from the Winter list and Movie Night is back. However, I realized after we posted the chart that we still managed to leave important things off. We forgot the Zoo (big oops there), Catching Lightning Bugs (what summer is complete without that) and going to a local Baseball game. Trust me, we'll get those three done---even if they aren't on the checklist. We might even write them in and check them off as we do them.

Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be expensive to add to the list. Park, Library, Sprinklers, Bubbles, Game Night, Playdough--it's all free and cheap fun. The places we have memberships to make the list each quarter to remind us to use the passes we paid for.

We've already crossed off several things on the list. We check each week to see what we're trying to work into the following week. Then at the end of summer when school is starting, we know we had lots of fun and I don't hear the kids saying, "We never got to do anything this summer."

***Hint from Robyn***

For things like Reading, Naps, Park, etc that you want to do repeatedly throughout the summer, I have a great tip. I use different colored markers and each week or every other week I'll add a colored square just inside the check off square. As the summer goes by, you get a rainbow of squares and amazingly enough, it never quite gets full so there's always room to do just a little bit more of that. I fill it in completely a couple of days before I change the chart for the next season.