Summer Rhythm
Summer is here and I am so excited to have a simple summer plan this year! While we’ve been traveling all over the Southwest - we’ve taken the last month off from everything! It was so fun, but I am anxious to add a little rhythm back into our days. I like to keep summers light, but still add some structure in between summer fun and traveling. In my last blog post I talked about why we take a break from our normal homeschool routine in the summer so if you missed it - you might like reading that too: Last Day of Homeschool 2023.
Mornings: House Work & Outside Time
After everyone has eaten and gotten ready for the day we are going to be moving right into some housework. Ideally, we love going to sleep with a house that’s ready for the next day, but I know summers are a little different because we’re often out later and doing fun things so in the event that it’s not, I am also allowing extra time in our morning time for our daily tidy needs.
For the last eight months or so we’ve been following the Clean Mama rhythms and they are working really well for us. I have loved her book because it has taken the mental load off of me trying to decide what to do and when. If we do most of the things she recommends and tidy the night before - our morning jobs only take about 15 minutes. But, if we need to get the house put back together in the morning - it usually takes us about 30-45 minutes of everyone working together. We like to:
Tidy our rooms - including making beds
Clear and wipe counters
Pick up anything off the floor
Begin one load of laundry - we fold and sort back into rooms later in the afternoon or evening
Empty and reload dishwasher - I always start it the night before
Care for our dog and the chickens.
Complete one rotating daily job (M: Bathrooms T: Dusting W: Floors Th: Floors F: Playroom/Basement S: Catch up day or a rotating monthly project like deep cleaning a room or decluttering storage
If we’re inside a lot or are too loose with our cleaning habits, another thing that works really well for us is to take anywhere from 1-2 ten minute breaks through out the day to tidy. This really helps to keep the house under control. If we don’t - it never ceases to amaze me how quickly our house needs stack up.
For our summer rhythm I printed out a list for the girls to reference every day and it’s posted right next to our white board. Last year we tried student planners for them so they could learn to plan their own days - but they’re a lot like me and need to see it and have a list out in the open so we’ve been writing what they need to do each day on our white board and it works really well for them. The girls like to erase things as they complete tasks so having our little cheat sheet right next to the board will help so I don’t have to tell them what needs to be done each day.
(UPDATE October 2023: I had so many requests for this our summer rhythm file in an easy to edit template! It’s now available HERE. It comes with Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer templates, but you can use them however you’d like. I print our rhythm on watercolor paper and still keep it posted in our school room.)
Around 9:30 or so we will most likely transition into our devotional and gospel study routine. We spend about 15 minutes opening our day with a hymn, poem, spiritual thought, the pledge, and a prayer. Then we turn to our gospel study which is usually a story, scripture reading, or hands-on activity. We’re about half way through The New Testament right now.
If we get an early start, we may work on some of our study related materials during this time. But, on most days this year I want to try to get outside before it gets too hot! We’re hoping to visit lots of parks, do some little hikes, and have fun with some unique activities from the book 1000 Hours Outside. There are loads of activities in this book and they’re divided up by season so we’ll be pulling from that for some fun summer ideas.
Afternoons: Quiet & Study Time
Reading & Book Journaling
After lunch, during the hottest hours of the day, we’ll have more indoor time and rotate through our study materials. I’ve always worked to protect downtime in the summers because kids get so overstimulated going going going all day. If we have something fun going on (like friends running through sprinklers) I won’t make my kids always come in right after lunch - but if I didn’t at that time - I might call for a break in the later afternoon a few hours before dinner because I know we’ll all be up and going going going again after dinner.
During these quiet breaks is when we’ll do more reading and studying. I love reading to and with my kids and it’s probably one of the things I look most forward to during the day. We’re starting this summer off with a new family read aloud, The Secret Garden. I tried reading this twice when the twins were younger and they just weren’t interested, but we’re a few chapters in and they’re loving it! After each chapter I’ve been having them tell it back to the boys to make sure the boys are understanding what’s going on and it’s been great retention practice for the girls.
Up until now I’ve had a really good memory of remembering which books we’ve read or my kids have read, but this last year, I noticed I’m starting to forget! On IG, I saw that Darby from Life with the Hawleys, keeps a journal of their family read alouds and I knew it was time to add some better tracking systems into our home. She recommended using Our Read Aloud Family Journal so that’s what I went with too. I love how Darby just briefly records the book and jots down a few simple thoughts from her kids - pages they liked or things they said while reading.
Now that my twins can write better and are excited about the books they’re reading, I talked with them about starting their own book journal and they loved the idea! During these quiet afternoons, they’re going to work on recording some of the books they’ve read recently (like how I am sneaking in some extra writing practice here?) Along side some Harry Potter stickers we already had, we also got these book lover stickers they can decorate their journals with and even I might steal a few because they’re so cute!
I shopped around forever for journals. I finally narrowed it down between For The Love of Books and this other reading journal. I liked For The Love of Books a bit better because of the way the review pages are laid out. I wish it was spiral bound so it’d lay more flat, but ultimately, I didn’t love the darker teal boxes to write in like the other journal had so I went with For The Love of Books. I hope the girls get a lot of use out of them!
Once we got home from our road trip my oldest son - just coming off of Kindergarten - has been reading like crazy. Last week he read over 80 beginner reader books. It has been so good for his fluency practice and confidence! The kids have always loved reading and reading is very much apart of our home culture. But, when the girls were just learning to read we used to pay them to read a little extra as part of our family economy. This year we’re starting it back up mostly for my oldest son so it’ll give him a little extra reading incentive and extra practice with money and financial literacy. We don’t give allowance money - the kids earn by helping around the house and doing extra study time. And then when they save up a few dollars we teach about tithing and give them opportunities to spend it at places like the $1 store. All three of my kids have quickly learned they prefer to wait and to save for larger items which I think has been a really good natural life lesson.
We’ve been doing one cent per page and just round up or down depending on the book. So, my son, who is 6, if he read a book with 12 pages - he’ll get $.10 for the book. At first I gave him a dime every time which was good while he was learning what to expect, but now I just pay him $1 once he’s read about 100 pages. At his age the pages are small and only have a few words or sentences on the page! So, remember, if you decide to do something similarly to keep appropriate expectations. On the other hand, last week the twins finished up the sixth Harry Potter book and since it’s nearly 700 pages - we gave them $7 each.
Since the girls got their reading journals, we pulled our reading logs back out for the boys and they’re using dot markers this go around to fill them in. A year or so ago I made these and you can download them for free by clicking here. Anytime I read a book to my 4 year old or he listens in on someone else reading, he gets to mark his page too!
I set up a fun little reading station in a bookshelf right off our main living area. It is “prime real estate” because it’s out in the open and something we see regularly. In our little reading organizer I put the journals, bookmarks, reading rods, and some washi tape, pens, pencils, and highlighters to use in our reading journals. On the top shelf I have the books my 6 year old is currently reading and a few I want to be intentional about reading to him this week. On the next shelf are some preschool books my youngest son and I can read together. On the bottom shelf is a little mix of everything for my twins. We’ll rotate through these books frequently between our local and home library.
Last of all, for some continued phonics practice we’ll continue using Explode The Code over the summer with my oldest son. We just do one page a day and he can pretty much do it independently. My 4 year old is so anxious for his own work so I am going to start working through the primer books with him and see how much interest he’ll show.
Summer Bridge Books & Math
The summer slide is a real thing! I believe it is very important to work on a little bit of math and reading each day - it doesn’t need to be a lot but a little bit each day can go a long way! Over the years we have loved using the Summer Bridge Books. I was going back and forth on whether we’d get them this year and I settled on getting them for my boys. For my soon to be first grader, I got him the K-1 bridge book (it’s pretty easy for him) and for my 2nd year preschooler, I got him the Prek-K bridge book which seems to be perfect for him. There are 2 pages to complete each day and only take 15 minutes. You child gets practice in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and fitness so it’s a nice little balance of everything. BTW I’d still do more reading practice than what’s in these books if you had a Kindergartner this last year.
For my girls we didn’t get the bridge books this year because we’re starting Level 5 Math from TGTB! We did Level 4 last year and LOVED it! But, I have heard that level 5 is pretty challenging so I am listening in on other’s experiences and planning to take this course SLOW. I have had multiple friends tell me that the book gets pretty heavy and very time consuming as you work through the course. So, we’re starting it this summer so we don't have to spend more than about 30-45 minutes on math a day. Near the end of this last year - my twins were spending over an hour on their math course - which I know can be “typical” for this age - but we’re just not a fan of that much time each day. They started to get really burnt out near the end so I am hoping that by slowing down and stretching one lesson over two days - we’ll be able to move through the course successfully. We’re going to start the summer off with just one lesson a week so I can get a feel for how long the lessons will take the girls.
By the way - last summer I neglected to practice multiplication facts with my girls over the summer and totally regretted it so if you’re in the middle of working on those - do it! Especially going into 4th grade math - if you don’t have those multiplication facts down - it will really slow down math progress and can cause a lot of frustration so take the time. If you need some help with multiplication mastery - I have a whole post on it here: Multiplication Facts.
The only other thing I am going to have my kid’s keep working on is their music lessons. For my boys we’re doing an introduction to music with the Prodigy Desk Bell Lessons and my girls are still working their way through online piano lessons with Hoffman Academy. (Code: LEARN gets your 10% off) We’re taking it light and only doing lessons a few days a week though.
We just started our Generation Genius and Crunch Labs subscription boxes so those are something else the kids will continue to enjoy all summer.
Summer Bucket List
Our days and evenings are pretty open for summer festivals, fireworks, and a lot of play and adventures. So last, but not least, we decided to do a summer bucket list this year. The kid’s have begged and begged to do a lemonade stand and said that they wanted to do it first thing in the summer so they could earn money for to do things on our bucket list - like go bowling and to a bounce house park. I know this is coming straight from the Tuttle Twins books we read earlier this year…ha! I talked a little bit about our entrepreneurship unit in this post: A Little Update 2023. Anyway, that is a BIG thing on our list to do in the next few weeks! We’ll keep you guys posted how it all goes!
Here is this cute EDITABLE printable we got for our summer calendar and bucket list!
What fun plans do you have for this time of year year?
I hope you all have a wonderful summer!