This year was different than most, as I was on maternity leave instead of at work Monday-Friday from about 7am-3pm. When I am at work, Graham spends the day at a lovely day care close to where I work. I love that he is on a schedule and is always doing fun activities and crafts. I knew it was important to make sure he kept somewhat of a routine during the summer and I also wanted to make sure we did things that kept his attention.
While I didn’t take the time to plan every minute of our days, I knew I wanted to have one planned activity every single day. Keep in mind, even though I make this schedule, I understand that days do not always go as planned and some flexibility is needed.
Planning
I started by creating a list of ideas. First, I gave every day a theme: Make Art Monday, Take a Trip Tuesday, Water Wednesday, Thinking Thursday, Foodie Friday, Sensory Saturday, and Sunday Fun Day. By creating themes, it helped me to come up with plenty of ideas that I may not have thought of before. I’m sharing a printable at the end of this post (CLICK CALENDAR FOR FREE PRINTABLES) with my schedule for July, fillable July and August calendars and a one page list of example activities, but here is the list of activities that I created:
Make Art Monday
-Collage
-Craft Kit
-Side Walk Chalk
-Frozen Paint Popsicles
-Paint with cookie cutter
-Face Painting
-Nature Collage
-Firework painting
-Chalk Paint
-Puffy Painting
Take a Trip Tuesday
-Zoo
-Museum
-Go on a scavenger hunt
-Library
-Playground
-Go to lunch
-Children’s Museum
-Kidzville
-Mall
Water Wednesday
-Pool
-Sprinkler
-Splash Pad
-Baby pool and slide
-Water in the roller coaster track
-Water balloons
-Squirt guns
Thinking Thursday
-Picture flashcards
-Building a tower
-Matching colors
-Color sorting
-Hot Wheels ramp
-Fizzy colors
-Skittle rainbow
-Worksheets
-Dino Dig
-Slime
Foodie Friday
-Bake cookies
-Make fruit snacks
-Make popsicles
-Make Pepperoni Rolls
-Make monkey bread
-Make chocolate dipped pretzels
-Make Ice cream sundaes
-Make pizza
-Make pigs in a blanket
-Make Jello
Sensory Play Saturday
-Colored pasta
-Cooked pasta
-Collect rocks
-Colored whip cream
-Rice
-Water Beads
-Sensory bottle
-Sand
-Wash toys
-Foam bubbles
Sunday Fun Day
-Picnic lunch outside
-Movie Night with popcorn
-Build a Fort
-Dance Party
-Yoga
-Tie Dye Shirts
-Build a Lego set
-Go for a hike
-Make a bird house/feeder
Activities
Visit this post Awesome Indoor Activities for Toddlers to find descriptions of several of the activities listed above.
You can also find a lot of ideas on Pinterest. If you type in one of my activities listed above, you will find several different ways to do it! Feel free to leave a comment or send us an email if you have any questions about how we did the activities. This is also not a complete list; just some of the things that we have done before, things I have seen and want to try, activities that Graham really enjoyed at school or things that I did with my class when I was a teacher. Also, don’t think you need to spend money! You can do activities with things you have laying around. You can take trips to places and parks that are free, or take walks around your neighborhood.
Schedule
Once I created my list, I created my schedule. I got a calendar, and added one activity to each day.
Example – July 1st is Foodie Friday. On that date, I put make red, white, and blue cookies. So on July 1st, we will be making cookies (Be sure to check out our Instagram and see the final product!)
You can choose different activities, or do the same one every week. You can choose to do one activity a week or several. You can use our schedule, or create your own. There are so many ways to use this summer schedule, so create what works best for your family. And remember what I said about being flexible? Life with kids can change on a dime. If you miss an activity or go on a trip on Monday, don’t stress! Switch days up, move the activity to the next day, and do two, or change it to the following week.
Here is what we will be doing in July:
*Please remember that these printables are for personal use only. You may not sell or distribute the files. If you want to share them, please link to this post and not directly to the PDF files.
Have an Amazing Summer!
Hopefully, you can use this post to help add some fun and structure to your summer.
PRINTABLES…In case you missed them above!