Summer Lovin' Series: Mommy School Part 1

Once I knew what I wanted to cover over the summer I had to prepare in advance how to make it happen. Although my girls love"Mommy School" (and ask to do it all the time) it was important to me to incorporate lots of just for fun stuff too. First I browsed through my Pinterest boards Mommy School and Boredom Busters for ideas. The web is FULL of resources, what did we do before internet...and pinterest?! When I saw this pin I decided to loosely structure our week the same way.

source

Since "being thoughtful" was going to be incorporated into day to day life I switched it to Think Outside Thursday. We'll draw in our nature journals, go on a hike, or just have school outside on that day.

First I printed off a monthly and weekly calendar for the summer months, today I'll focus on how I filled in the monthly pages. I used the TomKat Studio free downloads and searched through the pinterest boards to list a craft for each Monday. In the past I have used Google's online calendar instead of a printed calendar. If you do this you can include a link to the craft's directions. On every Wednesday I penciled in a kitchen lesson, this site was a great help in finding kid friendly recipes and I know the girls will enjoy the illustrations. 

source

Somewhere fun Friday is a little bit up in the air. We have zoo and aquarium season passes that I plan on using a lot. Most cities have a cinema that offers a free kid's movie once a week. Our local theater hasn't published their schedule yet but I'm hoping to include that. Our city publishes a fantastic local kids magazine with listings of events for the month: art museum's free days, library events, farmers markets... My advice would just be to scour your city for the free stuff, often if you "like" local theaters, museums, or parks on Facebook they will post about upcoming events. Sign up for your library's Summer Reading Program because they have events throughout the summer (even if your kid isn't reading yet). Sit down with your calendar and pencil in all the events.  Remember to add in any vacations or visitors you will have because your schedule will be different that week.

Finally on the monthly calendar I penciled in a rough idea of what I wanted to cover that week for each girl: fractions, autobiographies, money. This way we wont be switching back and forth each day between telling time, counting money....we'll have a general focus.

This is turning out to be much longer than I anticipated, I'll cover our day to day plans in the next post.

Have I missed any other great free activity resources?