If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of this series, do that first or the rest of this won’t make as much sense: How to Plan the Best Summer Break for Your Homeschool Family: Part 1

In Part 1 we covered the first two steps in planning a great summer break for your family. As a reminder those steps are:

• Step #1: Set Your Summer Goals
• Step #2: Take Inventory & Do Research

Hopefully, those two initial brainstorming steps were accomplished in the time it took your kids to binge watch a season of Bluey. 

Now that you’ve got your goals and you’ve researched the “tools” you’ve got at your disposal, keep reading to find out what to do next!

How to Plan Your Summer Break

Step #3: Pull it All Together Into a Summer Plan

The key to making this work smoothly is to find ways to achieve multiple goals at once in an organic kind of way. We want to avoid the Summer Plan becoming a task list of 15 boring daily objectives that you and the kids begrudgingly check off one at a time.

In the business world they call this “finding synergies”. In nature it’s known as “symbiotic relationships” or it’s “killing two birds with one stone” (though that sounds like anti-nature to me). Whatever you call it, you can work toward multiple summer objectives at once to be more efficient. Weave them into your existing routines and rhythms to make it all more fun and less like boring boxes to check.

There are a few tried and true strategies I’ve used to do this:

• Kids play while you work. Take advantage of playdate exchanges, grandparent visits, or summer camps/classes to get your own work done! The kids can achieve their goals of relationship building or learning/playing at camps while parents have a chance to be productive! Incidentally, using this strategy is what made this post possible! Bonus Tip: Don’t give in to the temptation to get household chores done with your kid-free time! Make them clean the house with you (yes, it’s harder at first, but worth it later!) and use your precious kid-free time to reach your own personal summer goals (paid work, Bible study, homeschool planning, or relationship-building with your spouse or friends, for example).
• Prioritize work before play. Some of my “mom goals” (i.e. getting help with chores) are at odds with my kids’ main goal (i.e. have a fun summer). It has worked well for me to use free time as an incentive that is abundantly available… but only AFTER the chores and other less exciting goals for the day are finished.
• Use one goal to achieve another. For example, pay one son (whose goal is to earn extra cash) to help your other son practice multiplication facts (his learning goal for the summer). Or, invite your daughter’s scouting troop over to finish their arts & crafts badge (one of her summer goals), and let them use up a bunch of the extra supplies in your art stash (if weeding out the art supplies was one of your summer project goals). Find win-win connections between your individual and family goals to achieve more of them. 

Also think about the best way to organize a daily routine around the goals you have. Are there any that could be grouped together? Here’s what I mean…

Let’s say some of the summer goals for your kids include improving hygiene habits, more consistent Bible reading, and extra handwriting practice. You could group that all together and call it your “Morning Routine”. Have them start each day with a shower, toothbrushing, hair combing, a chapter of Scripture reading, and 5 minutes of journaling. Presto! Several different goals turn into one straightforward morning routine! 

Note: I talk a lot more about the power of naming your daily traditions and routines in the post What’s in a Name? A Super-Easy Way to Get Your Kids to Cooperate! 

Staring at a daily checklist of a dozen individual tasks might be overwhelming – but combining them into mini-routines (like “morning time”, “afternoon chores”, or “before bed routine”) makes things feel more manageable. And in my experience, it also makes them more likely to get done without as much complaining. 

Once you can visualize what the rhythm of your days will look like and how you can incorporate everyone’s summer goals, the last step is to make sure it happens!

Step #4: Remember & Communicate the Summer Plan

The actual implementation of this could be done dozens of different ways. But the main idea here is to put all your ideas into action. For me this has involved two parts:

Remember the goals and ideas.

I’m lucky if I remember what I ate for breakfast today, so I’ve always needed to write out the summer goals and plans so I don’t forget them. Lately this has just been an email to myself that I leave in my inbox so it stays fresh in my mind. One friend of mine made a “Summer Bucket List” and hung it on the wall. Another uses a binder with a section for each child to organize her upcoming goals and plans for each person.

Communicate the to-do’s to the kids.

I’ve always used some kind of daily or weekly to-do list for each child to communicate the plan for each day. If you’ve got a system that works the rest of the year (student planners, wall calendar, etc) then by all means keep using what works! Or, for a change of pace, use a simple summer daily checklist to let each person know what the expectations for the day are. 

Over the years we’ve done this so many different ways. I’ve used color-coded spreadsheets, weekly checklists, handwritten lists, jars for them to pick activities out of (like a STEM Jar for coding and math practice goals or a Writing Jar for creative writing prompts), and store-bought planners.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to do it is whichever way will get the goals communicated to the kids so they actually get done!

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I guess we could summarize all this pretty simply…. Make summer goals. Do the summer goals. But it helps to think it through a little more than that to get the most out of your time and effort! Set aside some time to walk through these four steps:

• Step #1: Set Your Summer Goals
• Step #2: Take Inventory & Do Research
• Step #3: Pull it All Together Into a Summer Plan
• Step #4: Remember & Communicate the Summer Plan

With just a little intentional brainstorming and forethought, you can plan a balanced summer break that is both restful AND productive!

For more ideas on what to do during summer break and how to go about it, check out my original series where I share past summer plans and lessons learned: Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 1.

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