Surviving Summer: Kid-Friendly Activities and Screen-Time Solutions to Keep Your Sanity

Having kids at home for the summer can feel overwhelming. Finding things to keep them busy, the noise 🫠, the messes, the list goes on. And while I can’t help with all those things, I do have a couple things that will help if you have preschoolers and/or school age kids.

When I ran my small in-home childcare, every summer I would put together an activity a day calendar for the kids. It was a way for us to have some structure, flexibly, and it gave the kids something to look forward to. My preschoolers (and really all the kids in my care got to do these activities at their level and enjoy them) loved the calendars and would always ask their parents what activity we were doing the next day at night before bed. So, I put together for the month of July 20 ideas (one activity for each weekday) of activities, some with links to the idea on Pinterest, to help moms with preschoolers at home this summer. This was so popular with my daycare kids that I knew it could work on a smaller scale to help moms out. And putting together ideas for the end of June and beginning of August will be easy for you to do once you see how the setup is. The activities are easy with little to no preparation needed…. a mom win! And Pinterest is your friend. Use that site like google to look up all kinds of things to do this summer!

By clicking here, you can get the printable pdf of the activity calendar.

Once my kids got older and school aged, the summers became more about screens. I’m not against screens, I think they have their time and place, but I didn’t want my kids inside all day doing nothing but watching tv or playing a video game. So, I came up with a checklist of things that they needed to accomplish BEFORE they got any screen time. The list was not super long (well, my kids probably thought so 😄) and they were all things they could do independently from me for the most part. I liked that they were learning to be in charge of their time. I also liked that this again gave us some structure to the day but with flexibility and they got to decide when things got done.

Before I started this check list, I sat down with my kids, and we went over what the expectations were, so they knew exactly what was expected of them. And they also knew that they were not just going to wake up and be on a screen all day. And if they asked for the screen time, they knew I was going to be checking their check list (our house is not that big to where I wouldn’t be able to see them working on what they needed to be working on).

So, I recreated the checklist for anyone that wanted their kids to also NOT be on screens all summer long. Sign up below for the free screen time checklist and it will get sent to your inbox.

I know summertime with kids’ home can be overwhelming, but with a little planning on your part, you really can make it enjoyable for all of you. And I know this assumes that you are home with your children all day, but I do think these two things could work for the working parents as well. The activity a day could easily be used after dinner, before bed, and makes for great family time! And the screen time checklist could easily be adapted to what you want your child to get done when everyone gets home from the day before they just turn on a screen.

I do truly hope that these are helpful and make the summer better for everyone 🙂