Planning for Summer with Elementary School Kids

I’ve been hard at work at planning for our summer fun (and learning), but before I share what this year’s plans look like, I wanted to share how I put everything together last year. Here’s the post on how I organized all of it!

If someone asked me to choose ONE word to describe myself it would definitely be the word “planner.” I truly love to organize my thoughts, lay them out on paper and fill in any missing pieces. It helps me feel in control and gives me the structure that I need.

When it came to figuring out what our summer will look like, I started with daily schedules. Knowing that we’d have some activities planned in advance and time dedicated to work for both of us was really important to me. I can be spontaneous, but I don’t thrive on that long-term, I need to know what’s happening the next day!

Here are the schedules that I put together for the week. They’ll be flexible, I’m not rigid about making sure that we switch activities immediately when the clock hits the next hour, and the weather will definitely play a role – but having them in place will be good for both of us.

Then I made some lists – schedules and lists, that’s how I roll. Giving myself a theme for each month helped me organize crafts, field trips, and science projects so that everything fits together and makes sense.

After I had a rough outline, I hopped over to TPT and printed a ton of resources that fit the theme for each month and cover the skills my girl has been working on this year. I’m determined to make sure she continues to hone these over the summer, and there’s truly no better way to do that then by using activities developed by teachers who KNOW what they’re doing!

I took all of these pieces – daily schedules, art and field trip ideas, and specific resources – and created a daily checklist that she can use each day to keep track of what’s happening and what she needs to accomplish. Here’s what that looks like:

My favorite thing about all of this is how personalized it is – the month of May will be a bit different because it’s not *quite* summer yet, then in June we can get back to some of our favorite activities that aren’t available in May. This’ll change our daily schedules a bit, and that’s ok. July brings some camps, which is exactly what we’ll both need by that point in the summer. And then in August we’ve got some big events and trips planned too. I can have my beloved schedules and change them up to suit our needs. It’s the best of both worlds! I hope that seeing my layouts helps you wrap your head around how you might plan your summer too – feel free to reach out if you have any questions, I’d love to share more!