When school gets out, the kids are usually beyond excited and the parents are usually quite nervous. “How do I keep my children entertained and not go crazy?!” Well this was my thought exactly this summer. I needed to find a solution to keeping my sanity while having my boys all summer long with me. There’s perks of being a stay-at-home mom, for sure. But sometimes the cons are preeeety big and cause loss of sleep and hair… am I right? Lol. Or is that just me? Moms, we have it harder staying home all summer long. It’s serious stuff trying to make sure you’re not bald by the end of the summer.

Although summer break is now over, I had the opportunity this whole summer to experiment on what works when keeping kids occupied. Believe you me, I was determined to find something that would work. And guess what, I did. I hope that you can use this for your own sanity and your kids sanity next summer or even now. Kids are always bored, right?

So in all my searching through Pinterest, I found a few ideas and compiled them together. Keep in mind, these are other peoples ideas – I give them full credit – but I put them all together to make one big summer success. My video below explains it best of how I did it.

The three main things I found were these:

• A Bullet Journal
• Daily Themes
• Activity Jar

The whole purpose of this is to get kids off technology and use their brains for creativity. So here’s what it consisted of and how I used the for my boys.

Bullet Journal: I used a composition book that I dedicated specifically for their summers. This is what they made to refer to everyday during summer.

• 2-month calendar of summer – activities and events already planned and placed and where they could add events to
• Chore list – daily and weekly
• Daily activity list – things they needed to accomplish every day i.e. daily exercise, quiet time, outside time, daily theme (explained later), etc.
• Work hard list – ideas to make money
• Play harder list – things they want to accomplish/do/create
• Daily schedule – Monday-Friday from 7am-4pm hourly blocks for them to fill out for all the above
• Extras ideas you can add: weekly journal entry, book reading list, map of places to research, etc.

Daily Themes: This is what they can look forward to every day. You can make up your own themes or use mine, whatever works for y’all.

• Make Something Monday – experiments (I found several easy yet cool ones on Pinterest), crafts, or cooking. This is a great opportunity to teach them how to function on their own eventually. Teach them how to cook and bake, how to sew, how to use tools to fix or build things, etc.
• Time to Read Tuesday – go to your library and read fun books. Most libraries have summer activities for kids.
• Water Wednesday – go to a water park, splash pads, community pools, or if you have one then do a day in the pool, etc. Get wet!
• Thoughtful Thursday – some type of service or selfless act. Let them decide too, it gives them a chance to get out of their own head and be thoughtful. Ideas include Feed My Starving Children, making cookies for firefighters, visiting a retirement home, etc.
• Something Fun Friday – Get out of the house and do something fun as a family. Go to the zoo, museum, park, have a picnic, have a playdate, etc.

Activity Jar: this is for them during the day for ideas on what to do.

• Get a jar and write on popsicle stick of random things they can do. Include what they wrote in their “Play Harder” section in their Bullet Journal.
• Ideas: scavenger hunt, make a fly trap, make a dreamcatcher, write a book, write a letter and send it, make a dessert, make a bird house, make sun catchers, play water pong, walk the dogs, make a bug collection, make a leaf collection, create a menu, grow grass in a cup, hand painting, play sudoku, do a random act of kindness for someone, design paper airplanes, write a poem, make a comic book, create a business, blanket fort, make up a recipe and cook it, make a ‘thank you’ card for the mailman, build a chair out of wood, make masks, make an obstacle course, memorize a song, build a teepee, create fireworks in a jar, create a tornado in a jar, create your own board game, play a board game, research a famous person, make homemade play dough, slip n’ slide on trampoline. Get creative!

Hopefully this helps, even if its not summer. Kids need to spend more time outside and using their brain. They need to learn to be kids!