Here are the winner of the giveaways from last week:
The winner of the Priscilla Shirer “Armor of God” Bible study is Sheli C.
And the winner of the beach tote is Laura K.
Congratulations, girls, and thank you all for participating!
Now let’s talk about summer.
Summer can be a hard time for parents. Am I right? When I think of summer, I envision lazy days of sitting around in my pjs till noon, drinking coffee. Reading a book while lounging at the pool. Grilling out. Relaxing. But in reality, when you have kids, summer is far from relaxing.
Just the other day, I heard my little kids bickering in the playroom and soon afterward, Jonah came running up to me. “Mama, can you make Vivi be quiet? She’s making my brain go out!!”
(I think he was trying to say that she was making him lose his mind.)
(We might need to work on our idioms this summer…)
But here’s the deal – if my kids don’t keep some sort of schedule during the summer, they will kill each other. So this year, I’ve implemented a few things to keep the kids from getting super bored. (Now, let me say that I don’t mind if the kids are a little bored. I think boredom breeds creativity. But being bored all day will not be good for my little kids. At all.)
I bought new coloring books and markers and new play dough and cookie cutters for some fun indoor activities. I also bought school workbooks for both Jonah and Vivienne so they can keep current with their reading skills as well as math. So far they are pumped to be doing school work each morning. We set aside about 20 minutes to do a few pages in their books. I also use that time to work on Jonah’s reading skills, which he is blowing out of the water. And Vivienne wants to read too so we are also working on it a little bit with her. During this “school” time, Brienne has to read for 30 minutes.
Some mornings, we read a Bible story and complete an activity. The kids love acting out stories from the Bible, particularly all the Old Testament craziness. Because let’s be honest – there were some crazy happenings back then. I also bought a book about a missionary and we have been reading it together. We are enjoying it so much that I think I will order some other similar books. And we have been partipating in a Scripture writing challenge through heidistjohn.com. Brienne and I each have a notebook where we write the day’s scripture and the little kids have traceable printables so they can also participate.
Deuteronomy 6:7 tells us to talk about the Lord “when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.” My hope is that I will be able to follow this command throughout the more relaxed pace of summer.
In addition, the children have chores they must complete each day. Surprisingly, this hasn’t been too difficult to implement so far. During the school year, we are so busy running from therapies, counseling, swim, basketball, soccer, etc. that I don’t usually make my kids do chores every day. It’s just too much and I want them to have time to play when we are at home. But the summer is a good time to start implementing a few chores and I hope to carry it over into next school year. I heard a Focus on the Family podcast where they suggested implementing just 2 or 3 chores per kid to start with. So this summer each child has 3 main chores to do each week (which they will get paid for) on top of their usual tasks of cleaning up their toys and such.
And because summer is supposed to be FUN, I have lots of things planned each week. Here is a list of some of the things we are planning to do on a weekly basis:
- Wild Adventures water park
- Dollar movie days at the local theater
- Library
- Bowling on base
- Pool time on base
- Mornings at the park
We would love for our local friends to join us in any of these activities. And if you have some different suggestions, I am all ears!
Happy Summer!!