Organizing: Intentional living and my summer plan compulsion.

Every year as the end of the school year approaches and summer is on everyone's mind, I sit down with the kids and come up with a summer plan. Yes, I know that sounds a bit compulsive, but here is my reasoning. To me, summer is precious time I get for just a couple months out of the year to spend most of the day with my kids. To me, that screams teaching opportunity. If I don't make some actual plans to do the 'good idea' stuff we talk about, summer has a way of slipping away to quickly, and it might be another year before we have the time to revisit our 'good idea' plans. 

It may seem like an over-scheduling of what many consider to be the lazy season of the year. To each their own I suppose, but in the real world, few people have a couple months each year to lounge about. And if my main job is to teach my kids how to get along without me, then I consider teaching them how to use free and leisure time a part of that responsibility. Yes, I add in a couple sleep-late, do nothing days into the schedule occasionally. I don't apply our list to a hard calendar, but rather take a look at the coming week and see what things we can check off our summer list in between swimming lessons and scout camps. By the end of the summer we usually have everything crossed off, and hopefully a lot of fun memories and new skills in the process.

Our Summer list has about 30 things that fall into 6 categories:

• Chores
• Homemaking Days
• Projects
• Parties
• Places
• Just for Fun

So – what fun plans to you make with your kids to take advantage of summer?