The first summer was okay and I knew we needed some improvement.
Last summer was a joke. Tyler and I took off for 10 days right from the get go and I don't think I ever got a hold of summer like I wanted to. We were pretty much up to our eyeballs in yard stuff and trying desperately to get grass in the backyard before school started and I lost all my helpers.
THIS YEAR . . . I made sure things were going to be different. The first week of summer was a freebie since we took off for Phoenix immediately. Last week was our first "real" week of summer and I think it went rather smoothly.
First, I am a chart maker. I love, Love, LOVE charts. It helps our family run so much more smoother and frees up my brain cells. We have a
Family Home Evening Chart
a Sunday Dishes Chart,
a Kids Weekly Schedule Chart,
a Saturday Job Chart and Zones Chart.
Summer Dishes and Weeding Charts,
a Daily Jobs Chart,
and their usual Weekly Responsibility Chart that I've tweaked for summer.
Are you a little overwhelmed? I started thinking about this the first of May and didn't really get it to where I wanted it until 6 weeks later. I've put a lot of thought into how to make this summer work the way I wanted it to.
So here's the breakdown of how it works.
GOALS
The previous summers the kids had physical, mental, spiritual, and musical goals they had to accomplish. They earned money for these to go toward school clothes and supplies for the school year.
I still wanted them to do these but this year I cut out the musical and made it part of their daily requirements and added a scripture/journal goal where they have to read their scriptures at least 4 days a week and write in their journal 1 day OR read their scriptures 3 days and write in their journal the other two.
They came to me with goals they wanted to do and how much they thought it would be worth to them. From there we talked about each one and changed some. They can work on these goals whenever they have free time and if they accomplish EVERY goal by the end of the summer, I'm throwing in an extra $20.
DAILY REQUIREMENTS
This part works pretty much like we do it through the school year (I don't think I've ever gone into detail on how this works and it warrants a blog post all by itself.)
Music: Everyone is required to practice music, either the piano or the violin.
Housework: Everyone has a daily job to do to keep the house clean. During the school year we usually only do jobs on Saturday, but I figured since they're home all day my house is going to get dirtier. I've broken down our "major" Saturday jobs into smaller chunks that should only take 10 or 15 minutes to complete. Between the four kids the house gets thoroughly cleaned about every 8 or 9 days.
Dishes: During the summer I get really tired of always cleaning the kitchen. It seems as soon as I clean it someone comes right behind me and the cycle starts all over. I decided to delegate the kitchen duties so they would realize what a pain it is to keep clean and hopefully learn to clean up after themselves more. The kitchen duties are unloading the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, wiping off counters, and sweeping. We change these weekly.
Weeding: This summer has been very quiet with no yard contractors. We pretty much have some manageable flower beds that still get weeds. So I divided up the yard into different zones with each kid responsible for a zone. We divide these up every week because I know some beds tend to get more weeds than others.
Alex: This past year poor Al has had me all to himself as a playmate and sadly I have neglected some aspects of his learning. Most of my kids love to read which I attribute to reading to them when they were younger, going to the library A LOT, seeing mom and dad reading. I've fallen off the bandwagon with Alex and reading to him. I tried doing it before naps but didn't do so well. So I decided to have the kids take turns reading to him this summer. SO FAR? He has loved it and most of the time he won't let them stop at just one or two or even three books. It's been a win-win for everyone.
Khan: What's Khan Academy? It's an online non-profit organization devoted to learning. With over 4200 videos on just about anything you want to learn plus practice problems, it is a complete self-paced learning environment. Tyler and I both want our kids to be self learners and think this is a great way to motivate them. To earn a checkmark they all have to earn 5000 points in one day which Nathan said was very attainable within 15-30 minutes. Well, after several days Kiersten was really struggling to get that 5000 points without spending several hours. Turns out she was learning some harder things so we tweaked it and made it 5000 points OR 30 minutes, whichever came first.
Last Item: The last item was what I thought they needed to work on for the summer. For instance Kiersten needs to complete some Young Women goals, so she needs to work on YW every day. Nate needs to work on the R sound for speech; Erik needs to get better at brushing his teeth since he just got braces, he also has a slight lisp he needs to correct for speech, and needs to have better handwriting; Ash needs to work at keeping her bedroom cleaner.
At the end of the day they have to get it signed off by either Tyler or me. This ensures that they are held accountable for doing the items on their list. During the school year they earn money this way, but I didn't want to pay them for goals and for daily requirements. So we made this part a point system.
They get a point for each requirement completed . . . Kiersten, Nate, and Ash can earn 6 points a day, Erik has 8. Potentially they can earn 1430 for the whole summer between the 4 of them. Since I knew that there would be lazy days and weeks of girls camp, scout camp, time at grandma's, I set a total of 1000 points for the entire summer that they ALL have to earn. I then let them decide together on a fun activity to do if they reached their goal which is a day at Cherry Hill (did this a couple of years ago as part of a family reunion and they all loved it).
With week one down I think this has been a huge success so far. There have been points missed and some lazy days but I like the two-part system that makes them all accountable to each other . . . meaning no one can simply decide to not do anything all summer without hurting everyone but yet they still have their individual goals they're working on.
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