Your Secret to Summer Sanity

By Katy Agro Myers

We’ve got the secret to a summer of fun! And keeping your sanity!

Summer is here, and I always feel the pressure to get into a groove quickly. If our schedule gets out of control and we’re off routine, everyone fights. Everyone yells. It’s no longer fun. Getting into a routine in the summer can be hard! Some weeks are full of camps, some weeks are full of fun. Sometimes we stay up later than others. Some days we have to get up early and some days we get to sleep in! It makes it really tough to find the balance between stability and routine and having fun! Just today, my oldest said to me, “I thought summer was supposed to be fun – not full of jobs!”

A few months ago, my youngest two came to me and said, “we want to be helpful and do jobs, but we want it to be fun. Can you make it fun?” I drew a crude scavenger hunt for them and then the idea was born. Now we print these sheets weekly and they LOVE being responsible. Sometimes there are basics on there like brushing teeth and eating breakfast. Sometimes there are bigger things like cleaning their rooms or doing laundry. It keeps it exciting. Rewards don’t have to be big. They can be an extra 10 minutes of screen time or even an ice cream treat.

Is it perfect? Nope. Does it work every day? Nope. Will we keep this up all summer? Probably not. BUT it has cut down on a lot of arguing and it has helped with all of our attitudes. So the images are below, feel free to save them to your phone for future use! Also, if you click the image, you can download and print them for FREE.

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