Planning for Summer 2024

The sun is shining, the trees are full of bright green leaves, and the amaryllis are blooming. Spring has sprung in central Texas! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for this school year. My kids are getting toward the end of their curriculum and getting excited about the upcoming summer break. Admittedly, I am, too. The past couple of school years have been tough. We have had several major life events and changes, including a move, broken leg, cancer diagnosis, and starting dual credit classes, that have added stress to our daily load. While incredibly grateful for the flexibility of homeschooling through these seasons, I find myself missing the early years when we had lighter schoolwork loads and more time for fun. This summer, we are taking a much-needed break from the busy-ness of schoolwork, co-op, and college classes. I have May 17 labeled as our last day of school in pen, so I cannot erase it. The count-down has begun. Summer is not exactly looking like carefree days of laziness and swimming. My two high school kids are competing in Texas 4-H State Round-up in June, and then are planning to attend two different Shakespeare theater camps for the majority of the summer. Yes, they could be starting summer jobs or taking more dual credit classes (we live within the local community college district where dual credit classes are free), but they need this break. My oldest will be a senior next year. She needs this summer of high school freedom. My middle child will be recovering from her thyroid removal surgery and have scans, tests, and follow-up for her papillary thyroid cancer diagnosis. She needs time to just enjoy being with her friends. Other than attending one of the camps, I am not quite sure what the middle school kid will be doing, but I have promised lots of playdates and possibly a sewing camp. Unfortunately, what I have learned about myself, is as much as I like to plan things out, I am not much good at planning fun. Things like our anniversary have historically been sort of last minute, as I usually focus on responsibilities over celebrations. My kids are growing up. Time needs to be set aside for togetherness and fun while they are still living at home. In putting together a little summer planning packet to help me map out the major plans of the summer, I decided to include some unit planning pages, too, and make it into a planning packet for summer homeschoolers. While we admittedly are planning NOT to school this summer, I thought others who were might find it helpful. I made monthly planning pages for mapping out major events. I will leave my monthly calendar in my planner for business of appointments, deadlines, and boring stuff. These monthly pages are for summer fun. There is a planning page for holidays. I already have Independence Day planned. We will make red, white, and blue tie-dye t-shirts to wear to the parade. For food to accompany the obligatory hot dog and apple pie, we will use blueberries, strawberries, bananas, and whipped topping to make a rectangle fruit pizza that looks like an American flag. For crunchy snacking, pretzel rods will be dipped in melted white chocolate and rolled in red and blue sprinkles. There are a few books that I found at the library, and a couple of movies we can watch after the parade. “National Treasure” is tradition at our house for Fourth of July viewing. We may watch some “Liberty’s Kids” or introduce my kids to the 1990’s movie “Independence Day.” The thing about planning for me is once I write in down, it is hard to forget. Once it is planned, it is more likely to happen. And although we are not actually doing a unit study on Shakespeare, I used those planning pages to write down books and a movie that our library has that will be helpful. Summer will be here soon, and it will fly by. I am hoping the summer planning pages will help other “Type A” homeschool moms, like myself, to make time for fun. Plan it out. Make it happen. The Summer Planning Pack can be found here in my TPT store.