Works-For-Me-Wednesday: Stop The Summer Boredom!

Today's edition of Works-For-Me-Wednesday is the "Mom I'm Bored" one, just in time for summer vacation! We're sharing the things that work for us in the summer to stop the boredom.

These are some of the things that my family enjoys during summer:

~ Free Movie Days: Regal Cinemas have free movies on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at participating movie theaters through the summer. You can check here for the listing. One of our local libraries also offers free movies one afternoon a week and the neighborhood programs have free movies in the parks one night each month. Be sure to check out your city to see what's happening!

~ Park Days: A couple of friends and I put together a listing of dates and specific parks in the areas for our Christian school. School families can join us every Wednesday in the summer at the parks we've selected. It's easy because everybody remembers the day & time and it's a nice way to get together with school friends.

~ Summer Reading List: Our library offers incentives in the summer for reading books, but we make up our own. My son helps me make a listing of how many pages to read and what small rewards he earns at different levels. This helps keep him on track reading through the summer.

~ Learn a New Skill: Learning something new can be exciting, so this summer I will start teaching my son to play the piano. Is there a new skill your kids could learn? How to play a musical instrument? How to cook? How to mow the lawn?

~ Fun Stuff: I just thought of this - we experienced theme days in VBS long ago. Why not have theme days at home? You could try "Wacky Hair Day" and give a reward for wackiest, like getting their lunch first. Or maybe "Backwards Day". Don't tell the kids ahead of time - surprise them when they wake up by telling them the theme for the day. Try it once a month, once a week, or more.

Those are a few of our ideas. Hope you find something that will help you out!

Have a fantastic Wednesday! Stop over at We Are THAT Family to get lots of great ideas to combat summer boredom!

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Summer Reading and More

Today's Works-for-me-Wednesday is the "Mom, I'm bored" edition. Actually, what I hear from my kid is, "Everything I have is boring." That is usually when I helpfully offer to donate everything he owns! :)

We need all the ideas we can get to help keep our kids occupied this summer!

Libraries often have summer reading programs that you can join in, but last summer I made my own. That way I was able to use things that were more of an incentive for my son and to put our own requirements with it.

Summer Reading:

- First, you have to decide if you allow any books or only certain types. My son had to read chapter books for the pages to count and we counted Bible pages extra.

- You set the numbers of pages where prizes are given. Our first prize was at 100 pages to get him started. After that, the prizes were further apart, getting better each time with a final goal for the end of summer (I don't have the list, but I think it was 1500 pages) and a really good prize. He read a lot of pages, but didn't quite make that final goal. It was a good one to try for - and if he would have read every day, he would have hit it for sure.

- You determine the prizes. We started with an item from Dollar Tree, then a treat from Dairy Queen, then a personal pizza from Pizza Hut. I know we also had a rollerskating rink session with Dad toward the end and a lego set for the final prize. We'll change all the prizes this time. You can do this as inexpensively as you want - have kids draw a little item out of a bag, let them choose what's for dinner, no chores for a day/week, etc. It's best to get input from the kids to see what really gets them motivated.

- Have the goals and tracking in a visible place. We kept ours on the refrigerator.

Have fun and happy reading!


Also, I just saw 2 cool things in a family craft book...

* Use masking tape with the sticky side out to make a bracelet for your child and let them stick all the things they find in nature to it - leaves, rocks, feathers, etc.

* Make dad a keepsake by decorating a baseball (#1 Dad, kids autograph it, etc.), putting it on a candlestick holder and tying a wire or ribbon bow around the holder.


To get LOTS more summer ideas for your kids, go to Works-for-me-Wednesday at Rocks In My Dryer.