Our Family’s Summer Bucket List (and a FREE printable for you!)
The summer is just around the corner and it couldn’t come quick enough. This will be the first summer that I’ll have Mabel home with me - an exciting time, but also one that gives me pause. She is wrapping up her first year of school before embracing a nice little two month break from her regular routine. Up until this year, she was in daycare, which never paused for the summer months. It’s hard for me to believe that we’re in a place where we have a school-aged child who gets a full-fledged summer break. Yet here we are.
I am beyond excited for the break from school drop-offs and pick-ups and there’s no doubt that Mabel is too. But if I’m being honest, I’m nervous about the lack of direction and structure that comes with the easy-breeziness of the summer months. All of us in our family do best with a little bit of structure to our days. With this in mind, I wanted to make sure that I prepared as best as I could for this break from school so we didn’t find ourselves flailing through the weeks with no direction and grumpy attitudes. I want to make sure we strike a balance of flexibility and adventure with structure and intention.
Here’s my loose plan. I signed Mabel up for two weeks of camp this summer - one week in July and one week in August. Both are local day camps that run the full day for the week. She’s excited, I’m excited. In addition to that, I also purchased a kindergarten homeschool learning unit from The Peaceful Press all about gardens. We (obviously) don’t homeschool, but I’ve been keeping tabs on The Peaceful Press for a couple of years now and am intrigued by their homeschool philosophy and intention, so I thought the summer could be the perfect, low-stress opportunity to explore what they have to offer while adding some structure to our days. Their resources are heavily based on establishing a living-education, prioritizing connection (between child and parent), developing life-skills, and learning through literature and nature. The guide covers four weeks of learning, four days a week so I plan to leisurely make our way through it over the course of the summer. The Peaceful Press offers full-year curriculum bundles, which the Garden Guide we’re using is a part of, but I appreciate being able to purchase this one unit at a very minimal cost so we can explore how it goes before committing to more. I feel really excited about this.
Finally, with a few things lined up to add some structure to our weeks at home this summer, I also wanted to ensure we have ample opportunities to be flexible and do some fun summer activities on our own and with friends. I took some time to sit down with Mabel and make our annual summer bucket list. Many of our additions have become summer traditions, but a few are new to us this year. I love creating a bucket list like this because even if it’s not specifically planned out, it offers a sense of direction and intention to the season. If ever we have a day where we don’t have anything scheduled, we can easily look at our list and plan to tackle one of the items. It’s an additional layer of structure, but without the rigidity of a set schedule of events.
What’s on our list this summer?
Visit Camp Kahquah during Family Camp (our favourite memory from last summer!)
Go to the local splash pad (we have tons of these throughout our town and it’s such an easy, low-stress way for kids to cool down)
Try making slime (anyone else suddenly find themselves in their slime-era?)
Have a backyard campout
Make strawberry-rhubarb crisp
Go on a Mommy & Mabel trip (Curt took Mabel on a solo trip last month and since then she’s been requesting a special trip with just me too)
Get ice cream from the ice cream truck
Complete our garden learning unit (Mabel is just as excited about this as I am)
Make a Canada Day poutine (a tradition in our family)
Start and maintain a sourdough starter (this is more so for me, but Mabel is excited to be involved in this experiment)
Have a beach day
Make nature cyanotype prints
We wrote out our items on a list template I designed earlier this season. I have attached below a free printable version for you to download and print if you’d like to use it to create your own summer bucket list. But of course, you can simply write out your list on a plain piece of paper too - there’s no need to be fancy! We love creating a list with our kids (their input included!), but this is a great exercise for anyone to use to add some intention to your summer, regardless if you have a family or not. Summer is the perfect time to add some excitement to your day-to-day.
If you create your own, please share it with me! I’d love to see what you have planned for the months ahead. Have a great summer!
