Fun Summer Schedule For Kids

My son and I created this personalized calendar for the summer. It was a super fun project to work on together, and he’s thrilled with the end result. The best part is that he’s actually excited about rushing over to the refrigerator to see what part of his day it is.

I started by jotting down what we do on a daily/weekly basis. For the most part, it’s the same things every day: eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, feed and walk the dog. Our morning and bedtime routines are similar. It’s what we do during the middle of the day that varies.

Once I had captured our daily routine, my son and I searched for free clip art together. That part was really fun. He had a great time deciding which images looked most like our family.

The tedious part was figuring out what size to print the pictures, how to arrange them on paper, and then come up with a finished product that we could color together.

Here’s the process I used:

1. I inserted the clip art into Power Point – two images per slide.
2. Then I duplicated the slides to end up with the exact number of each image I needed.
3. I printed the entire deck in “Handouts View”, with 4 slides per printed page. That was the perfect size. Each image is ~2in x 2in in size – same as a passport photo. Easy to see and color, and small enough to fit in a format that would eventually reside on the fridge.
4. I adhered the 2×2 images to 8 1/2 x 11 in paper in the desired order, horizontally. I used 3 full sheets. (A glue stick is perfect for this application).
5. I then copied each sheet to create a smooth finished product.
6. Color away! Each morning before school for about a week, we sat at the kitchen table together after breakfast and colored.

Once we had finished, my son’s pre-school teacher kindly offered to laminate our calendar! I gently taped the 3 sheets together, so we ended up with one long, laminated sheet.

Magnets hold it in place on our refrigerator door, and I gave my son a cute little Taxi magnet I picked up on a trip to New York. He uses it to mark where we are each day.

During the summer, he has camps, playdates with friends, picnic lunches with Mom, swimming, and so on. I wasn’t initially sure how to capture these events, but eventually decided to create a separate sheet. I cut those images into individual squares and will use them to “cover up” the appropriate square on the calendar.

A few notes:

–The shooting star represents free time. My son can choose what he wants to do during that time: play with Legos, color, ride his bike, go swimming, visit the park, etc.

–The clock represents standing appointments or errands we may need to run.

–The ABC book represents learning time. My goal is to do a learning activity with him of some sort every morning during the summer months. Some days we may practice letters, read a devotional, have a cooking or gardening lesson at home, or even go on a short field trip.

I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial on how to create a fun schedule around your home this summer!

Tags: Around Mi Casa, Around My Home, calendar for kids, kids daily schedule, Melanie Bolke, summer fun for kids