Summer Fun Guide: 10 Essentials and Activities

As we prep for the school year to end (how the hell did this year fly by so quickly?!) I wanted to create a template of what our summer will look like and a list of activities / essentials for our family. I always find it fascinating to learn about how other families organize their summers with kids off so I wanted to talk a little bit about that in today’s post as well as putting together a list of 10 summer time essentials and activities - hopefully these will inspire you as well!

PS - the summer capsule wardrobe for moms (along with outfit suggestions) is coming to you next week! I have been working on it tirelessly! I would love for you to let me know what you live in during the summer below:

Our kids have 11 weeks off in the summer - part of me wishes this was spread out more throughout the year but I digress. Summer camps can be a bit stressful since some fill up immediately so I was prepared this year and put them into about 4 weeks of camp total. Our oldest is in 5 weeks since she does more sports oriented camps. Some of these camps are only 9-12pm so it gives us the majority of the day to relax and have fun with minimal plans which is my goal for the summer. I work an average of 1 - 12 hour shift a week (sometimes 2 depending on my parents who help take care of the kids if needed). Ideally I would work 2 12 hour shifts a week but childcare is close to impossible so we do what we can!

We have one trip planned for the entire summer and that is our annual family trip to the Cape. My goal is to let the kids be kids without too much planned. My fondest memories of my childhood were when I was able to run freely through my neighborhood with all the kids doing whatever we felt like doing. Simple enough, right?

This guide consists of 10 essentials/activities that are on our list for this summer!

Last summer we did a “bootcamp” every morning and a few neighborhood kids joined in as well. We put together about 10 stations and did 40 seconds on/20 seconds off and switched them every time so that no one got bored. BONUS is that YOU get your workout in too! Role modeling for kids is so important so I love to participate with them whenever possible. I do plan on focusing a bit more on simple weight training with our oldest this year and teaching her proper form for certain exercises.

Some suggestions for each station:

The above are just a brief idea but there are so many more - get creative! I always like to do a demo of everything first so that they understand the right form for these exercises first too! If you are looking for sport specific training - this is a pretty cool option.

This Seek + Splash game can be played with many kids and is fun in a big outdoor pool OR a pool like this that is MINIMAL maintenance (we have one of these!) We are so grateful for neighbors that let us use their pools frequently in the summer but we do have that low maintenance pool that the kids splash around in in our own yard. Heck, you can also just play with this in the bathtub.

I am sure many of you have heard of this ‘how to be a person’ camp from a few years ago. I love the concept of this and really want to incorporate this into our summer this year. It can be hard to really focus on these things during the school year and the summer is the perfect time to teach and them allow children to be independent with the things you teach them. These will vary depending on the age of your kiddos so I highly recommend coming up with a list that is unique to the ages of your kids :) I put a list of things are are doing this summer below!

• I am amazed by the number of kids who still don’t know how to properly call someone, mine included. Teaching kids how to say hello + goodbye, hold the phone up to their ear vs. using facetime or speakerphone, etc.

We go through an insane amount of sunscreen every summer between all 6 of us! We love being outside as much as possible and protecting yourself with sunscreen is important.

For the kids I love using this sunscreen. It comes out white so you know where you may have missed a spot and it’s easy for the kids to use. I also love their lotion rub on as well. As for their face, I use this sunscreen stick!

For myself I love to use this Kopari shimmer spray when I feel like being “fancy” and then I use this simple sunscreen for all other times! Kopari also has this full face + body sunscreen set that saves money compared to buying them all separately. I love this sunscreen for my face but use this tinted moisturizer with spf 30 daily.

Also I just checked and code: KOPARI10 works for 10% off at Kopari!