Ready for your best summer ever?
Our “Do-it-Yourself Summer Camp” post has been read by several hundred thousand moms. And many have requested further details to help them create their own great summer camp, summer checklists and summer goals for their kids.
So the author of the article, Saren, has put together a comprehensive kit to help you keep your kids’ bodies and minds active and have lots of fun adventures together at your own fabulous family summer camp.
Saren’s great ideas come primarily from her experiences “in the trenches” with her five children – but it also helps that she earned a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University and spent many years running programs in schools and training others to set up and run successful after school and summer programs for kids while working for the National Institute on Out-of-School Time.
Included in this online kit are:
- Overall instructions that walk you step-by-step through setting up and implementing your own amazing family summer camp (following the ideas laid out in the article, “Do-it-Yourself Summer Camp“). Ideas are adaptable for a variety of ages of kids but are generally geared towards children ages 4-14.
Printable “Daily Must-Do Chart” as well as suggested instructions and rewards to keep kids going on fun reading, writing, housework, practicing, and physical activities each day
- Fun tips and ideas for keeping kids reading as they accomplish their daily “reading” point
- Printable list of great writing prompts to help kids keep up and develop further writing skills as they accomplish their daily “writing” point
- Ideas for ways to keep kids physically active as they accomplish their daily “physical” point
- Printable worksheets to help kids set meaningful summer goals they can work towards through their daily “practice” point
- Printable list of 5-10 minute household tasks that kids of all ages can do each day to help keep up on housework as part of their daily “home” point
- Ideas for activities and links to tried-and-true websites full of meaningful learning activities kids can use to accomplish their daily “extra” point
- Brainstorming sheets with starter ideas so you can create great fun “bucket lists” for Make-it-Monday, Take-a-Trip Tuesday, Wet Wednesday, Thinking Thursday and Friend Friday. These activities can be a great complement to the “daily must-do activities.”
- An introductory podcast by Saren and April (to walk you through the whole thing)
- Lots of photos to help demonstrate ideas
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Here are a few quotes from moms who’ve tried the kit:
“I LOVE this kit!! Every summer I start out strong with some ideas, and then vacation or other things hit and it all goes down the drain. Here is something that is concrete (that I didn’t have to come up with all myself) that has fun ideas and activities. I like that it has specific ideas (inside activities, extra activities, goals, jobs, etc.). It is a great starting point for me to add and subtract my own ideas. It is definitely easy to follow and is something I really feel like I can do.”
– Koni Smith
“I love how versatile this kit is. It is a structured and streamlined system and yet I could do it in a variety of different ways to fit what my family needs. I also really like how this kit addresses learning and goals and helps me see how I can integrate fun AND learning. There are so many “summer plans” type blog posts out there but most of the ones I’ve seen deal with the fun of the summer. They talk about the trips you can take, the waterparks, the beach, the fun crafts, etc. I loved that this kit helps promote learning and being active during the summer as well as setting and accomplishing goals WHILE having fun. The summer can easily turn into one of those “lost periods” where you look back and think where did the time go. With this kit I can already tell that my children are going to be better prepared for when school returns and we are going to really focus on growing and progressing through making goals.”
– Mary Jenkins
“I love that a lot of the work has been done for me with this kit (charts, worksheets, lists of ideas). I think this makes it so easy and quick to implement a great program. I also love that the kit gives a framework that you can modify according to your needs. I think we all want to do neat things like this, but having a schedule or framework already set out for us makes it much easier to actually do what we mean to do.”
– Aubrey Degn
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CLICK HERE TO MAKE YOUR PURCHASE THROUGH POWER OF FAMILIES
*** You may also be interested in our Joy of Reading Kit which works as a great companion to this Summer Camp Kit. Check it out! (It’s only $15.)