Planning For Summer

With summer fast approaching and my children being able to count on their fingers the final days of school, I have been thinking about our summer plans and schedules. 
I feel like to fit everything in during the school year I have to be pretty on top of things and there is little room for completely letting go. During the summer I like to relax the schedule part quite a bit, except for a few things. 

The main things I focus on in summer include: 
* Daily wedding in the garden
* Teaching new chores (1-3 new ones per summer, per child) 
* Giving more responsibilities around the house (helping younger siblings, taking over more laundry, bathrooms or vacuuming, having them work on chores they were taught last summer to help them remember & to lighten my list a little so we can play together)
*Workbooks for math 
* Reading every day

When I take a poll of what my children hope summer will be like, we can talk about my expectations and their dreams and find a decent place to meet in the middle. Generally, my kids want to play and they often want me to play with them. That means I have to have a little more help in getting to the things that must be done and sometimes I let other things go. Explaining my goals, taking their plans into account and using services like ordering groceries online, help make the summer an enjoyable few months, 
This week, take some time to figure out your expectations, the hopes of your children and design a way for both to meet up somewhere. Explaining that you have more time for taking them to the pool or park when they clean up after themselves benefits everyone. Focus on the most important things and let some of the stuff go. My house has been a little dirtier in the summer in recent years, but the memories of playing together and doing "enough" made for times we have all been talking about for months this year. 

(This is a list of things to do that I have been collecting and putting together for years. I now just keep this list for deciding what things we all want to do each summer and we generally pick 3-5 things to do during the summer. Keep a running list of things your family enjoys if you have a hard time coming up with things on the spot.)