Creating a summer routine is important, but many people wonder if there is a way to make daily routines and summer vacation work… without taking all the fun out of your time to relax.
The time and effort put into maintaining at least a semblance of a daily routine over summer vacation is easier than you may imagine. With a plan and a little self-discipline, your family can stay on track.
Why daily routines are important, even over summer vacation
Daily routines are vital to keeping life running smoothly and stress under control, even on summer break.
While it can be easy to throw routines out the window in the summertime and just let your whole family fall into vacation mode, this can lead to a lot of problems. Daily routines help your family keep on track and take care of vital tasks like daily self-care.
When you have a summer daily routine for kids, you are giving your child a sense of security in the knowledge that they know what is going to happen and when. The need for this doesn’t go away when the weather turns warm and school lets out for the year.
If you can stick to daily routines over summer vacation, your transition back to normal everyday life when vacation ends is a lot easier than if you throw out your daily routines and have to rebuild them into your life and make them habit all over again.
What is the best summer routine?
It’s easy to fill the long summer days with extracurricular activities, like day trips to the water park, visits to the community pool, and all the fun summer bucket list activities that you don’t get to do the rest of the year.
However, the best summer routine is one that prevents learning loss and provides a sense of structure for kids of all ages.
Grab the free printable summer bucket list below:
How do I put my child on a summer schedule?
Use natural blocks of time like meal times, nap time, and planned fun activities to create a summer schedule for your child.
Whether you plan to attend day camps, play dates, of fun physical activity things like a bike ride, a walking tour through your local state park, or fun challenges to promote physical exercise, there are many different things you can do to break up your daily routine during the summer while still making sure you’re making the most of lazy days and relaxing instead of following your typical busy schedule.
To transition your everyday routines into your daily summer schedule, take a deep look at your existing daily routines, including your morning routine and evening routine.
Some things like brushing teeth and hair are non-negotiable and vital to a healthy lifestyle, while other things, like getting up at a specific time, are no longer needed during summer vacation.
Consider transitioning your daily routines to a summer vacation version by shifting your kids’ bedtime routine and wake-up times to better reflect your new schedule.
When you no longer have to be somewhere at the same early time, you have a bit of leeway to let everyone sleep in a bit longer. You can even allow older kids to stay up later at the end of the day.
How do I keep a summer break routine?
While keeping daily routines over summer vacation is vital, you may discover that some parts of your daily routine are just not a good fit for summertime.
When transitioning times for your daily routines, be mindful that you do not want to deviate too far and find your family struggling to get back to your old daily routines when the school year rolls back around.
If you are unsure of how much to shift your daily schedule, try a small period of time until you find the right balance for your family.
Don’t forget to add more summer chores for kids into your daily routine over summer vacation.
With the kids home more, they are making more messes and they have more free time that can be used to help you with chores to clean up those messes.
Add in summer chores like extra sweeping of the floors, gathering and loading the dishwasher from all of those extra dishes, and working on the extra laundry created by swimming or playing outside in the dirt.
Daily routines and summer vacation may not be something that comes to mind, but it is just as important whether you work full time or if you are a stay-at-home mom. Either way, you need to build a routine that leaves you with more time to make the most of precious warm-weather days.
Use this chance to help you find balance and learn to plan a bit of fun and a good bit of rest into your daily routines over summer vacation.
If you are going on vacation and will be away from home for a while over summer vacation, use alarms and reminders to keep your daily routine somewhat intact and make the transition out of vacation-mode easier.
Get the SOS (Systems to Organize Summer) bundle to stay organized even when you’re traveling and doing all the fun summer activities!
How to fix a daily routine that slipped during summer vacation
Sometimes we find our daily routines slipping during the summer months.
When this happens, we often discover that our routines really were a major tool towards keeping our sanity.
If you find that your daily routines have slipped over summer vacation, you can work to rebuild these routines and healthy habits.
Go easy on yourself because this is normal and can be fixed.
- Make a list of the daily routines you had before summer vacation and which ones you have let slip.
- Use a visual schedule to help get your family back on these daily routines and rebuild these essential healthy habits.
- Set alarms and reminders on your phone to help keep you on task through the day even if things get carried away. Alarms are a great way to build routines even if you may let time slip away while enjoying your summer vacation.
Even while you’re enjoying the summer holidays, daily routines and summer vacation go hand-in-hand.
When you know why you still need to use daily schedules, how to incorporate daily routines into your summer vacation, and how to fix a daily routine that’s not working, you’ll be all set to get some sand in your toes (and not in your living room carpet).