our summer bucket list and some summer rules

last monday for family home evening (fhe for short), we decided to make a summer bucket list.  these are wildly popular on blogs and pinterest, but we had never made one before.

so i pulled out an old piece of posterboard that i had used for a yw lesson, cut it in half and turned it over to use the unused side.

after our song and opening prayer, we talked about what a bucket list is and then what types of things we could put on our bucket list. i told the kids things like "go to disneyland" were not an option.

first we did a brainstorm session where everyone just threw out any idea.  then we decided which ones we would keep and i wrote them on our poster.  can you tell which one was my idea?  i got strange looks from the kids and possibly even the hubby when i insisted it go on the list.

and because all of the other bucket lists i see online are written cute, i attempted to do that as well :)  plus, i had to block out a few things because some of you might be creepers....

after we made our fun list, we talked about some of the not so fun things about summer.... rules.

these don't include our regular house rules, these are just rules for summer.  of course we still expect our children to stay inside and not answer the door when mom and dad are not home, but this just helps everyone be on the same page as to what is expected of the kids.

they got the first two weeks of summer off - they didn't have to do anything outside their normal chores, but now it's time for business.

for their worksheets, i created a board on pinterest and scoured the internet looking for printable worksheets that were grade appropriate.  printed out worksheets for reading and math and stapled 4-5 pages together as a set.

i also pinned a couple book report forms.  each friday they have to fill out a book report form about the part of a book or the book they read during that week.

i took their worksheets and their book report forms and put them into a 3 drawer organizer.  each drawer has one of their names on it so that they know exactly what is their stuff.

last year, i bought them books from costco and had them do 4-5 pages every day (kind of like this one).  they got burned out really fast.  this year i reminded myself that it is summer for crying out loud, so i settled on 2 days of worksheets and one day to do a little book report writing.  seemed like a happy medium to me.

do you have your children do worksheets during the summer?