Trying to Avoid Chaos

She is just so beautiful. And she is fine -- no ill effects from the Weekend of Disasters.

I am looking ahead to the summer, which is going to be here in just 5 days. I have been mulling over this for about a week...how to provide a sense of structure to our days without running myself ragged or relying on countless hours of PBS Kids.

I think simple is probably best. I want the day to have some structure, but not be overwhelming for me or the kids. My ideas are kind of embryonic right now, but the bare bones look like this:

Every day we will do 1) something to improve our environment 2) something to improve the mind 3) something to improve the spirit 4) something to improve the body 5) something for fun.

Sounds ambitious, but improving our environment is my fancy way of saying "cleaning." The spirit refers to something of an artistic nature and also to Vacation Bible School; the mind is just something academic -- reading practice, reading time, alphabet practice, zoo camp (which the kids are signed up for in July) or something sciency from a cool book I found. Improving the body is where I'll slot activities like swimming lessons or time at the pool. And doing something fun is really so that I remember to play with my kids. I am going to expand on these in a later post, just so I can work out what I want them to look like, but just under "improve our environment" my general drift is something like this:

• Monday we mop & take out trash
• Tuesday we tidy (living room and bedrooms)
• Wednesday we dust
• Thursday we clean bathrooms
• Friday we put away laundry

In theory, these are all things the kids can either do or help with in a substantial way. I think I'm going to pick up some kid-sized mops at ToysRUs so they can really help with the mopping. I am in the process of making lists of activities for the other things on my master plan.

I'm also thinking about integrating mind, spirit and body activities in some simple thematic units like oceans, rainforest, gardening. I think the activities will be more meaningful if we have a loose, exploratory framework to guide them. Not at all sure how this will play out...still working on it.

I don't want the summer to be frittered away on TV and videos. There'll be time enough for that when the weather keeps us indoors again.