Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to episode 131 of Outnumber the Podcast. This week we're talking to you about summer school and specifically five different opportunities that summer offers for education and learning. One of these is the opportunity to have fun and that's why we are delighted to let you know this week's episode is brought to you by chalkpastel .com.
Speaker: Our kids consider chalk pastel lessons with Nana the most fun art lessons they have ever taken. So if you have a child who questions their artistic ability, one who shows promising artistic talent, or anywhere in between, you must let them try chalkpastel .com. We'd like to invite you to use our link in the show notes to go and experience chalkpastel .com for yourself. Now, onto the show.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey. And if your kids are bored and
Speaker: making you want to pull your hair out. You're going to love this episode because we're talking all about what to do with your kids in summer. And we just wanted to remind you that episode 73, we also did an episode about exactly what our summer school looks like. So what we do to educate our kids in summer. And that one's an amazing episode. So listen to that one too. But this one is kind of a broader look at summer and what's going on.
Speaker: Yeah, and this goes without saying, but obviously this applies to any school vacations, right? It can apply to, you know, homeschoolers, obviously, but anytime your kids are home off a regular school break, these are some great tips for not losing your mind with no schedule and kids running amok.
Speaker: Okay, so we wanted to pause here for a second and tell you that one of our best ideas for ways to keep your kids active during summer is something that we have given to our Patreon supporters for free. We have given them a super smart curriculum and it's intended, it was created intended to keep little ones busy while the older ones are doing schoolwork and it works amazing for that. But why we're talking about it here is that it's just
Speaker: Like, my older kids love it. They love the Play -Doh, they love the sensory boxes, they love doing the activities with their younger kids. And it's a great way to keep both older and younger kids busy during the summer. And so if you guys want to find out what that's all about, you can go support us on Patreon.
Speaker: We have that curriculum over there. It's completely free. And we have a link in the show notes where you can find us on Patreon. We love our Patreon supporters and we try to do lots and lots of special stuff to help them out because we know what it's like to have kids driving us crazy in summer saying, mom, I'm bored. The worst word ever equals all the chores at our house. Yep. You're bored. Hey, I got a list, right? That's right. The board list.
Speaker: Last thing before we get into the meat of the episode, we really want to share one of our latest reviews. It's from Tara SW and she entitled it so helpful. I am a dinnertime cooking veteran. I've literally been making dinner for kids since I was 10.
Speaker: But when you have a bunch of littles at home, sometimes you get burned out or just need someone else's thoughts. The dinnertime episode was such a huge help. It reminded me of tricks I already had and gave me new ideas plus new resources to check out. Audrey and Bonnie are rockin' this mom thing and full of great advice. So thank you, Tara, so much for that review. If you who are listening have been meaning to leave us a review and haven't yet, just hit pause right now, take 30 seconds to head over to iTunes and leave us a quick review. We appreciate everyone so much.
Speaker: Oh, yes. Thank you so much, Tara. Like we want our podcast episodes to be just like a chat between us and you and that we're just moms sitting around and we help each other and inspire each other. And so we love every review we get. So thank you.
Speaker: All right, let's talk about summertime. Let's try to look at summertime as an opportunity. So we're gonna share five different opportunities you can use summer for in this episode. So we hope one of these five, at least one of these five will help you guys make it through the doldrums of summer too.
Speaker: That's right. Okay. So the first opportunity, number one is an opportunity to catch up. So for me personally, this means if a kid is behind in a subject, I mean, sometimes people just stick their kid in summer school to kind of fill in those gaps, which is totally cool. But if you don't want to do that and you've got a kid at home, this is a great time to get a little bit more one -on -one chance to work with your child, bond, connect with them, and then give them extra strength in a subject that they may be struggling in.
Speaker: Yeah, that is so true because you're not focusing on, you know, during regular school, you're doing all the subjects. It's a great time to just focus on one subject and you can get, you know, several lessons done or they just don't get burnt out because their mind is working on another subject. They can just focus completely on one.
Speaker: And it's an opportunity to catch up in other ways too. Like I notice in summer, my house is always cleaner because I've just got more time to spend on it. Um, we have more outside time, more time in the sunshine. Like there's always a backlog of projects that I just keep a running list of. And it's during summer that I can kind of start checking some of those off my list.
Speaker: Right. For us, summer is a great time for us to do household projects. So I painted a wall the other day. We actually do most of our quote unquote spring cleaning in the summer because we're stuck inside anyway. So that's when we like pull up the rugs and vacuum underneath them and move the couches. Although technically that probably has to be done every month because it's like piles of garbage under there. Some of my own work projects that are going to be a little bit more time intensive and take time away from the kids. Organizing things. I've been having a local teenager come over and help me because
Speaker: my big kids do their chores and then they want to play. So I'm like, well, I'm still in organization mode mode. So I'm going to have another girl come over and help. And we've tackled like every closet in the house has been fantastic. That is awesome. Yeah, that gets me all excited and reminds me of our episodes about organization and systems. So go listen to those episodes too. Those are great ones. Okay. The second opportunity that can be for some, that you can see summer as is the opportunity
Speaker: to take a break. Guys, rest is so important. So one year I decided we weren't going to take a break from school and we're just going to keep going. We're going to press through and we got around to school in the fall and everybody was just so burnt out and nobody wanted to continue. It's so important to rest. Everybody will perform better.
Speaker: after a break from school. They'll have renewed energy. They'll be excited to dive in again and do it. Oh, yes, school. Yeah, we haven't done this for several months. It's going to be fun again. And so definitely an opportunity to take a break. Yes, absolutely. I've done the same thing, thinking, well, I don't want to lose our momentum. Let's just push through. And it is torture. Everyone needs a break, even if you're not farmers and following the traditional schedule that the public school system initially used. A break is worthwhile no matter when it is.
Speaker: And I have noticed that if I personally am tired of doing school or just helping with school or whatever else, your child probably is too, right? We need to give them a break just like we need the break and allow them to rest and relax.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a really good example of this. Several times I have a child who's learning to read and they are just on the cusp of reading when it's time to quit for the summer. And I just like, oh, I just hate to quit because I'm like, they're almost there. They're almost there if we can just keep on pushing. And what happens, this has happened like three or four times for me already. What happens is if we take a break all summer,
Speaker: then when we start back in the fall, boom, they've got it like within two weeks. So what would have been, you know, taken maybe another month or two is totally sped up because they've had a rest. They spent so much time outside playing and doing other projects and our mind is just free to, I don't know, maybe it's like their mind is just processing all that information that they were getting. And instead of losing time, somehow they just gained a time by just taking a break and having a rest.
Speaker: And then they just really, really launched like skyrocket in their reading ability. So I've got one just like that when we quit this summer. And he even said, mom, I kind of want to keep going. I just want to kind of keep you helping me practice through summer. And I was like, okay, we can do that. But then I also was like, yeah, right. You're taking a break.
Speaker: You need a break. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I have so much to say about that. You know, just as a physical example, if you exercise, you know how valuable those days of rest are. And that's actually when your muscles are doing the bulk of the work. The exercise is what like does those micro tears in your muscle. And it's the rest days where they build back up and actually get stronger. And I think our brains are the exact same way. When we don't sleep, we don't function. Because the sleep is when all those random connections that we've been building up during the day just kind of
Speaker: I mean, I'm not a neurologist, some of this I'm just making up, but it really is vital to rest. And that means not just sleep, but play rest. And for kids, play is work, right? That's how they're learning. And so we think that work and learning is just sitting down with books and we're not huge fans of just book learning anyway. So summertime is a great time for them to pull everything together.
Speaker: Number three is summer is an opportunity to fit in things that you have missed. And this is not just necessarily schoolwork, but the extra stuff. Like how many times have you thought, I'd really like to go to the library this week and then the week just got away from you? Or we'd really like to do this field trip that we've been planning for a while and life got too busy. Messy projects. I am not great at doing messy science projects or art projects during the school year because the day moves so quickly that I don't like to pause and clean up a huge mess, but summer is the
Speaker: perfect time for that. Yeah, absolutely. Just let them, you know, the longer it takes them on their messes in the summer, the more we like it because they're being occupied and we don't have to, you know, find something else for them to do. Yeah. As we speak, my dining table is covered in glue and paint and popsicle sticks and I love it. I'm like, leave it out all day. We just got to clean it up before dinner. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Some stuff we take the opportunity to fit in in summer is typing. We just, you know, they use the computer, they use the keyboard and they type stuff, but it's not like an actual typing practice. So we have a little typing program that they love to do in summer because it's not schoolwork, it's kind of more like play.
Speaker: And like you said, art, definitely we squeeze in more art in the summer just because we have more time to just kind of let it unfold on its own and not have to, you know, okay, well, we got to be done with art now because we have to do these other things. Educational games, we'd love to pull out Boggle or Quiddler or Monopoly or any of our favorite educational word games or
Speaker: you name it. We just have a little extra time and so I'll even print out some of those at the beginning of the week and just kind of leave them laying around that they can just pick up and spend their time on. This isn't like super educational, but one of my daughters has discovered solitaire this summer and she just kind of sits around and plays solitaire sometimes. I'm like, well, it's summer. Enjoy it.
Speaker: And then field trips is definitely something I try to fit in once a week, something special. There's just anything, any process, factory or a newspaper, go down to the newspaper office and see what it takes to print a newspaper and shadow a photographer for a day and just all sorts of stuff that they might be interested in or might not even be interested in.
Speaker: they can just really, we have time for because we're not doing other stuff. So yeah, definitely love this opportunity. Yeah. And it's just, it's just so much more fun for you as a mom to, to really enjoy your kids doing something fun, right? Rather than being a taskmaster all the time.
Speaker: This is also for me, summer is a great time to catch up on that one -on -one time that you may not have as much time for. So especially as parents of a large family, this is something that I'm always conscious of. In fact, we've done a whole episode on getting lots of one -on -one time in with your kids. And during the cast of the school year, sometimes it just doesn't happen the way I'd like to. We like to do, you know, one -on -one dates, just kind of running errands together or playing games together.
Speaker: painting nails together, maybe even going swimming with my kids, doing something, you know, heaven forbid, maybe even getting my hair wet. What my mom never did and I always thought she was so lame for and here I am doing the same thing. Family movies or a camp out for my husband's birthday the other night, we decided to just make him a really nice dinner and then set up the projector in the pool area and watch a movie in the pool. And it was so fun. I mean, it was loud. Everybody's always loud.
Speaker: But all these fun opportunities to connect as a family. Oh, yeah, definitely. Those are so fun. In fact, the other day yesterday, my kids and I took off. It was hot. We usually do our swimming on Fridays, but it looked like it was going to rain on Friday. And so we just took off and we went swimming yesterday just because we could. And and I got my hair wet.
Speaker: Good job, mom. I know, I know. Okay, the fourth opportunity we can look at for summer is an opportunity to bring in help. So in our Patreon episode this past month, in June, we were actually talking about the things that we're willing to pay for ourselves and not, or bring in help on.
Speaker: And so again, we love our Patreon supporters. We try to give them everything we can. But we were given specifics on the things that we are definitely willing to outsource. So swimming lessons, a reading tutor. In fact, one of my daughters who has graduated, my 18 -year -old right now, she is making money for college by tutoring other kids. And she has picked up in the summer, she has picked up extra kids.
Speaker: Because there's a lot of people looking for help in the summer to use it as an opportunity, number one, that we were talking about, opportunity to catch up. And number three, fit in stuff that we missed, that they missed. And so my daughter, she's almost got no spare time this summer because she has so many students she's tutoring this summer. And it's a great way that she's making money for college. So lots of people are looking for this too, like bring in help. And sometimes it's just a change of person.
Speaker: that will help the child make it over the hump. Like on reading, if someone else sits down with them and uses maybe just slightly different words to describe the same letter sounds or something, it just clicks. I've always found that
Speaker: bringing in somebody else helps them understand it differently, whether that person is an actual in -home person or it's like an online program. Like Khan Academy is one of our favorite. We're going to share some of our favorite summer resources at the end. But yeah, definitely an opportunity to bring in more help.
Speaker: Yes, totally. Audrey and I are going to be the first people to tell you that anybody can educate their children at home if they want to. But if you get someone who has an actual education in education, they have a lot of additional skills, especially for those kids that need extra help. And like I mentioned earlier, I've had like kind of a mother's helper coming in this summer.
Speaker: Think of maybe a teen or a pre -teen close by to you who can help, like I mentioned, organize or just hold a baby, play with a toddler while you're working with or playing with other kids. I mean, there is nothing that is off limits for outsourcing, right? If you just want more time to hang out with your 10 -year -old because he feels kind of overlooked with a bunch of babies,
Speaker: Hire someone to watch the babies while you and the 10 year old go hang out. That's totally okay Especially if it's you know, a 12 year old that you can pay five bucks an hour eight bucks I don't know whatever they whatever they agreed to write Laundry and cleaning we've mentioned before those are kind of below my pay grade if my kids aren't doing them Then I'm an outsour some because that's not what my time is worth more than that now, right?
Speaker: or maybe even a qualified nanny, someone who's a little bit older, has more experience that you're willing to pay a little bit more if you have a job that you really want to dive deep on, maybe an actual business, et cetera, maybe house cleaners, maybe someone to help with meal prep. You just invite someone over and say, hey, I'll pay you such and such an hour. And all you have to do is like, you know, cook some sweet potatoes and cook some chicken and do these things for me. So my meals are halfway done for the rest of the week.
Speaker: Yeah, and don't feel bad about bringing someone in to help. It's just like Bonnie said that your time is more valuable and can be spent better on other things. Especially when you have several kids, there's just not enough of you to go around sometimes. And it doesn't have to be somebody you pay either. Oftentimes, there's a neighbor or a family member that would be delighted to spend more time with your kids or something.
Speaker: Yeah, look around for some free options, too. In fact, we have an episode coming up on finding a babysitter. And in that one, we cover tons of resources. So watch for that one, too. OK, so finally, number five, our fifth opportunity in the summer is to have fun. So if you're productivity oriented and the kind of person that's trying to get all the things done when your kids are out of school, sometimes it can be a little bit stressful. Like, I'm never going to get anything done. They're here and in my space all the time. I'm going to have to entertain them.
Speaker: but it's okay to take a break and have fun with your kids. In fact, it's essential. All the things we've mentioned before, not just field trips, but trips out of town or even just to a neighboring town, going to a pool, even if you have your own pool, maybe you go to the public pool together or a splash pad or a water park. I have learned many, many years ago how important it is to spend time with my older kids, especially while I have a young baby because that young baby takes up so much of my time.
Speaker: So I am planning on going to a water park with my kids here in another couple of months. And I'm trying to figure out the logistics, but I'm either going to leave my baby behind or bring someone else to help out with the baby so that I can be fully available to hang out and spend time with my kids. I would hate for them to have a lot of memories of me just doing nothing but caring for babies. And generally that's not a concern, but if you have babies for 16 to 20 years straight, it's kind of a concern. And so that's something that's been a priority for me is to make sure that I'm having fun with my kids.
Speaker: Those are all such good ideas and great thoughts about having fun with your older kids too.
Speaker: Yes, some things I thought about opportunity to have fun. It's extra time to play with your kids. Like I said, you know, Bonnie and I like to squeeze in those extra projects, but the extra play time with the kids is pretty important too. So some things we like to do is we set up a volleyball net. It's too hot in the middle of the day, but in the evening, so we go out and we play volleyball. We do the swimming lessons that I mentioned together. We'll pull out a game just on a rainy afternoon and play game together just because.
Speaker: And trips are a great way to have fun. If it's a day trip or if it's an overnight trip somewhere, just having fun with your kids is so important. I think if we all think back on our childhoods, remember some of our favorite memories are those times when people had fun with us, adults had fun with us. Yeah, totally. They let their hair down, sometimes literally. Let their hair down and get wet.
Speaker: Also, a note to beware of the trap of electronics or screen time eating away at your days and weeks of summer. This is something that we're struggling with right now because I'm still just kind of in recovery mode after having a baby and being, and then I was sick last week. And it is just so frustrating to watch kids use all their time on screens instead of all these really wholesome resources that are available to them during the summer.
Speaker: It is a great time. Summer is a great time to sit down with your spouse and or the kids and set down some ground rules for screens, what you feel comfortable with. And I will also say that if you are trying to decide how much to give them, it is always easier to give more than it is to pull in the reins. So if you're thinking, I don't know that I want them to have time every day, tell them no. Tell them they're only going to do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday or something. And then if you choose to give them time the other days, you can. But just a little pro tip.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right. You know, summer is going to pass by no matter whether you choose to be intentional about the time, how it's spent or not. So it's going to pass. That doesn't mean every minute has to be planned. If your intention is to rest and have fun and spend hours in a hammock with a book, do it, but just be intentional that that's what you're going to be doing. If it's using this as an opportunity to take a break, take that break. But just, you know, we're
Speaker: We love to talk about being intentional in what you do so that you don't feel like it's wasted time. Like if you planned the time swinging in the hammock reading the book and it feels so good that you're just swinging in the hammock reading the book. But if you are swinging in a hammock reading the book and you're like, oh man, I really should be doing something else, then who wants that, right? Who wants that feeling, dogging their time in that gorgeous hammock?
Speaker: So anyway, the thought is just be intentional about how you're spending the summer no matter what you're doing.
Speaker: Right, right. Intention is huge, especially for me. My mind is always going a million miles a minute of all the things I want to do or should be doing, blah, blah, blah. And my kids can tell, you know, if I am not present in the moment, I'm not very fun to be around because I don't even know what I'm saying sometimes. A couple of times this week, my kids have asked me a question. I respond and they're like, what are you even talking about? And I realized that I'm responding with a word that has something to do with what I'm reading at the moment. I have too much polls I'm asking, right? So I'm trying to be really intentional about being there, being present and having a great time.
Speaker: So we're gonna wrap up with a couple of our favorite summer resources. All of these will be linked in the show notes. The first one is savvy reading. I know we've talked about this before. It is an awesome opportunity for kids to have a live tutor, either one -on -one or in very small groups, helping them get to the next level of reading. And my kids have been obsessed with it. My young ones, this is the only thing they're doing school -wise for the summer. And they look forward to it all week long. There are prizes they can earn that get, like the actual physical prizes that get mailed to your house. Suze is super fun.
Speaker: It's really awesome. And we've had the creator of that program, Janssen, on our podcast as a guest, too. That's right. They have done a really, really good job with this program. And I'm in love with it. So go check that out. Similarly, Revolution Math is another awesome program, again, online tutoring, that just makes it really, really fun. There's prizes to be earned and characters. And they almost always have a deal where you can get the first month for just a couple of bucks to try it out. So we'll link that as well.
Speaker: Nitro type is an online resource for typing that my kids love. Again, we treat this one kind of like an online game, because it's a little bit more gaming than it is learning, but they're learning while they're playing. So that's fun. Last summer, I was really nervous about the summer being stuck at home due to COVID. So we created a big poster that we divided into four quadrants. And at the top,
Speaker: We wrote home and away. And on the side, we wrote paid and free. And then we just brainstormed everything we could think of, either paid in home or free at home, paid away, free away, if that makes sense. And we just plugged it into each quadrant. So when we were bored and we thought, well, we have a little extra money. We want to get out of the house. We went to the paid and away quadrant.
Speaker: or it's really hot out, we don't want to leave and we're trying to save money, we went to the home and free. And surprisingly, the quadrant that was home and free was the one that was the most full and that we did the most things in, which was really fun. So we pulled that back out this summer, did a lot of the things that we didn't get last summer. Anyway, the kids got a huge kick out of that, planning all the fun things to do. Oh man, that sounds awesome. We're totally going to make one of those starts and hang it up. My kids was super getting into that.
Speaker: Yeah, and it helps mom, like you're thinking, okay, I don't have the bandwidth to take anyone today, but I do have a couple extra bucks. And on there, there's things that are paid for staying home. You can order some washable paint from the grocery store, have it delivered, or you can order a new exciting movie on TV or whatever. That was a really fun way to stay within my limits of what I was capable of.
Speaker: Finally, just a couple of those ideas were washable paint for outdoors, we use that a lot, water balloons. And a couple summers ago, we bought a blow up water slide, kind of like those big huge ones that you see at birthday parties, like the bounce house type things, we found that one that was designed to be used with water has a little pool at the bottom, it costs us maybe $300. And they played on it for hours every single day that summer, and part of the next summer until it got a fatal wound. But that was a huge
Speaker: An amazing investment, I would buy another one any day.
Speaker: Okay, that sounds like a really fun thing, my kids. I can see spending hours doing that. My kids love to just set up the sprinkler and go running in the sprinkler, run in the sprinkler. They can do that for hours. Some of our favorite summer resources are everyday reading. Again, this is Janssen, like we mentioned, our former podcast guest. She puts out a free summer reading chart and you can print it just on regular size paper. You can have it printed really big and the kids can work through it by themselves.
Speaker: or together and it's always really cute and really awesome and it gets them into kind of different sections of the library. Like I know I talked about that in our first episode that we did on what we do in summer school episode 73 how we get around to different parts of the library.
Speaker: So that's one that we really love her free summer reading chart. We can link that one in the show notes. Um, chalk pastel .com. She has so many awesome, awesome videos. We're part of her clubhouse and we love that. That is, that is so fun, but she has tons and tons of free, um,
Speaker: videos too on YouTube. It's just an amazing resource. ChuckPastel .com. My kids love that. Even everybody from my four year old all the way up to my teenager, 13 year old girl daughter, she loves it. So everybody does it at their own ability and skill and everybody just feels like they're an artist. In fact, that's what she says at the end of every video that she does. You are an artist. And the kids love that.
Speaker: Something that we really, really take advantage of if we are working on number one, catching up in other ways to opportunity is Khan Academy. They've got so much free content.
Speaker: Again, that is like people, you know, just helping your kid in a different way. Like opportunity number four that we talked about bringing in help. So somebody teaching it a slightly different way and they just clicks with the kid. Mavis Beacon is the typing program that we use. My kids love that. And we use that one all the time. And it's also kind of gamey. There's lessons, but then they do get to do games and
Speaker: earn rewards. And my kids also like, they do this through the school year too, but they also really like to continue doing their Duolingo app, which is their Spanish. And they love to do that one all summer too. It makes it kind of like a competition. You know, you get tokens if you practice more often and then you use your tokens to, you know, whatever. It's just fun. And they like to continue doing that through the summer and they have more time to spend on it too. Oh, so many great resources. In fact, I want to get off and go do some stuff.
Speaker: Some of this sounds really fun like that reading chart. I forgot to print it out this year and we need to do that to get my kids reading some more. I will also give a side note. I know we've talked about audiobooks before, but if you have a reluctant reader and you don't want to ruin their summer by forcing reading, which by the way, we're not fans of forcing reading at all. I think it actually causes more harm than good.
Speaker: audiobooks are a fantastic place to start. I have an eight -year -old, a new newly turned eight -year -old who still struggles with reading at the level he probably should be at. But he loves audiobooks and I just let him read the read slash listen to them all day, all night long. He'll listen to them if I let him because
Speaker: It is doing almost as good as reading by sight because they're still getting that vocabulary developed. They're diving into a new world and as they learn to love books, then they will ease into reading a little bit more and their skills develop to match their interests. So just a side note about the wonder of audiobooks.
Speaker: Oh, yes. I love it. Vocabulary building, they can listen to books way more advanced than they can read. And something that, well, it's not quite audio books, but it's a free, well, it has a paid option too, but my kids love to listen to vintage radio. So it's an app that we download. We'll link it here in the show notes.
Speaker: Vintage Radio, it has all these old -time shows that, I don't know, I think we're even too young to have listened to some of these, like The Lone Ranger and all these ones. Baby Snooks is another one that my kids love to listen to. I think these must be ones that our parents listen to, but they're so fun and funny, and they even have some of the old -time ads on there like Eat Wheaties and that kind of thing. My kids love to listen to these old Vintage Radio programs.
Speaker: Love it. That sounds so fun. Okay guys, so we hope that you are inspired to take advantage of one of these five opportunities that we have offered you as far as summer goes with your kids. And we definitely hope that whatever opportunity you choose, that you're intentional about it and that you love it and you have such a good time with your kids this summer.
Speaker: Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
