Camp Mom |

As this summer’s “Camp Mom” winds to a close (T-… days!), I want to post my successes so I’ll have them on hand for next year. Maybe they will help some of you too.

This summer has flown past fairly quickly. Immediately after the school year ended, we went on a family trip and then Sweet Girl went to sleep away camp for 3 weeks. After that, we moved to the apartment and then she began a theater day camp. It was only after that that I needed to implement “Camp Mom” and figure out how to fill the endless days when it’s too hot and humid to do much outside.

Structure

First, we had a light structure in place for the day. If Sweet Girl woke up before 7:30, she could watch some videos in her bed until it was time to get up. Then we had a piece of paper with our daily agenda outline that we would complete together. Below is an example from a random day (only the categories were typed – we filled in the rest together).

I also gave her a list of ideas for House Help (vacuum, clean mirrors), Life Lessons (how a credit card works, how to make a bed), and things she could do for her Personal Time (science experiments, writing prompts, art projects).

Generally, I was ok with SG planning the order of activities as long as she did some form of each category before bedtime. After a few days though, I realized that we needed to move Reading Time to early in the day or it wouldn’t happen. There was negotiation on some of the other categories too, but for the most part, this worked great for us.

I’m just putting this here for next year…

Activities/Outings

One goal I had was to actually go somewhere each day, even if it’s just to the grocery store. SG is a homebody but I know I’d go crazy without the structure of a plan and someplace we had to go.

We went on some walks, had ice cream and snow cone dates, planned for friends to come over, and spent a lot of time at the apartment pool. I would have loved to add in some museums but I got a lot of pushback on that one. We went to the library once a week and I let her choose her own books. I utilized our library system for their activities that were easy to join and only lasted an hour – SG made an “ezine” one time and did some art another time. We also took a neat Amazon tour of a fulfillment center.

This summer, SG and I took on online class about making and editing “day in the life” videos. She absolutely loved it and didn’t even need to watch all the lessons. She was off and running once she had an editing app. I, on the other hand, needed all the help I could get on how it all worked! This was something fun we could do together.

Lessons Learned

It was only midway through Camp Mom that I asked SG what skills she wanted to learn and what goals she had for the rest of her summer. I should do that at the outset.

Limiting technology is useful! SG was allowed no more than 2 hours of time on her phone and not all in one sitting. If SG wanted to watch more videos and everything else had been accomplished already, I would ask her to read for the same number of minutes that she wanted to be on her device. If she wanted 20 more minutes, she’d first have to complete her regular reading, the house task, etc, then read for 20 minutes first.

I scheduled in a few hours each week for a babysitter to come over so I could have some time to myself. This was when I completed house-building tasks, got a manicure or massage, or did some reading/writing.

I was fairly firm on wake/sleep times when I could be. Until now, we woke by 7:30am and started our bedtime routine at 8pm so she’d be asleep around 9pm. Now we are moving those times earlier in preparation for her first day of school …

Travel is useful. Not only does it create amazing memories for us all, but it’s a great opportunity to sneak in some life lessons and to try new things. It breaks up the regular days too.