summer adventure journal {hot town, summer in the city}

Summer break is almost here!

Only three more days left of school!!! Yes, if you're doing the math, next Monday is the last day of school for my kindergartner.  Kindergarten graduation is Tuesday evening.  Clearly I'm excited for summer break {mostly to not be commuting nearly two hours total a day round trip for drop off and pick up since we moved half way through the year}.

{side note: if you're thinking "I thought she was a home school mom?", yes we home school our oldest and our second has been in a private school for "socialization" purposes - aka: she needed to find herself out of big sister's shad}

We {the kids and I} have been planning and making a summer "bucket" to-do list.  They of course are thinking they need to come up with a "not bummer summer" challenge {Judy Moody inspired}.  We need to "buckle up" the list still, but in the meantime, I came up with summer adventure journals for the kids.

While we love free, unplanned days, my kids definitely benefit from some sort of structure once in a while.  To keep on top of hand writing basics, spelling, etc. I decided to make these summer adventure journals so that they can write about, draw, make notes, or add in "treasures" {postcards, pictures, maps, etc} from our doings over the summer.  At the end of the summer they will have a little diary and scrapbook of the things they did.

The Summer Adventure Journal:

I had these composition notebooks that I bought at Target last fall on clearance for 12 cents each...

 

I collected a few supplies...

I channeled my mad book covering skills that I developed in middle school and high school...

Voila! There you have it...

Here is the start of our summer adventure list {these are just ideas, we won't necessarily do them all}:

*Chalk the entire driveway
*Lemonade stand
*Parade of parks (we pack a picnic lunch and spend the day "park hopping" usually hitting up 5-6 parks)

*Beach days

*Have a water balloon & squirt gun fight

*Ice Cream Sampling (go to a few different ice cream shops in a day sharing a dish of ice cream at each place)

*Visit libraries we don't usually go to

Minneapolis/St. Paul specific adventures:

*Chutes and Ladders

*French Park

*Irish Festival

*Torch Light Parade

*Red, White, and Boom fireworks

*Como Zoo

*Minnesota Zoo

*Sculpture garden

*Minneapolis Farmer's Market

*Twin's game

*Minneapolis public library