I was so happy when school ended last week. Yay…summer break! This summer (for the first time), my teacher husband is not going to be attending school and/or working. Since I’m doing the camp administrator position this summer coupled with the fact that my paid blogging work has picked up, we agreed that we would switch jobs for the summer. He is going to watch the kids while I do paid work. In theory, that is a pretty easy switch. Reality is a different story though…
First of all, I realized that I needed a space of my own to work kid-free. At first, I considered Starbucks…especially now that they have free wi-fi. I quickly nixed that idea though for two reasons. First of all, the Starbucks across the street from our house is pretty small, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable staying there for an extended time. Secondly, I figure that I would defeat the purpose of working by spending all of my money on their (addictive) passiontea lemonades. For some things, I just need to go cold turkey. Then, I thought of Barnes & Noble because they have free wi-fi too. Ultimately, I decided on my bedroom (easy commute). During my focused work time, the kids just can’t come in. At other times when I’m doing things that I don’t need to be 100% focused on, it’s fine if they come in and out.
Secondly, my husband and I had to decide what were fair trade-offs to both of us. I started out by writing down everything that I did versus what he did on a normal workday during the school year. Wow… I (moms!) do a lot. I asked him if there was anything that he really didn’t want to do. Besides the laundry, it turned out to be a pretty even switch. So, we were able to come up with a really good plan.
Lastly, we needed to agree on a daily run of things:
-In the mornings my husband will take care of the kids. I don’t really care what he does with them (he’s a great dad!). My only two things are:
1.) I don’t want the kids to watch more than a certain amount of television/electronics a day.
And
2.) I want Michael to complete a page of his Summer Bridge Activities: Kindergarten to 1st Grade each day. I reviewed this series last year and was sent a new one to review this year. Last year, I waited almost a month into summer before starting, so we never finished the book. This time, we started the day after school ended. I like the workbook and find it easy for Michael to do (he often goes pages ahead “just because”). For some reason though, the publisher is under the assumption that kids get 3 months of summer vacation, so there are 60 days of worksheets. Does anyone get 3 months of summer vacation?! Irregardless, I think that it’s a good review, so Michael will be doing a page daily. Also, because Michael knows the material, he “teaches” it to Sean which further reinforces it.
Reading, writing and math are daily things. In addition, we have scheduled in weekly library visits; science or cooking projects and art projects or cultural events. Since Michael has (already!) started missing his friends, we are also going to try to schedule in “playdates” as much as possible this summer.
Suffice it to say, my husband is going to be eager to get back to work in the fall 🙂 Luckily for me, I get to be the “fun parent” this summer. Below are a couple of photos of what I did with the boys today after I finished my work for the day:
Do you face any new challenges when it comes to child care during the summer months? If so, have you come up with any helpful solutions?