Summer Routine Incentives for Kids
Jun 13, 2023
I love summer. It's fun. It's warm. It's carefree...sort of.
Chances are even if you have time off during the summer, you still have responsibilities. Chances also are you simply have responsibilities no matter what the season because you're raising littles right now.
Summer can totally be fun, but throw my family completely off a routine for too long and it's chaos...especially when there are still things to get done! I.e. paid work, summer reading, chores at home, etc.
I knew walking into summer I needed something to keep our (ok, my) sanity in check. I didn't want to be nagging my kids everyday to do their summer packet or reading minutes required by school. I also knew I didn't want to feel resentful I was bearing the brunt of double and triple household chores with kids home more hours than usual. P.S. This isn't because my husband doesn't help, it's because he's not home the majority of the day.
And I definitely knew how to make all this happen. I needed to create some summer routines.
Now, full disclosure, even though I totally geek out on routines, not everyone in my family loves a good organizational system as much as I do, at least they haven't grown into this trait yet (I hope they will someday!). So, I needed to incentivize...and damn did I deliver.
Here's how I did it. First, I got some supplies. I knew I was going to need my middle guy to work on sight words, writing, and reading. My older two would have to also do reading and we'd try to keep up some spelling skills (our most challenging subject here lately), and my youngest didn't really have an agenda, but needed to be kept busy, so there's that.
Then, I spent some time making sight/reading word cards for incoming first grader. I put those in a gallon size Ziplock bag and labeled it with his name. Then, I pulled another gallon size bag and labeled it "Completed" so we can reinforce words he's already worked on. He'll pull a number of cards per day, read them, write them 3x each on the mini whiteboard (much more fun than pen to paper), and we'll quiz him on the words daily cumulatively.
Once I created the index cards, the kids and I (minus the napping toddler) got together and came up with a list of how to earn plastic chips (currency for doing chores or school work during the summer) and what you could cash those chips in for. I gave them a lot of autonomy in this process while directing/making final decisions on what seemed like a fair price for the job/reward. The older boys wrote the list of tasks and rewards, the middle guy wrote the values. This was a crucial step to ensure there was buy-in from everyone.
By the end of the day, the kids were practically begging me to set and clear the table, inquiring if the dishwasher needed to be emptied and had read for far longer than the daily minimum. This was a Sunday, mind you--a day I wouldn't even normally ask them to necessarily be 'on routine'.
We're still in our first week, but so far so good. Some things that have helped are giving the kids lots of freedom in deciding if and when they want to complete the tasks so there's no power tripping. Additionally, ensuring some of the rewards don't cost a lot so they can reap the benefits right away (this is especially helpful for the younger kids: 3 and 5 years old).
The best part has definitely been the lack of a daily battle to get help around the house or stay on top of reading and school skills so we don't lose all that knowledge over summer. Here's a quick reel to see some of our summer routine incentive in action and if you need any of the supplies I used, you can find them all in my Amazon recs.
Stay connected!
Join the email list to receive the latest news and updates.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.
