Additional Needs

Here is to Summer!

Posted by Brittney Baumgartner on 17th July 2018 Additional Needs, Disabilities

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Here in Texas, our summer kicked off in June (end of May to be more exact).

I will be honest, I was pretty nervous with having to deal with Oliver’s therapy sessions, doctor appointments, getting my at-home work done, all while finding activities for all of us to enjoy without hearing the “I’m bored” spiel.

With three boys, none of these tasks come easy during the school year, so with all of them at home with me, it was frightening!

Luckily, I had baseball season coming to a close for two of my oldest (Aaden and Oliver), so I was able to mark Taxi driver off the list. Lol!

Usually, for the summer, we take each day as it comes. I get a feel of what each boy might want to do and take a vote from there.

With them at such different ages, this only proved itself to get harder for me. One would want to stay home and play video games, while the other wanted to watch Blippi on YouTube.

So, I took to social media and actually found an awesome idea. A Summer jar!

What I did was use a recycled spaghetti sauce jar and taped a label to it that read: SUMMER BUCKET LIST.  Inside, I filled it with all kinds of activities from extravagant to small on small pieces of folded paper.

Every morning when the boys would finish their breakfast, they would each get to pick one piece of paper from the jar. If it was doable for the day, we would add it to our list!

Some of the activities were: watch a thunderstorm, go to the beach, watch a rainbow, etc; so, they were not always an option that we could get done for the day.

But every morning, the boys would wake up and be so excited to see what we could do for the day.

I also want to brag about a smart move on my part, because we all know that we can do this and that with our children but at the end of the day they will act or say that they did not do much.

To save myself from that problem, I printed out a blank sheet with the title, “SUMMER 2018” and I would tape all these individual pieces of paper that we accomplished to it.

Our list is ever-growing, but currently reads activities we have done such as: go swimming, go to a water park, go to a baseball game, make tie-dye shirts, play bingo, camp in the living room, go on a road trip, and so much more.

It has only been one month into our summer but being able to put aside the tablets and electronics and build our relationships on these activities has been worth more than words can express.

Got any special summer plans with your kiddos? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

Happy sharing! (: