Betsie Bop

Make a Summer Schedule for Kids

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School is out for summer. Yay!

The kids are loving it. I’m loving it. But now I get the challenge of the kids having more free time, but I don’t want them to squander all their time either. I’m a big fan of being productive.

We have lots of fun too, but we have things that do need to be done and skills I want them to work on, so summer is not ALL play.

Now, I know I can’t schedule their life down to a “t” and dictate it all, but I do want to encourage them to make good habits and to help with things around the house.

I don’t want the responsibility of being an adult to shock them. I want them prepared for what that looks like as much as I can.

There are no shortage of things that need to be done around our house. I think it is good to be able to pass on real life skills to my kids and to include them in what it takes to make a house full of people really work.

Some things need to be done daily. I am a serious check-list type of person. I love check-lists and use them daily for about everything. I have even gone so far as to write in what I’ve already done….just to check it off and track that I did it. That’s totally normal, right?

My kids have lessons and other things that continue through the summer outside of our house. This is not a list for those types of things. This is a list strictly for things that I want done at home.

I thought that I would share what mine looks like and how I made it. If anything helps you…then feel free to borrow the idea.

our summer check list

I know there are tons of things out there you can buy already made. Frankly, I’m a bit on the cheap side so I make my own.

I’m sure there are no shortage of apps that could do something like this for you too. But…..

I’m a bit old school. I love pen and paper. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with technology. It makes some things so nice. But to me, nothing beats a piece of paper tacked on the board in the kitchen with a good old fashioned pen to cross things off.

Pens don’t have batteries that need recharged….and my kids never “borrow” my paper on the board for a million other purposes like they do my IPod.

Basically, I can count on my sheet of paper always being there and always being easy to see and use. And we have about two million pens in our house, so losing one of those is a non-issue. I’d actually be happy to get rid of a few.

While you can type up your lists on your computer….I just use paper and pen….back to that part about being in love with pens and paper…..

First, I decided what days I wanted to keep track of. Then I decided what I wanted to track. I have four kids spanning 4-15 years old. Obviously, I have vastly different expectations for my kids.

Then I just pulled out a piece of copy paper, pen, and a ruler and divided it up. I made a column for each kid. On each day, I write the recurring things I want them to do.

I also added extra check boxes for future daily things to add in. Since some things only need done once. This allows me to easily see each day what each kid needs to get done.

Once it is drawn up, I just scan it to my computer and then print out a copy for each week. As much as I love doodling, I don’t really want to make a new list each week. The point was to do it once and maximize my time for the rest of the summer.

I started doing this because my son highly prefers to know what is expected of him for the day. So I was already doing something like this for him….I just had to do it all the time. I’ve gone through a lot of Post-It notes!

I think he got my list making gene. Except, he doesn’t really make them per se, just likes having one when it comes to work. We just feel better knowing what we are doing.

I guess it always makes the day a bit smoother if the expectations are laid out clearly.

We rotate through house chores monthly so I didn’t write in the specifics as they already know what those are. I just want to know that they do, indeed, get done.

I know four kids isn’t that big of a family, but I find that if I don’t write stuff down I am always asking the kids if they did a particular job or not, over and over and over again.

They’d get frustrated with me…..I’d forget who I asked what and who answered what. Keeping a list or chart eliminates a lot of stress and keeps things pretty clear.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like my kids are jumping up and down for joy because they need to do things. Some days, list or not, they still don’t really want to do that “one” particular thing.

Overall, it makes life simpler and we have a lot less stress over getting things done.

The bonus is our house stays fairly clean. Not perfect. It’s a kid-lived in place and we love life and do things. I think we’ve found a nice balance though. It doesn’t happen by accident. You have to plan for it and teach kids to help out.

Cleaning Up Ice Skates

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My kids love to ice skate. With our winters, that feel like they last forever, it gives them something fun to look forward to in the winter.

Willow with her new ice skates.

Honestly, our winters aren’t “that” cold compared to a lot of places. But we don’t experience the fluctuations that I remember as a kid growing up in Nebraska.

It might snow today and be fully sunny and pleasant tomorrow. That is not something we experience here. It’s just this constant cold and darkness that eats away half of your personality by February.

Once the sun sets in summer time you feel like you are saying good-bye to an old friend you won’t see until the next summer. This would be the same summer that is gone in a blink of an eye and poses no real threat of getting hot enough to break out into a sweat on most days. I only joke that I feel a heat stroke coming on because in actuality, I’m tired of needing a jacket in August.

That might be a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but that’s how it feels by the time you hit January. Despite how whiny that feels, I really love this place.

Last year was the first time we bought our big kids ice skates of their own. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made as parents. Willow was only two and didn’t seem remotely interested in skating. She loved sledding and that seemed enough for her last year.

Before we did anything at all to her skates.

This year, the girls had outgrown their ice skates, so we got them some new ones for Christmas. Willow was so taken with the ice skates and was so bummed to not have any.

At three now, she loves to do everything the big kids do. At the very least, she likes to at least have a chance to try what they are doing.

Adam and I were out on a bit of a date last weekend and were looking through a second hand store. As I was walking through the back of the store, I spied a little pair of ice skates. They seemed to be begging me to take a closer look. They were so cute. Little white figure skates.

They did seem like they would be just a speck too big, but as fast as kids grow at this stage I figured they would still work. I could always put an extra pair of socks on Willow if needed to make them work. They were only two euros, which made them an impossibly hard deal to turn down. In fact, I couldn’t turn them down. They were perfect!

They needed new shoe laces and a bit of a cleaning, but structurally they seemed great. Not that I’m any expert on ice skates or anything. I just learned this year that ice skate blades need to be sharpened from time to time. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.

The ice skates all ready to clean up.

Anyhow, I brought home the skates and it was so fun to see Willow’s excitement over them. She wanted to put them on right away so I helped her.

Sure enough, they are a little bit big, but not bad at all. The up side is….we should get at least two years out of them before she does indeed, outgrow them!

The whiteness of the skates seemed to be slightly yellowed. So I looked here in town for some white shoe polish. I couldn’t find any so I resorted to looking online for how to make my own. And while I didn’t learn how to make white shoe polish, I did find lots of options for cleaning up leather shoes.

Amazingly, these skates are made of real leather and are so cute. Did I say that already? What is it about little things that are so stinkin’ cute?

I gathered up a few supplies and Willow and I spread a bath towel out on the kitchen floor. She was pretty eager to help me.

Getting ready to work on her skates.

The things I decided to try out using were toothpaste and a toothbrush, and a basic school eraser. I had read both things are good for helping to clean up scuffs and marks.

I tried the eraser and, honestly, it didn’t do a thing on the skates. It might work on a certain type of scuff mark, but it didn’t do anything on our little ice skates.

This did nothing for her little skates.

Our second attempt was with toothpaste and a toothbrush. We just used the cheap whitening toothpaste from our local grocery store, nothing fancy!

Just your ordinary toothpaste.

Putting toothpaste on an ice skate is really a three olds version of fun. She LOVED it. I gave her a toothbrush and let her scrub away at one skate while I worked on the second one. It did really seems to clean them up and get a lot of grime off of them.

All ready to scrub!

We did remove the shoe laces first. It really makes it much easier to get the tongue cleaned and saves you from getting toothpaste on the laces. Which is not what you want to do.

It is a messy venture to say the least. I had toothpaste all over my skirt by the time I was done and Willow had it all over her too. At the end I just used a damp rag to wipe off all the toothpaste and grime. I had to rinse it out and do that a couple of times to get it all off. But it did come off just fine.

I was a little disappointed that it didn’t really remove the little rusty spots from the shoe lace rivets. And the worn away areas would still be improved by actual show polish.

I’m sure if I went searching in Tartu I would find somewhere that actually sells a white shoe polish. I’m not sure, if or when I will ever get around to that.

The last thing we did was to slather lanolin all over the skates to add back in some moisture that we undoubtedly took out with our toothpaste scrub. Plus, I was hoping it would help to act as a bit of a barrier against water in the future.

Lanolin is awesome! Who knew there were so many uses for it?

Ever since I’ve had kids, which is most of my married life, I’ve had a tube of lanolin around. That stuff is awesome. It works on anything and everything. I could speak of it’s virtues forever. But this would definitely be a first time I’ve ever used it on shoes of any sort. It seemed to work pretty good though.

I grew up watching my dad polish up his cowboy boots over the years so I gave these ice skates my best buffing and shine I could. I think my dad would be proud!

The final product. So a bit better, but obviously no mistaking they have a story to tell about where they’ve been.

They look much better. I am not sure the pictures really do it justice. No, you won’t mistake these for brand-new skates off of someone’s shelf, but they look pretty nice. And I have one very happy little girl who is constantly trying on her “new” skates and trying to walk on the rug around the coffee table and asking when we’ll have real ice to skate on which, from the looks of it, will be very soon.

The happy girl trying her skates on!