Activities To Do With Kids During The Summer So You Can Still Run Your Small Business (& Work From Home)
If you’re anything like me, you run your business at home. Through September to June you can easily rely on preschool, school and kids napping while you work (well, as long as the kids aren’t home sick with a cough and runny nose), but with summer already in full swing, how do you continue to run your business when you have a full house?
In my short time of working from home (going on my third year now), I’ve tried all sorts of timings to find a work schedule that allows me to work when I’m most productive, and spend time with my kids without feeling overly exhausted and stressed 24/7. Here’s the thing though. My schedule changes often. Mostly because my kids are still young — I’m working with the transitional nap schedule of a one-year-old, a sometimes napper with my three-year-old and a never-napper five-year-old — with that being said I find ways to work 10-15 hours a week in my business, and that includes daily networking, client work and posting regular content.
One perk of having a flexible schedule means that I don’t always have to work 15+ hours a week every week. I can work 8 hours one week and 15 the next without sacrificing consistency in my business because I put reliable systems in place within my business.
Another reason my schedule is ever-changing is … summertime! I kinda love how the family slowly transitions to all-day outdoor time and takes a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life — no more rushes to school drop off’s or packing countless lunches and snacks. Being able to take the summer months off to go on adventures with the kids is part of why I started my business in the first place. I dreamt of days at the beach, going on road trips and spending time together as a family.
This year, I plan to do just that! (with a little planning of course)
What I’ve started doing each time I get paid is to set aside a bit of money to cover expenses and pay myself for the two months I plan to take off. I calculate ahead of time how much money I need to cover my time off and then save that amount from each client invoice. It’s been so worth it because now that summer is almost here, I can actually enjoy the summer without worrying about when I’m going to fit in work.
I also plan my year ahead of time. Every November I dream up my next year of business and schedule all of my design times for the next year into my calendar. Once I fill up my design spots, say 10 spots for the year, I can focus all my energy on creating content, networking and designing those 10 amazing websites.
The things I have planned for the family this summer is a two-week-long family road trip to Alberta to visit family and friends — including a night out for mom and dad to attend a close friend’s wedding! A couple of afternoon summer camps for my boys and a week of swimming lessons for all the kids & mom. I’ve always wanted to attend the mommy and me swimming lessons, now is my chance!
In between all those planned activities I’ve been brainstorming, researching and talking to busy women entrepreneurs just like myself to create a cheat sheet of activities to do — because I don’t want to exert too much brain power the morning of to plan out fun activities, and bonus, I’ll already have all the supplies needed on hand. Take a peek at what I have planned and jot down a few ideas for your own summer break!
20 Activities To Do During Summer Break
DAY OUT AT THE BEACH — pack a picnic, sand toys and plenty of sunscreen!
TAKE A ROAD TRIP OR DAY TRIP — we’re planning to drive from B.C. to Alberta this summer, it’s the same trip I took as a kid to visit my grandma in the summertime and it’s totally bringing back all the memories of driving through the Rockies every summer.
PLAN A FAMILY VACATION
VISIT A MUSEUM OR SCIENCE CENTER
BAKE A NEW OR FAVORITE RECIPE
GO TO THE POOL OR WATERPARK
SPEND THE DAY IN THE BACKYARD — Make popsicles, fill up the pool/run in the sprinkler
STOCK UP ON SUMMER SUPPLIES — sunscreen, hats, bathing suits, chalk, water toys and spend the day in the backyard or park, invite friends or family for additional fun!
FILL UP THE WATER TABLE — add in shovels, cars, boats, and animal toys or have them add in leaves, rocks, grass — anything they can find in the backyard
GO FOR A HIKE OR NATURE WALK — one mom I talked to suggested playing ‘I Spy” or making up stories about our surroundings while walking
GO ON A NATURE SCAVENGER HUNT — you can find a template on Pinterest or staple different color pieces of paper on the outside of paper bags to collect items of different colors
SET UP AN OBSTACLE COURSE IN THE BACKYARD
FOR RAINY DAYS — MAKE A FORT, WATCH A MOVIE OR MAKE HOMEMADE PLAYDOH
ATTEND STORYTIME AT THE LIBRARY
Here’s our favorite homemade playdoh recipe from my son’s preschool, the boys play with it for hours, creating shapes, planets, and letters. The creativity for this activity alone is phenomenal!
Homemade Playdoh Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups boiling water
30-40 drops of food coloring of choice
2 tbsp oil
Steps
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl
Mix all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir until dough forms a ball
Drop onto the counter and knead until smooth, add flour as needed to prevent sticking
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Vacation and Road Trip Activities
This year, we are going on a two-week long trip chock full of visiting friends and family and oh right a two-day drive x 2 with three little kids.
When I was packing for our trip, I was reminiscing about the days when my husband and I would go on vacation and how effortless it was to wake up in the morning, stop for coffee and then hit the road. This trip, phew, it’s been an intense amount of planning, prepping and organizing as the weeks count down. But oh so worth it. We are all looking forward to seeing Grandma and going on a new adventure (we’ve been counting down the sleeps until we take the ferry over to the mainland).
Let me give you a breakdown of what we’ve got planned for this ambitious and very exciting family road trip.
I bought special toys & activities from Amazon, Walmart and the Dollar Store (I found they had a good selection of what we needed at a good price), and I have hidden them all away until we head out on the open road — kinda feels like a mini Christmas.
INSIDE MY SHOPPING LIST!
Stickers — we love anything space, vehicle and emoji related over here
Coloring books, markers & blank notebooks
LCD Drawing Tablets (I found a 2-pack from Amazon for cheap)
A couple of new toys — a Lola droid from Obi-wan (another Amazon find), a medical kit and a transformer
Two new movies to watch in the van — we’ve been watching Wall-E and all three Despicable Me’s for the last three years, it was time to spice things up a little bit
Throughout the trip, I’m going to bring out different activities because we have a two-day journey there and back home …. so Mom and Dad are going to need all the snacks and reinforcements we can get our hands on.
When we get back home we’ve got a few summer camps planned for August — space, and underwater-themed camps. As well as swimming lessons for all the kids for the last week of August.
That means I will still be home with three tiny humans for 2 weeks without major activities planned before we get back to school and preschool.
I’m looking forward to slowing down the pace a bit and taking it easy. I intentionally planned to put a hold on client work for the rest of summer so I want to be present and enjoy my time at home with the kids.
We love going on nature walks, walking over to the beach to throw rocks and climb on logs, definitely many, many trips to the water park and of course tending to our garden — It’s a joy to watch my 5-year-old take care of his succulents as we take our daily morning walk in the backyard to check on the flowers, he takes his job as gardener VERY seriously.
10 Summer Activity Ideas That Take 20 Minutes or Less To Set Up
Make homemade playdoh (find the recipe above)
Bake muffins or cookies — these Banana Muffins from Sally’s baking addiction are the BEST and are super easy to make
Make homemade popsicles
Make (or purchase) a themed sensory bin
Build a birdhouse from a kit — this activity takes longer than 20 minutes to set up but an advantage is that it can be split up into a two-day project. The first day to point and the second to build.
Purchase a large roll of paper for doodles, masterpieces and painting experiments
Test out a new science experiment
Set up a scavenger hunt
Set up an audiobook
Lay out some different crafting materials — glue, different colors of construction paper, googly eyes, paper plates, egg cartons, markers, crayons
Lay out paintbrushes and a bucket of water, and have your kids ‘paint the fence’
I came across the website Happy Hooligans and found a huge resource of 100 activities to do during the summer, check it out to start your summer activity list!
Preparing My Business For Summer
Just before summer break started I knew I needed to get my butt into gear. Instead of stress-rushing around at the last possible moment to write-edit-and-publish my blog posts and weekly emails, I started creating room in my schedule to eliminate this stressful cycle I had inflicted on myself.
The first two weeks of every month you’ll find me writing up a storm — writing a month's worth of blog posts (including an additional emergency post for times I’m not able to write), creating my weekly emails to my peeps on my email list, and repurposing content to post on Instagram, Facebook and in Facebook Groups — although I must confess, I’m not as active on socials as I am in my emails.
Here’s the 411, because I dedicate my first two weeks to content creation, the rest of the month I’m working completely 1:1 with my clients to build their dream website or I’m taking time off to hang out with the fam or I’m taking additional time to make updates within my business.
I’ve learnt the hard way that I need to focus on one thing at a time. Trying to complete a blog post entirely from the idea creation phase all the way to publishing it in one go is exhausting! It also isn’t, well, practical. I don’t keep up with it and that's hands down not what I’m going for.
To prepare for my two-month break from client work I wrote, edited and scheduled all my blog posts and emails for the month ahead so it really wasn’t on my mind, like at all. My business will be running behind the scenes and I’m kinda all for it.
Changing Your Schedule So You Can Enjoy Summer Break With Your Kids
Planning 2 one-hour-long activities for kids to do independently while working (take inspiration from the activities listed above)
Shifting to working more in the evenings or early mornings
Outsourcing/hiring a team member to help with daily tasks
Let clients know that you’re home with the kids and it may take a little longer to respond
Signing kids up for summer camps or enlisting help from family or friends
Working on the weekend and having family or your partner watch the kids
Focus on one goal to complete during the summer and focus only on that
Planning for Next Summer
At the end of your roughly two months at home running your small business while (hopefully) still enjoying your summer with your kids, let’s reflect on what worked and what didn’t work, and come up with a plan for next year. Instead of (with the best of intentions) waiting until school’s out next year to start thinking about what to do to balance running your own business and planning an epic summer break, let’s do future you a solid and start the review and planning process now while it’s still fresh in your mind, you can always change it when June rolls around again.
Take out a pen and piece of paper or the notepad app on your phone or a Google doc on your computer, whatever suits your fancy and set a timer for just 20 minutes.
Setting a focused time with a time limit helps eliminate distractions and get’s you to think clearly about the task at hand. With so many distractions in daily life, its a breath of fresh air to be able to concentrate without kids asking for snacks in the background or adding another item to the running weekly grocery list, or checking your email…. or scrolling through Instagram
THIS IS WHAT I WANT YOU TO REVIEW
How did this summer go?
Did I accomplish my summer goals?
Were my expectations for how much work I could complete vs. time I could spend with the family aligned with what I was able to accomplish?
Are there any tasks I’d like to outsource for next year?
What went well?
What didn’t go well?
How would I like my summer to look next year?
Save this doc somewhere you’ll be able to review closer to next summer, I’d even recommend going a step further and setting up a reminder in your calendar or in Trello for the beginning of June or earlier to start reviewing your notes and coming up with a plan.
Did you want to work less and take the summer off with your kids? << this is my personal goal for summer 2024.
Some ideas I have for accomplishing this are making sure I hit my financial goals during the year and saving up a cushion of money to cover my two months off. I plan to have my work calendar free and to leave my design schedule in vacation mode for July/August, only checking emails occasionally. I’ll also be planning, prepping and scheduling all my content to run throughout the summer while I’m off at the beach or waterpark.
What will your summer schedule look like?
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Simply by Katie is a Canadian Squarespace Website Design Studio based in Victoria, BC and serves Small Business Owners from across Canada. Simply by Katie designs strategy-rich websites in a quick turnaround of just two weeks.
