As homeschool winds down, students often still need the routine of school or at least something to keep them going. As mom, you need a break from teaching, but that break shouldn’t involve you having to hear bickering or the famous words, “I’m bored!”

Creativity is one thing that is caught and taught. If our children see us being curious, asking ‘What if…’, and creating things, it’ll help them be creative. Too often creativity is left in childhood.

Today, I’d like to give you a solution to both aspects—the summer blues and nurturing creativity.

Hi, I’m Kandi J Wyatt, mom of five and grandma of two. Over the years, I’ve learned that summer can be some of the best days of the year. I wasn’t able to homeschool my kids, but we did enjoy our summer breaks.

I remember having the kids help me pick huckleberries before breakfast for huckleberry muffins. Or we’d go to the creek for the afternoon to cool off. There were also blackberry picking afternoons, walks to find items to create a centerpiece for the dinner table, and all kinds of roaming.

A tried-and-true chart that I’d pull out in the summer was called the Peace Chart. It came from a newspaper article my mother-in-law saw. The idea is to help kids negotiate their own interpersonal relationships and to keep them from saying, “I’m bored!”

To use the chart, you fill in the blanks with things that your children love to do and you’re willing to enforce taking away from them if they “break your peace” (come running to mom to tattle or start arguing among themselves.) You’ll check off boxes as they break your peace. I usually left three blanks as free spots in the first week or two, and then moved it down to two, and finally one. When they use up their free spaces, then they start losing privileges.

Ideas for privileges might be: no video games, no TV shows, no dessert. Then they might move to more serious ones: no outside play, no swimming—and my final one was always go to your rooms. Note that I always left no outside play as one of my final resort options because I wanted them to play outside, to be active and not underfoot, and I had to enforce the consequence. I didn’t want it to be something that was more work for me.

I learned that the Peace Chart helped the kids figure out how to play together on their own. I can’t say that it was the Peace Chart that helped the youngest three become friends as adults, but I believe I used it more with them than I did the older two.

As for creativity, here’s an adventure journal that you can print off for your kids to fill out. Use a page a day to discover things around you and to help observation skills. This also could be used as a gratitude journal. As you seek things that are unique, awe-inspiring, and wonderful, you begin to be grateful for them. And it’s scientifically proven that you can’t be both negative and grateful at the same time! Which would you rather inspire in your kids?

May your summer be filled with fun adventures and peace.

🔎 Download the Adventure Journal

Adventure Journal

. . . writes “family-friendly fantasy that brings light and hope” and is the author of An Unexpected Adventure, for which you can download a free study guide here. Kandi lives with dragons, most in human form--and some even blow fire! She spends her days providing space for teens to be themselves, inspiring them to be more than meets the eye, and spilling hope into their world.

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