What our family of 5 is doing this summer (and why unstructured time beats busy activity plans)
I was balancing a wiggly 4-year-old on my hip in the grocery store produce section last week, prying a bag of sour cherries out of my 7-year-old’s fist while my 9-year-old trailed behind scrolling a kids’ podcast on my phone, when our old neighbor Mrs. Henderson stopped to say hi. “What are you all doing this summer!?” she asked, grinning like it’s the most exciting question to ask a mom of three.
I fumbled for an answer. A year ago, I would have rattled off our packed schedule: swim team Mondays and Wednesdays, art camp for the big kids on Tuesdays, STEM workshops for Jake on Thursdays, zoo playdates every Friday. This year, I just shrugged and said, “Uh, mostly hanging out around the house?” Mrs. Henderson leaned in a little, voice dropping like she was sharing a critical warning. “Aren’t you worried about summer slide? All that time off, they’ll forget everything they learned last year.”
I used to worry about that too. I taught 2nd grade for six years before I had my third kid, so I’ve read all the reports, I’ve sent home the summer skill packets, I’ve had dozens of parents ask me what they can do to avoid learning regression over break. Last year, I bought into the whole hype. I planned our entire June and July around activities, mapped my driving route between three different locations across town, packed three different snack bags every morning, and by mid-July I was drinking iced coffee out of a sippy cup in the car line and we’d eaten cereal for dinner four times. The kids were cranky every night, my 9-year-old Mia cried through the first week of third grade because she was still exhausted, and I realized I’d spent the whole summer rushing and no one had any fun.
This year, we sat down as a family in May and asked everyone what they actually wanted to do. Mia said she wanted unrushed time to draw her comic books. Jake said he wanted to fix the old broken grill that’s been sitting on our driveway since last year. My 4-year-old Zoe said she wanted to dig for worms. So that’s what we built our summer around. We only signed up for one thing: the free weekly story time at our local library. That’s it.
People hear “unstructured summer” and assume we’re just staring at screens all day, but that’s not what’s happening here. Learning looks different when it’s not planned by someone else, and I’ve been shocked how much of it is happening without workbooks or scheduled lessons. Mia spends at least an hour every day working on her graphic novel about a cat that runs away to join a circus. She writes dialogue, draws panels, asks me how to spell words she doesn’t know, and reads every finished chapter out loud to me after dinner. That’s more writing and reading practice than any $30 summer workbook would get her, because it’s hers. She cares about it, so she shows up for it.
Jake spends a couple hours a day tinkering with that grill. He’s measured the rusted-out burners three times, written down the part numbers he needs, watched three different YouTube tutorials on how to replace a gas line, and asked my husband how to calculate the right size of connector. That’s math, problem solving, systems thinking—all things he wouldn’t get in a structured STEM camp, because he’s working on something he chose, not a project someone else designed for a group of 10 kids. Zoe digs holes in our vegetable patch every morning, counts her worms, and asks why they’re good for the tomatoes. That’s science, simple as that.
I used to jump in the second one of my kids said they were bored. I’d suggest a craft, pack up the car to go to the park, pull up a list of activities on my phone. Now I just say, “What’s one thing you can think of to do that you haven’t done yet?” It’s such a small shift, but it works. We also keep a cardboard box of random junk under our coffee table: old magazines, markers, extra googly eyes, cardboard tubes, leftover wrapping paper. No fancy craft kits, no expensive supplies. That’s where the puppet show came from last week, when Mia complained she had nothing to do. She rounded up the other two, made puppets out of paper bags, built a stage out of old moving boxes, made tickets out of notebook paper, and charged me one chocolate chip cookie for admission. That was all them. I didn’t have to do anything but show up.
I’m not saying structured activities are bad, by the way. If your kid loves soccer camp or art classes, that’s great. For our family of five, with three kids with very different energy levels and interests, cramming our calendar full just left everyone burnt out. As a former teacher, I can tell you that the biggest skill kids need to bring into a new school year isn’t remembering how to do multiplication or spelling words. It’s being curious, and rested, and knowing how to come up with an idea on their own. That’s the thing no camp or workbook can teach them as well as a few empty afternoons.
Some days don’t go great, of course. Last Monday, all three kids fought over the only inflatable pool float for an hour, I yelled, and we all spent twenty minutes in our own separate corners. The grill is still half taken apart on the driveway, the weeds are starting to take over the tomato plants, Mia’s graphic novel probably won’t be finished before school starts. But right now, as I write this, they’re all running around the backyard chasing fireflies, their cheeks sticky from popsicles, no one has anywhere to be at 8 a.m. tomorrow. I don’t know if we’re doing this summer “right.” I just know that right now, it’s working for us.
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