Our Not Bummer Summer Plan

Thanks to Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer?my daughter and I came up with our summer plan. We developed a way to earn thrill points doing planned family activities and made a chart to track it for fun.

Now Judy had her system set up with dares, bonus points, and lazy points. We are putting our own spin on that. We have our dares which amount to places we will be visiting throughout the summer, bonus and super fun points for anything crazy that might happen while we’re there, and gross points for those unfortunately funny things that happen.

For our chart we used supplies from our massive craft supplies. We used brown packing paper we saved from some packages we got in the mail, smoothing it out to make a 30×34 inch poster. Using scrap construction paper, scrapbooking paper, stickers, markers, and paint I let my daughter decorate the spaces.

Our major summer activities (Dares) this year will consist of:

• The Beach
• The Zoo
• The Natural Science Center
• The Children’s Museum
• The Movies
• Adventures (These are things we didn’t really plan for, but turn into major events.)

Our bonus?category?is pretty much every time we go. Memberships help make multiple visits possible without the pressure of spending ?money every time, and the movies are the free summer kids shows. The super fun category is for the unexpected surprises like seeing a ?costumed character or a special event at the location. Gross points are for things like getting blisters from walking or having something spilled on your shirt. Gross can either be a plus or a negative point depending on my daughter’s mood. I left that one up to her completely.

And even though for my daughter school doesn’t get out until this Friday, we started our thrill point gathering already. She’s on an extended school year so she gets out later and starts sooner than other schools around. It seemed fair to start the thrill points this past weekend with a trip to the Natural Science Center where her bother splashed her with water and a trip to the Zoo where she got a blister. Her daddy also took her to a paid movie so she insisted that we count that too. Between the visits, the super fun, the gross, and the adventure of the drives we have 40 bonus points, 10 super fun points, and -5 gross points.

For us the thrill points are just a fun way to see what we do this summer since we aren’t really having a thrill points race with anyone else. Our main focus is on having fun together.

What are your summer plans? Anything we can add to our list? Get any ideas from us?