Summer Fun in Northwest Arkansas

Summer is almost here and we are ready for some family fun in Northwest Arkansas. I’m a little intimidated about being home with my kiddo now that he knows how much fun bog school is and his incredible teacher kept them entertained and learning without realizing it every day. But, these are the days I looked forward to so much about being a mom and I’m so excited about what we will do to fill our days!

Surviving Summer Plan

If you are like me, you are already worried about how to survive summer. Everyone is excited about slower mornings with fewer requirements and longer days where you can push bedtimes a little. But with school-aged kids entertained all day by their teachers, having a plan will help you keep your sanity and not waste these precious days.

Make a summer bucket list – ask everyone if there are places they want to go or something summery they want to do. Then, find a way throughout the summer to mark things off the list!
Make a plan for what you want to accomplish this summer – find the best latte, snow cone, ice cream, BBQ, or tacos. You could even taste food from a different country each week.
Make a plan to survive your day – do you have morning routines you want to maintain, or do you want to have a chill time or learning time each day so everyone keeps their minds moving? Set these parameters, and maybe even post them if needed. But clearly explain your expectations with your kiddos so they know what they need to do before they can have free time for their fun.
Set a weekly theme and let that help you plan your summer and outings – topics like gardening, critters/insects/butterflies, birds, robots/tch, camping, mountain animals, transportation, farm animals, ocean, jungle, nature, sharks – any of these can help you go check out library books, choose your adventures, print off activity sheets, make a craft, make a fun treat.
Could you offer a surprise each Sunday as you do with Advent or Lent/Easter experiences (Preschool or Teen Ideas) – I’m thinking about revealing a weekly theme – and an envelope with a word or color pages could be an easy reveal and something they look forward to each week, to set the tone.
Are there weekly rhythms you could do every week – For example, on Mondays, we chill. On Tuesdays, we go to the Library. On Wednesdays, we play in the water, etc. You don’t have to be rigid, but it keeps kids from saying, “What are we doing today,” when you get out of bed. Last summer, a friend of ours always did “Frostie Fridays,” and they would get a treat at the same place each week. Rhythms with your family create space to build a community with store employees and easily open doors for conversations about Jesus.
Work with what you already have planned – if you’ve signed up for a weekly class or a vacation, use this in your summer planning. We want to enter more things in the County fair this year, so I’m using our weekly rhythms to do projects for the fair.
Use the summer to clean out and set new rhythms – one of your home days could be a clean-out day – or you could have a jar of projects that you could do throughout the summer to clean out your home.
It’s OK for them to be bored – if you didn’t read the opening paragraph, it’s OK to let them be bored. Let them get creative and fill the space with learning or free play. Their mind needs a chill, and their dopamine levels require a reset!

Our Summer Bucket List for Northwest Arkansas

Activities for do this summer

save paper towel tubes to make a long car track
Make playdough salt dough
Stuff for fair – art projects
tie-dye tshirts
Solar printing
Make jello
baby wipe baseboards
Write letters on a day if week to mail to friends / family
Picture for a neighbor. Scooter to deliver them to their house

Weekly themes for the summer

beach
bugs
space
egypt
shark – time with shark week
decade days
recycled week
building week

Destinations to visit this summer

who has the best sno cones?
take the dog to get a treat
Crystal Bridges Space Makers | Indigenous peoples project
Exquisite creatures project at Crystal Bridges – closes July 29
Batesville/Mountain View quick weekend
Red Bluff Overlook
Pivot rock – Eureka Springs
Quigley Castle | Eureka Springs
Tanyard Springs | Bella Vista
Tulsa science place
Drake field |Fayetteville
Cave at Eureka Springs
Natural Falls in Oklahoma
Ten Killers State Park | OK
Race track in West Siloam springs
Rodeo of the Ozarks
Harbor Village | Grove, OK and Grand Lake area
Creekside Park | Farmington
Rodeo of the Ozarks |Springdale

How we will spend our “home days” this summer

Home days are our favorite days. While we both love to be out and about, seeing friends and taking new adventures, we love home days. What is a homeday you ask? Well, its when we wake up without and alarm and have no planned agenda the day before. We either stay in our pjs all day long or decide in the morning how we will spend that day. It means relaxing and just doing whatever we want that day. Sometimes we get a homeday that turns into cleaning, or projects and crafts. Other homedays involve reading, or doing choires, or finally watching a movie. Soetimes we invite a friend over and sometimes dad comes hoem to join us for lunch. But a home day = a no agenda day and we love that kind of day!

How to organize our summer plan

I know that looks like a lot of things, and you are not wrong, but I like to look at our big summer schedule and use that to line up our weekly themes and determine where we have time to go on adventures. If I know we aleady have a day camp our outings planned, I will use that to pick my theme. Maybe we hae a short week and can go on our of our day trips on the day that week we dont have another appointment.

I’ll line up sharks to the week that Discovery celebrates shark week and we have extra things to occupy our time.

The week’s we don’t have a camp, I’ll build the same rhythm where we go to the library, have a home day, a craft day, an outing day, and maybe a day where wer go try a new lunch. Having this pattern and rhythm helps us all know what to expect for the day and then my kiddo knows in the morning what to expect for the day.

Having rhythms, keeps you from being a “no” mom and a “when we do we do that mom. Kids like rhythms. Its what they are used to at school and the structure helps build consistency and expectations.

We of course love to travel and summer usually invovles a road trip, so I maximize those experiences as well. That’s usually when we go into Junior Ranger or Expedition Adventure mode and use our research skills and have lots of park related “homework”. My kid loves these kinds of days so I try to play along.

Road Trips you may enjoy with your family