Plan a low-screen summer with me!
Boredom, a kindness challenge, and a fill-in worksheet for kids and parents
Psst: we have another AMA podcast coming up soon! Submit your questions for John and/or me here or just leave them in the comments. You can listen to the first one here!
I had planned to run this newsletter in two weeks, just after Memorial Day — the unofficial beginning of summer! But in conversations with friends and looking at my own to-do’s, it seems like summer prep is already in full swing. (Just this morning, I got a text from Bethany, bless her, asking to compare schedules and make a few plans.)
So let’s do it! While I know May is the month where everything collides — where we’re just trying to finish the school year while also planning ahead for June, July, and August — today we’re going to embrace it. We’re going to ask and answer a few questions about what matters this summer, and then we’re going to figure out how we can do more of it, together.
These summer planning newsletters are some of my favorites: not only do they embody much of what we’re trying to do here at The Connected Family — hopefully helping you to scaffold creativity, adventure, warmth, and fun in your home with just a sprinkle of technology — but they also force me to get my own plans in order! (Thanks, pals!) Looking back, it’s fun to see that both 2024’s and 2025’s versions were some of their year’s most popular posts.
It’s no secret that it takes careful planning to facilitate a slow summer — especially for working parents — but to me, it is worth every bit of extra effort: spending the hot, lazy days of summer at home were formative for me when I was in elementary school, and I cherish being able to offer them to my kids: days that include time outside. Time to be bored and to use their imaginations. Time to read. Time to play with neighborhood friends. Time to create and explore their interests. Time to grow closer together as siblings. (And, you know, time for John and I to do our work with minimal interruption.) Those things are worth fighting for!
If you, too, are hoping to scaffold a low-screen summer — one that might include boredom yes, but also where that boredom can blossom into creativity, relationship, resourcefulness, independence, patience, and passion — I’d love to share a few ways we’ll be doing it in our home this year.
And psst — I’m also sharing v. cute, v. fun “summer planning” worksheets you can download for the whole family to fill out together. (There’s one version for the parents and one for the kids, but many questions overlap!) I hope they lead to good conversation, and help surface some shared things to look forward to in the months ahead! We’ll be filling ours out at our upcoming end-of-the-school-year / beginning-of-summer celebration dinner.