ABC Summer

During the summer of 2018 a friend posted on Facebook that she and her kids were having an ABC Summer, choosing adventures and activities for each letter of the alphabet. I was looking ahead to 2019, the next summer, already gathering ideas for what we might do. I knew that Sophie would be starting kindergarten that fall and I decided that an ABC Summer would be a perfect way to ring in her school career.

Instead of planning things on my own, I enlisted the kids. I printed out a list of all the letters and asked each child to write down an activity they wanted to do for each line. I told them we wouldn't be able to do everything they asked for (no trips to Utah, no elephant riding), but we would do as much as possible. Then I complied a list that we hung on the wall. We spent the summer marking off adventures.

What did we do during the summer of 2019?

• Applebees
• Arcade

• Blue Mountain
• Board Game Day
• Christmas in the summer
• Crafting
• Cake Making
• Dance party
• Engineering day
• Farm visit

• Gardening
• Gaga Ball
• Going to a garden

• Holiday day (This was possibly the best activity we did all summer. We celebrated as many holidays as possible in one day. We started with a New Year's Day sign, then read a book about Martin Luther King Jr while we ate a Valentine's Day breakfast of pink oatmeal. Then we dressed in green for St Patrick's Day and had a treasure hunt instead of an Easter Egg hunt for Easter. I didn't take pictures of our hot dog lunch for the 4th of July, but I did capture our Halloween costumes which we wore to trick or treat to the bedroom doors. We wrapped up the long and fun day with listing what we were thankful for, a variation on Christmas dinner, and a list of New Year's resolutions for the rest of the year.)

• Hide and seek
• Hill Cumorah Pageant

• Happy challenge
• Hiking

• Ice Cream party
• Inside tunnels
• Jacobsburg Park

• K friends
• Kindness challenge
• Library

• Laser Tag
• Movie day
• Museum

• Martin Guitar tour

• Mall
• Mom playdate
• Nickelodeon Watching
• Niagara Falls

• Optometrist
• Ophthalmologist
• Orthodontist
• Park

• Pool
• Queen for a day
• Ropes Course

• Somersault practice
• Shopping
• Swimming
• Sleeping in
• Temple visit

• Train

• Treasure Hunt
• Tree climbing
• Up and down jumping
• Ultimate Workbook Party
• Upside-down Pineapple Cake Making (This was Sophie's suggestion, I thought it was a clever use of the letter U.)

• Video Games
• Ventriloquist
• Whitefield Museum

• X-ray (dental)
• X-ray (hand)
• Yummy treats

• YouTube watching
• Zebra (sibling in a costume) riding

It was a full and fun summer.