ABC SUMMER
Keep things fun, active, and somewhat organized for you and the littles you get the privilege of hanging out with all summer long — use our ABC Summer guide
I used this template last summer when my boys were 3 and 1 years old. The older guy learned so much, and applied what he had been learning at Montessori, and he was able to be the leader when it came to choosing activities alongside me, and the littler one was happy to be along for the ride.
Essentially, I decided that I wasn’t going to ‘wing it’ all summer with them — and knew I needed some way to make sure that I wasn’t taking our ample together time for granted. SO our ABC summer was born!
On days when I didn’t work and was responsible for my children from breakfast to bedtime, we themed the day based on an alphabet letter. It doesn’t have to be fancy, extravagant, or expensive.
I would write the letter of the day on our white board, and draw a few things that started with that letter because my older one wasn’t reading yet– this year I will leave spaces for him to write words he comes up with for the letter and we’ll try to add pictures for the littler one to also make connections to what we come up with — We’d talk a little about the letter, the sound(s) it makes, and some things that start with that letter. My son surprised me with the amount of connections he could make with certain letters, and we worked hard on the trickier letters (sometimes using books or even asking Alexa for ideas). We would keep that letter close to our brains all day long.
“A” day was as simple as going to our local market and looking at all the different kinds of apples and letting my boys choose which kind they wanted to try, doing art that was more special than the usual crayons and paper, and pretending to be astronauts on our play set.
“B” day took us to a local bakehouse where we tasted some baked goods and then went on a bug hunt.
Like I said before, it doesn’t have to be a huge event to be special. You can make up activities based on where you are and what’s available. I chose this particular bakehouse because I love their coffee and I wanted to go there. Everyone can win.
My enthusiasm mattered, and the more I put the effort to just engage with our days in this way the more fun I had too.
As the summer went on, I was so surprised at how smoothly our days went when we had this tiny bit of structure and guidance – for me and for them! – and my 3 year old really latched on to the theme as we made our way through all 26 letters.
This is a low stakes commitment — you don’t have to do it perfectly– some days we did multiple letters to make sure we got the whole alphabet in. We just made it work. A special treat was on their letter day, my kids got to be ‘king for the day’ and wear a special “S” or “M” hat we made out of paper and be in charge of helping choose activities– they loved that.
Below is my loose list from last year, and we plan on adjusting the days this summer for my boys’ skill and interest levels!
I am excited to see how we can expand the learning this summer with a 4 and 2 year old – my 4 year old already requested we do a ZYX summer and do the whole thing backwards… I love that, and we’ll definitely follow his lead.
Hope this helps provide some excitement for the summer months where, yes the days can be long, but they can also be so much fun!
Make sure a few days are things YOU want to do too.
A Art, Apples, and Astronauts
B Bakeries, Buses, and Bees
C Campfire, Couch-fort, and Crunchy Snacks
D Daddy Dates, Dinosaurs, and Dance Party
E Egg hunt (went to local market and let them look for a literal carton of eggs I needed), Elephants (went to Hobby Lobby and tried to find as many things with elephants on it as possible…surprisingly a lot)
F Fire station, FRIENDS, and Flowers
G Grandparents, Glue sticks (we glued paper together, yes they love glue crafts of any kind), Garbage trucks
H Happy notes (we wrote notes to people who make us happy), Heroes, and Hulk (I got them a new action figure — big hit)
I Ice cream, Ideas, and Iguanas (we have a local greenhouse with a pet Iguana—check!)
J Jumping (we found a bounce house at a local side road restaurant), Jeans (we literally wore anything denim lol), and Jello
K Kecia Day! I got to pick some special activities — we had kit kats, explored a first aide kit (just had it in the diaper bag and we emptied it and talked about everything and tried on bandaids. they loved it) and karate (basically just jumping around on all the cushions off the couch saying HIYA!)
L Lollipops, lemonade (we made some), and the lake — we went to a local waterfront and walked the pier
M Mac day! He was too small to “choose” so we went to a Children’s Museum which was one of our bigger event days, so fun. and We picked his favs: mac and cheese for dinner, mommy snuggles, and a monsters inc book from the library.
N Nature hike somewhere we’d never been, we packed nuts, and let them pick any noodle from the grocery store for dinner…we had penne lol
O outside all day (packed a lunch and went to every park in our area haha), ollipop (special from chicago trip), and orange (we tried to find them both something orange to wear)
P picnic dinner (in our yard), peaches from a local stand, and packing suitcases just for fun
Q questions, quiet movie time (a high key fav), and quick runs in the gym
R Ranch visit! Got to see and pet all kinds of farm animals. So much fun — one of our bigger planned outings.
S Slater day! He chose swimming, shark bath toys, and “store cookies” aka cookies from the store not the healthy ones I try to trick them with
T Toy thrifting— went to a thrift shop and they both got to pick one toy to buy with “their” money, tools in the garage, and temporary tattoos
U umbrellas, underwater creatures, and “under” stuff….we would see what we could crawl under at the park lol
V “vacation” remember when we packed suitcases for fun? we did that again and set up an airplane in our kitchen and went wherever on vacation. We played that game a lot after this day.
W water day! water table, water bottles, water balloons, and watermelon of course
X xtra cool park day (we went to park a little farther away haha) and drew x-rays by tracing our shadows …this letter was hard
Y yellow ( we wore yellow) and “yes” i tried to say yes to as many things i could for this day
Z zoo day! another bigger outing that was so much fun and very memorable
Obviously the variations are endless and dependent on what you have available. I never overthought it, we did bigger things when it made sense, and some days we just did the most random shit that went with the letter. They really did love it, and it gave me a theme to run our day off of which felt nice to my type-a brain.