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Do you ever come to the end of the summer vacation with NO IDEA where the days went?

I have found a solution that we love, that worked several summers for us.

We kept a journal.

It wasn’t fancy—just some lined paper stapled between construction paper, but we made it more fun than it sounds. You may want to copy this idea.

After the children chose the color for their journal cover, they took turns adding decorations to the front. These usually were made with crayon and stencil, for ease and speed, but you could do some creative cut and paste and make the cover, itself, part of the event.

My kids are so no-nonsense.

You will need enough pages for the whole summer, say, ninety days. We eventually made ours simple as possible, but if you would like illustrations along the way, inside your journal, you will have to allow more pages. We would put two day’s of activities on each page, in a list form.

Some days’ activities were planned for us. We always shopped on Tuesdays, for instance. When green beans HAD to be canned, they just had to be, regardless of our wishes. Excess rains might mean an extra mopping chore. No matter. Whatever we did, we recorded.

The other minor rule we used was that we would do two note-worthy things each day. They did not have to be magnificent or impressive; they just had to be things we actually DID. Of course, the children preferred writing about the fair and the water park, but our goal was to realize where the summer went, and if it went to mopping and canning, then so be it.

In the end, we had a great little reminder of each day, plus a good grasp on where all those days went. Try it this summer, and see!