If you have school aged kids you are probably feeling similar to what our photo is expressing AND yes we do have the days counted till school begins again. For us it’s 82 days till our three are back in school. Last year our summer was rather unpleasant… You know filled with bickering siblings, crying, whining…the constant use of the phrase “I’m bored”. That went on for about half of summer vacation till we put our foot down and said “No More”. They wanted to do sports, camps, swimming lessons, parties, & more… That’s great but those things cost money and x3 it adds up fast. So we set the rule if you want it you have to pay for it yourself. Our kids whined for a few minutes, but then quickly got to brainstorming on ways to earn money. Here’s what they came up with:
- Lemonade Stand
- Collect Recycling from friends, neighbors, & family to cash in
- Sell fruit from our tress in our yard
We were impressed that (at the time our 3, 4, 7 year old) kids came up with these on their own. Next we sat down as a family and priced out all the activities each of them wanted to do. After everyone had their totals they made little goal posters so they could keep track of their earnings visually. Next we gathered supplies we would need for each money making activity…table, cups, lemonade, wagons, baskets, etc. We set a day and time for our Lemonade Stand and passed out flyers, plus posted it on social media. We really didn’t expect the Lemonade Stand to make big bucks, but the kids raised over half their goal. We were really amazed how hard they worked and actually worked together. Each kid had a job; our youngest scooped ice, middle took money, oldest poured and handed lemonades out.
A couple days later we got our wagon and walked with the kids door to door collecting recycling from neighbors. Also had a drop off day for our friends and family to bring by their recycling donations. Cars would pull up, kids would go out with their wagon and bring them up the driveway to sort into our collection cans. The next day we took our whole collection down to the recycling center. Each kid made about $10.00, not too bad for a days work.
For our fruit sale we posted online to our friends and family to pre-order how many plums they’d like to buy. We then had the kids bag up the right amount of fruit and write the family’s name and the cost on the bag (ex: Smith – $5.00). We set a pick up time and they would drive up, kids go out with bags and came back with money. The kids got a lot of tips for their road side service.
After completing all 3 “jobs” they each had enough money to do their activities. Next we helped them sign up for their activities and they proudly paid for it with their own money.
The structure of problem solving helped get our summer going in the right direction. The kids were involved in so many things of their own choosing they were mostly too tired to bother fighting with each other, which made our summer much more peaceful.
This summer we decided to do a repeat of last year and let the kids come up with money making ideas and go to work earning their activity fees. This summer our activity goals consist of cheerleading, swim lessons, fitness fun camp, and basketball camp. So here’s to screamin` & shoutin` for all the right reasons this summer!