Beating the back to school blues….

After a Summer filled with adventures and family fun I hate the thought that it’s over already although as I do every September, I welcome the return of some sort of routine in our lives.

I don’t know about your family but last year seemed as though the start of September brought with it a change in the kids, they went from being filled with energy and wanting to be outside as much as possible to just wanting to stay in and watch TV or play on the XBox when they got home from school.  It wasn’t just them though, a similar thing happened to me as well and looking back, I think I felt as though the fun was over because they were back at school and I was back at work so I didn’t really plan much fun through the week.

But that’s not the case at all is it?

We can have just as much fun in the time we have together on a night after school and work so to help us with this, I’ve come up with a ‘Beat the Back to school Blues’ plan which is going to mean that we have things to look forward to together through the week as well as leaving them plenty of time for chilling out and hopefully, playing out with their friends still.

It all depends slightly on any after school clubs that the kids sign themselves up for but basically we’re going to make time to do things together through the week on a set day so we have something to look forward to and if we do set days then we’ll know that we’re not just going to put it off and put it off.

So, we’re going to start again with our 20 minutes (at least) outside time a day rule (at least)  no matter what the weather which is an idea we got from The Boy and Me last year.  This could be a trip to the park, a bike ride, splashing in puddles, playing on the trampoline or even walking the dog and it means that we’ll be doing something although it may be more difficult now that Miss Frugal is going into secondary school.  We’ll be going swimming once a week together, having a mid week movie night at home together and an Xbox game night (if you can’t beat them….) as well as playing the odd board game or two.

I also think we’ll start our ‘do something’ afternoons again which is basically a couple of hours that we keep free and when it comes to the time, we take it in turns to choose what we do (within reason) and it could range from a trip to the library to a walk in the woods or from getting an ice cream to going ice skating!

I may be in the minority but I find that planning in activities means that we actually do them – if we didn’t we’d often just put them off and never get around to doing them.

Do you schedule ‘fun time’?