By Kendra Roehl

A summer bucket list for your family can inspire everyone to have fun this summer. Here are several practical ideas you can use.

Why You Need a Summer Bucket List

“Mooommm! I’m bored!”

Three little words every mom dreads to hear—especially when school just ended last week. 

Several years ago, we decided to do a summer bucket list of kindness as a way to head off our kids’ boredom. We brainstormed ideas of things that we could do with our kids, wrote out our list, and put it on the refrigerator where everyone could see it. Every few days my kids would glance at it, and we’d pick another act to accomplish that day. It became a highlight of our summer.

Since then, our bucket list has expanded. We now include fun activities we want to do as a family, kind acts we can do for strangers, and activities to do with friends. Every year, the number of things on our list changes along with the activities. If you want to create your own list, don’t overwhelm yourself. Add things you know you can do, and don’t feel bad about the things that don’t get crossed off (every year, we have a few items that get missed).

Creating a Summer Bucket List for Your Family

Here are three areas we are sure to include in our list:

Acts of Kindness

We’re always looking for ways we can be a blessing to others, and summer is no different. It’s a great time to be intentional about fun acts of kindness we can do in the summertime for others. This includes writing encouraging notes with chalk on our sidewalk, leaving flowers and a card for an elderly neighbor or putting drinks in a cooler for our mail person.

Acts of Friendship

Summertime is so much more fun when we do things with friends. Some of the acts of friendship we like to include are inviting another family over for an outdoor barbecue, writing a friend a note and sending it in the mail, and inviting a friend to the beach or for a walk to the park.

Family Fun

We always want to include a few things we want to do as a family. These typically include items like getting ice cream after dinner one evening, going to a state park, swimming at a local lake and attending a local outdoor concert.

As a mom, summertime is both fun and a little overwhelming. Although my kids will still tell me they’re bored, with our summer bucket list those comments have lessened—especially when we’ll be checking another item off our bucket list that week.

With just a little bit of planning, you can create a summer bucket list that is easy rather than overwhelming for you and your kids that will help your family be intentional about spending time together, getting together with friends, and reaching out in kindness to others. 

Wife Step: Brainstorm a summer bucket list with your family. Let everyone offer an idea or two and then make a plan for how you’ll start. 

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