Making Your Summer Meaningful

In five mindful minutes a day

Summer vacation is officially upon us, at least for the girls.  The kids think they’re the only ones celebrating, but I think I speak for many parents when I say that as much as we cherish our incredible schools and all they do for our children, we are also rejoicing at the freedom and lack of academic pressure that comes with summer. And let’s not even get into how the teachers are feeling! And yet, summer isn’t a time to totally and completely let free. We might not be in school anymore, but we are still bnei Torah and bnos Yisroel, of course. There’s always learning and always growing to be done; it just looks a little different than the learning and growing we do in school, under the guidance of our wonderful teachers. 

Even though Shavuos is over, we still say Pirkei Avos. We know that we say it during the weeks between Pesach and Shavuos to help prepare us for Matan Torah. But why during the summer months as well? We go all the way until Rosh Hashanah. Maybe in Elul we can understand it as preparation for the tikun hamidos necessary to ready ourselves for the yom hadin. But what about these months now? I used to teach my students in a kiruv school that the summer months have the unfortunate potential for unbridled hefkerus and yeridah. If we aren’t careful, all the growth we’ve attained during the school year can go down the drain in just a couple of months of relaxed standards and loosening boundaries. Pirkei Avos keeps us in check, reminding us of who we are, what makes us special, and how to act toward others and toward Hashem. 

In that spirit, here are some ways you can keep the learning and growth alive in your house during the summer months, without cutting into all of the summer fun the kids (and perhaps you too!) have been looking forward to for so long. You can choose one and carry it through the summer, spending five minutes every day as a family. Or you can try a different one every day/week or month.

Final disclaimer: This is written with the assumption that in the absence of homework and long school days, we have more time in the evenings. For some this may be the case, but I know for others there seems to be even less time during the summer, with sleepaway camp, long day camp hours, the allure of spending all day outside with friends and neighbors. If five minutes a day is too much for your family, you can aim for once a week, or even just an every once-in-a-while exercise. Even just keeping a growth mindset in mind for yourself, without actually implementing any of these activities with your family, can have a powerful impact on the environment in your home. 

1. Say Tehillim: Imagine if every member of the family spends five minutes a day saying Tehillim. You can use Tehillim cards that split up sefer Tehillim into a perek or so per card, or you can divide the perakim to be said each day among the members of your family. Everyone can sit down together and say their perek/perakim during a designated time, or whenever they have time throughout the day. By the end of the summer, you could finish sefer Tehillim together as a family and make a siyum. Depending on your motivation and family size, you might even finish it many times.  Alternatively, schedule five minutes into the schedule where everyone sits together and says Tehillim on their own, following their own pace and schedule. If you do this daily, each child can even finish the entire Tehillim on their own. 

2. Call your grandparents. If your children are fortunate to have grandparents, or even great-grandparents in their lives, the summer is a perfect time to get in the habit of calling them regularly. They can make weekly good Shabbos calls, or call each grandparent one day of the week so they get to speak to each of them weekly. The same goes for aunts, the third-cousin-once-removed in a Florida nursing home, or anyone else who might appreciate a cheerful phone call from your lovely children. 

3. Explore Pirkei Avos. We spoke about Pirkei Avos in the intro; how about incorporating it into your summer? Many children don’t even know that we continue saying Pirkei Avos on Shabbos afternoons right up to Rosh Hashanah; to them, it’s an end of the school year alternative to Parshah. You can keep the powerful lessons of Pirkei Avos alive during the summer months too in any number of ways. You can read it together on Shabbos, and then have each child choose something from that week’s perek that they will work on the rest of the week, for five minutes a day. If your children are older and love “playing school,” have them each prepare a mishnah to give over in some fun, creative way. They can make up a song, make a poster, a skit, or a game. Every day of the week can be another child’s turn to present. If you are a crafty family, why not try a Pirkei Avos scrapbook? You can keep one scrapbook as a family, as everyone works on the pages featuring different mishnayos of that week’s perek together,  or with every individual child keeping a scrapbook on her own. 

4. Practice Gratitude. Besides for being fun and exciting, summer can sometimes be prime grumpy time. It might be the extreme heat that our children insist on defying as they play outside for hours on end. Perhaps it is the hyper-exciting, sugar-filed, overstimulating environment of camp, where they get so much and yet still crave more. Maybe it’s late bedtimes, too many freeze pops or lack of structure. Either way, in many homes, as much as children complain about school, they can be even moodier in the summer. You can take some of that away by working on gratitude as a family. When we’re so focused on what we are grateful for, and what’s going right, we forget half of the trivialities we were kvetching about moments before. You can spend your five minutes a day sitting down together as a family and going around the table as each person shares something they are grateful for today. Alternatively, you can keep a giant chart on your wall that everyone adds to every day. If you want to be more private, allowing them to open up more and write things they may not feel comfortable expressing in public, use individual gratitude journals. Gift each child with a beautiful notebook special for the summer that they can decorate… or not. Every day, give them time to write down what they are grateful for that day. Younger children can use it more as a scrapbook, drawing or crafting their own entries. You can make things more challenging – and keep the education going! – by having everyone fill out the ABCs of gratitude every day (or every week.) They need to come up with one thing they are grateful for that day for each letter of the alphabet.

5. Brush Up On Skills. You can individualize this for each child, if you have the time and energy to invest in it. Figure out where they could each use some improvement before moving on to the next grade come September. One might need more kriah practice, one could use encouragement to read more chapter books. Devise a contest or game that will help them practice these skills throughout the summer. You might want to spend the money on buying fun sheets and activities, or the time to make them up yourself. You might need to speak to their teachers to determine in which areas your investments are most needed, or, perhaps you have been extremely involved and intuitive all along and you know exactly where they could use improvement. And, if you don’t have the energy or will to introduce more school-like agendas into a blissful summer, you can be yotze by encouraging them to do the summer homework the teachers have already prepared, by adding additional layers of contests and incentives on top of what they will already receive from school. You can designate a few minutes a day to be summer homework time, where the children all sit together around the table and you circulate. Make it a pleasant atmosphere, with music, some snacks and lots of helpful encouragement. 

6. Write Letters. It’s an old fashioned endeavor gone the way of the cassette tape, but there is no reason why letter writing should go out of style. Encouraging your child to start a penpalship over the summer will help them practice their writing skills and expand their social horizons. The pen pal can be the child or student of one of your friends who lives in a different town. It can be a cousin from out of the country, or a camp friend if they are up to that stage. You can even  use the opportunity to reach out to an elderly relative or friend who would appreciate the letters. (Special mention to one of my favorite pen pals from teenagehood: Mrs. Zwickler a”h.) Just make sure your children have rachmanus and don’t write in miniscule letters. (Sorry Grandma!)

7. Keep up the zechusim. It’s hard to fathom that we still have to mention this. Who would have thought after all these months of horror, our people are still at war and our brothers and sisters are still languishing in terror? Every time I want to mention something along these lines, the thought that by the time this is published this will still be our reality is too horrifying to contemplate and I hold back. Hopefully we’ll have already been zoche to the geulah shelaimah by the time this is published, but barring that incredible reality, now would be a good time to have each family member take on their own project or kabbalah as a zechus either for Eretz Yisroel or for whichever specific suffering member of kllal yisroel they choose. You can do what families and children around the globe have done and take on the name of a specific soldier or hostage as your special cause, committing to your kabbalah in the zechus of this person. It creates a bond, makes it more real and connected. You can choose something as a family – reading five minutes of shmiras halashon every day, making brachos out loud, etc. – or you can have every family member, young and old, take on something of their own. 

8. Love and Inclusion. Perhaps you are reading this and rolling your eyes. “Who has extra family time in the summer?” You’re thinking. “I can barely get the kids inside for a bite of semi-nutritous supper before they disappear on their bikes again.” Yes, the lack of structure that comes with summer times can often make it less conducive to implementing many of these ideas than the actual school year. One thing you can do is encourage them to be mindful during their play. For five minutes a day focus on being kind to their peers they don’t usually notice. They can include a kid on the block who usually stands on the sidelines, or compliment a friend who could use the cheering up. Encourage them to focus on ways they could increase their ahavas yisroel at least once a day, and then share what they’ve done either at the end of each day or at the end of the week, at the Shabbos seudah. Summertime can lend to a lot of friction between peers, because of all of the hours of unsupervised – or less supervised – interaction. Let your family be the shining example of what it means to be a true friend!

Wishing you all a happy, safe and meaningful summer!