Kids Goals for Summer: Make Learning Fun!

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Are you hoping to add a bit of structure to your summer with some summer goals for kids? Do you want your kids to have lots of free play, but also learn to set and accomplish goals? Do you want to encourage summer learning for kids? Here’s how our family uses summertime to have fun and learn along the way!

I really love summer with kids. It gives us time to explore and learn outside of a classroom. It helps us connect with one another and with the world around us through exploring first-hand and through reading a gazillion books. I love bare feet and wet swimsuits. I love picnicking outside with sticky peach-juice hands grabbing my shirt (jk, I loathe that and go through baby wipes like they’re going out of style).

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Why I Put Together Kids Goals for Summer

It’s also important to me that my kids not JUST goof off over the summer. Of course, I want them to have plenty of unstructured play time, both outside and inside. But I also want them to remember that learning is FUN! I want to help them learn to set and accomplish feasible summer kids goals. I want them to be delighted by all the opportunities to gain knowledge and expand their minds and strengthen their bodies.

What Goals for Children Do We Choose?

Summer Fun Club was my answer to helping my kids choose structured, attainable summer kids goals. It’s intended to help them LOVE to learn, and be excited and ready for the classroom next year. I first put together a version of this two summers ago, when my two oldest were 6 and 4. We were in Europe the summer after that, so our adventures and learnings looked a bit different then. But since we’re mostly exploring at home this summer, I’m excited to take advantage of connection and learning opportunities through goals for children.

For our family, we worked together to create a set of summer kids goals divided into a few categories: Physical, Life Skills/Service, Academic, Arts, and Fun. The kids are also expected to do their normal Family Economy lists (get ready, daily simple chore, music practice, etc.). At the end of the summer, our kids earn one special date of their choice – any activity, any meal, any treat. They get SO excited for this and we love celebrating their accomplishments of kids goals with quality one-on-one time.

Create Your Own Customized Summer Kids Goals

For us, the point of summer fun club isn’t to dictate how my kids spend every minute of their summer. Rather, the templates and guidelines help them have fun, build skills, and develop stronger relationships. I hope sharing them helps your family do the same.

We like to think of the different categories that are important to us – we want our kids to be strong mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Then we come up with age-and child-appropriate goals for those categories. This will vary for each kid, but I hope this gives you some inspiration as you discuss your own kids’ goals.

I like to store our goals for children digitally so that it’s easy to recreate next year, or to make a shortened version for school breaks. Feel free to modify as much as you’d like!

Goals for Children Template

Below, I’m pasting a photo of our summer fun club lists so you can see what our kids goals look like. I’m also including a LINK to a Google doc where you can save and edit your own copy (just click on File > Make a Copy). Feel free to use it and change it as much as you’d like to fit your family’s needs.

If you’re looking for more summer activity ideas, I have a list of 270+ simple suggestions along with a printable right HERE. And here’s a link for our easy SUMMER SERVICE CLUB!

Happy summer!