Summer vacation is here…or right around the corner, depending upon where you live. This spring, guest blogger Kimberly Drew prepared for vacation with her daughter who has special needs by establishing some summer routines. Today, she shares some of her ideas with us.

4 Special Needs Routines for Summer

Everywhere I look, spring is turning into summer! I have an internal countdown to the last day of school. My year never ended with December or started in January. In my mind, it has always revolved around school.

Our daughter Abbey has a short break and then goes back to school to maintain her therapies over the summer months. I always look forward to the weeks she has off because it means I get to snuggle and see her more. But I also feel a tinge of, “ahhhhh!” knowing she is very attached to her routine. I try not to take it personally that she will get her shoes and sign “school” to me at the front door.

This has me thinking about how I can handle those weeks this summer a little differently. For one, like most children, she thrives on a routine. Something about being out of school evokes this great desire to stay in pajamas and live on a diet of spontaneity. This is okay to a degree, but I don’t know why it never occurred to me to have at least one or two parts of her day that can be predictable.

Here are just a few of the things that we will be incorporating into our summer days off routine.

1. A Velcro Board. Abbey uses different manipulatives in school and icons on her iPad to mark a transition of activities. I think she would love it if we had a smaller version of that at home.  I hope to make pictures of some of the things we do every day as well as some of the things we do occasionally for her to pick up and move.
2. More Books!  Abbey loves books, and we usually read a lot over the summer anyway  But I think giving story time a name and set time each day might give her that sense of predictability that she looks forward to.  She would love to move a picture over on a Velcro board to say, “It’s story time!”
3. Snacks Outside.  In addition to easy clean up, moving snacks to the deck will get us out in the sunshine if we aren’t enjoying it already. It doesn’t hurt that it also encourages us to get out of our PJs!
4. Clean up songs. I worked as a preschool teacher for a year or so in college, and the school had a “clean up” song for the kids. At a certain point in the day, we would start the music and the kids went crazy cleaning up. They loved it!  Abbey loves music, loves predictability, and I think hearing the same song everyday at a particular time would help all the kids with getting toys put away. We usually clean up toys before my husband comes home from work and I’m about to start dinner anyway, so why not make it fun and an audible transition time with music.

Who knows, maybe some of these ideas will stick for the whole year!

What Are Your Summer Routines?

What summer routines have you established to help your child with special needs? How are they working? Leave a comment to add to Kimberly’s list.

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