14 creative ways to involve your kids in planning summer activities
Summer planning doesn’t have to be a one-sided task that leaves kids bored or resistant to your carefully chosen activities. When children take an active role in shaping their own summer schedule, they become more excited, cooperative, and invested in the outcome. This article shares 14 expert-backed strategies that transform vacation planning into a collaborative process, reducing power struggles while creating experiences your family will actually enjoy.
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- Adopt Special Lists to Spark Simple Joy
- Redesign the Playroom Together for Buy-In
- Assemble a Draft Deck with Picks
- Leverage Stickers to Shape the Itinerary
- Launch a Family Adventure Challenge
- Assign Tokens to Set Priorities
- Create a Shared Doc and Rank
- Give a Budget to Shape Plans
- Hold a Structured Kitchen Table Session
- Build an Activity Board for Ownership
- Hand Out Wish Notes for Groups
- Grant Calendar Control to Reduce Meltdowns
- Let Your Child Lead Themed Days
- Offer Pre-Screened Choices for Eager Participation
Adopt Special Lists to Spark Simple Joy
The easiest way I’ve been able to get my kids involved in planning summer activities has been to have them each come up with a few activities they really want to do this summer and write them down on their “special summer lists.” It is such a simple way to get them excited about helping to plan the summer weekends and also helps them learn to negotiate with each other and take turns with who gets a saturday activity versus a sunday activity. It always surprises me how often they choose simple things like “going to the park” or “eating a popsicle outside” or “setting up the sprinklers outside” and it is a great reminder that sometimes all they need is some autonomy to make great choices.
Redesign the Playroom Together for Buy-In
One creative way I’ve involved my boys in planning for summer has been by including them in reorganizing and redesigning their playroom before summer break starts. We wanted the space to feel more functional and exciting for the summer, especially since they’ll be spending more time at home during break.
As they’ve gotten older, their interests and the types of toys they actually use have changed a lot, so we decided to use this as an opportunity to go through the space together and figure out what still makes sense for them. We’ve been sorting through older toys they no longer play with, setting aside items to donate, and talking about ways we can make room for new activity areas, larger toys, and better storage solutions that fit their current interests.
I’ve also been involving them in decisions about how they want the playroom to look and function, which has made them much more excited about the process overall. I think involving kids in organizing decisions instead of just doing it for them is such a great way to make them feel included in the process. It helps them feel more connected to the space, more excited about the changes, and more willing to help maintain it afterward.
Assemble a Draft Deck with Picks
One creative approach that worked well for me was giving my kids a “summer draft board” instead of simply asking what they wanted to do. Open-ended questions like, “What should we do this summer?” can overwhelm kids, and they often default to the same answers. A draft board made the planning feel like a game while still giving the summer some structure.
I wrote different activity ideas on cards and grouped them into categories: outdoor adventures, rainy day ideas, food projects, local outings, learning challenges, and low-cost home activities. Then each child got a set number of picks in each category. They could choose things like a backyard campout, a library challenge, a homemade pizza night, a new hiking trail, a science experiment, a movie marathon, or a day where they planned the family dinner.
The key was that they were not just choosing from a list I had already finalized. They could add their own cards, trade picks, and lobby for why something deserved to make the calendar. That made the process feel collaborative instead of parent-directed. It also helped me see what they were actually excited about, which was not always what I expected. Sometimes the simple ideas, like breakfast for dinner or a sprinkler obstacle course, got more enthusiasm than the bigger outings.
Their participation changed the experience because they felt ownership before the activities even happened. Instead of me announcing plans and hoping everyone would cooperate, they were reminding me about the things they had picked. That changed the energy from, “Do we have to go?” to “When are we doing my idea?”
It also reduced the pressure to make every summer activity impressive. When kids help choose the plan, they tend to value the experience differently. They remember that their idea made it onto the calendar. They notice when the family follows through. That sense of being heard can matter as much as the activity itself.
The biggest lesson is that excitement often starts before the event. Kids are more engaged when they help shape the plan, even in a small way. Giving them controlled choices, rather than unlimited choices, keeps the process manageable while still giving them real ownership.
For anyone trying this, I would keep the format simple. A few cards, a few categories, and a visible calendar are enough. The goal is not to create a perfect summer schedule. The goal is to let kids see that their ideas can turn into real family memories.
Leverage Stickers to Shape the Itinerary
Last summer I gave Elia a paper map of Italy and a stack of colored stickers. Green meant beach, red meant pasta city, blue meant her cousins. She got to place ten stickers anywhere on the map, and we promised to seriously consider every one when we built the itinerary.
She put a green sticker on Sardinia, which honestly we wouldn’t have visited otherwise, and it turned out to be the highlight of the trip. The whole exercise wasn’t really about cartography. It was about her feeling like she had real agency in what the family was doing, instead of being shuttled between adult decisions.
We do something similar before any trip now. Each kid in our extended family group gets a non-negotiable they can put on the calendar, whether it’s a specific gelato spot or a swimming pool that has to happen on a specific day. The grown-ups plan around those anchors. The result is a trip where the kids feel ownership of the experience, and we get fewer meltdowns at museums they didn’t choose.
Launch a Family Adventure Challenge
By using a “Family Adventure Challenge” as a method for getting input from my children on how to plan our summer vacations, I was able to make the family planning process much more fun. I provided them with a large map and allowed each of them to identify specific locations or experiences (i.e., nature, art, food, etc.) they wanted to visit during our vacation. After each child selected their preferred destinations and/or experiences, we used this information to create a collective “summer mission list.” Each child was able to add his/her desired experiences to the “summer mission list,” and then all children were able to vote on which summer missions they most enjoyed.
This participation significantly altered the emotional investment of my children in the planned activities, since prior to starting the planned activities they already had developed an emotional attachment to the activities we planned. The children no longer viewed the planned summer activities as simply being decided upon by their parent(s), but rather they were enthusiastic about engaging in these planned activities with their families. Additionally, due to the encouragement of other family members in planning our summer activities, the children were more interested in exploring different experiences than if another family member did not encourage them. For example, when one child suggested an experience that he/she knew his siblings would not normally suggest, the other children became more interested in participating in this new experience and showed greater curiosity about this new experience.
Assign Tokens to Set Priorities
Honestly, the game-changer for us was treating summer planning like a team project. I stopped acting like a cruise director and started treating my kids like stakeholders.
I set up this big Summer Roadmap board right in the kitchen. We listed every potential outing, learning goal, and even just lazy downtime, like items in a project backlog. It wasn’t just a chore list; it was a menu of possibilities.
Then, I gave each of the kids a set number of priority tokens. They had to actually decide what mattered most to them. If they wanted to hit the water park, they had to spend their tokens.
That little bit of gamification changed everything. Suddenly, they weren’t just passengers waiting for me to entertain them. They had skin in the game. They had to negotiate with each other — “Okay, if we do your thing today, we do mine tomorrow” — instead of just expecting me to hand them an itinerary. It turned summer from something that just happened to them into something they actually built themselves.
Create a Shared Doc and Rank
I created a shared doc where my kids could add any summer activity ideas they wanted, no matter how wild, then we ranked them together based on cost, time, and actual feasibility.
Previous summers I’d plan everything myself and they’d spend the whole time saying, “This is boring,” or “I don’t want to do this.” Giving them input upfront meant they felt heard even when we couldn’t do certain things. My son wanted to go to Japan, which obviously wasn’t happening, but putting it on the list and discussing why it didn’t work for this summer made him feel like his ideas mattered.
They got way more excited about the activities we actually did because they’d been part of deciding. Even a simple hike they’d picked themselves felt like their adventure instead of something I was dragging them to.
The best part was seeing them compromise with each other. They had to agree on the final list, which meant learning to consider what others wanted instead of just fighting about their own preferences.
Give a Budget to Shape Plans
Last summer I gave my kids a budget of $200 and told them to plan three family activities, showing me the math on how it would work within that amount.
Usually I just book things and tell them where we’re going, which leads to complaints about being bored or not wanting to do whatever I picked. Letting them plan meant they had to research options, compare costs, and make tradeoff decisions. My daughter wanted to go to an expensive theme park but realized that would eat the entire budget, so she found a local water park that cost half as much and left money for two other activities.
The participation completely changed their attitude. They were excited about everything we did because they’d chosen it themselves and felt ownership over making the plan work. No whining about activities being boring when they picked them.
The bonus was teaching them budget constraints and decision-making. They learned you can’t do everything, so you have to prioritize what matters most. Way more valuable than me just planning everything and them showing up.
Hold a Structured Kitchen Table Session
The single creative practice that’s worked most consistently for the families I see: build the summer schedule together in a single dedicated session at the kitchen table in late spring, treating each child as a planning contributor with a small structured role. The specific structure I’ve watched work: each child gets to propose three “must-do” summer activities (a specific outing, a specific skill they want to learn, a specific experience they want to have), three “would-be-nice” activities at a lower priority, and one “let’s try something new” stretch experience. The parents add the family-level commitments and the practical anchors (camp weeks, travel windows, the recurring weekly rhythms). The whole map gets posted somewhere visible — a kitchen calendar, a whiteboard, a wall sheet — and gets referred to across the summer.
How the participation changes the experience: the child who’s helped plan the summer arrives at each activity with anticipation rather than passive reception. The shift in emotional engagement is meaningful — the same trip to the local lake, the same afternoon at the museum, the same backyard project carries different weight when the child can point to it on the chart as something they chose. The child also develops the planning capacity itself, which is a transferable life skill that the summer is a particularly good context for building.
The second observation worth sharing: the must-do list of three items produces a forcing function the parent benefits from too. The child’s specific request (“I want to learn to skip stones at a real river”) often opens an activity the parent wouldn’t have organized otherwise, and the parent’s adult-pattern preferences (“we should visit the science museum because it’s educational”) get balanced against the child’s actual interest patterns. The summer that results looks different from the summer the parent would have planned alone, and the children remember it differently.
The principle from clinical observation: children who feel like agents in their own lives develop the self-direction adults wish they had. Summer is one of the easier contexts to practice that — the stakes are low, the time horizon is short, and the cost of imperfect planning is recoverable.
Build an Activity Board for Ownership
I made a “summer activity board” with my kids to come up with all of the different things we wanted to do over the summer. This included local hikes and craft projects that they designed themselves to give them a sense of ownership in their ideas for the summer.
The kids were so much more excited about summer because they were part of the planning process, and it didn’t matter if we did something else due to the weather or our timetable. They provided us with suggestions or alternatives to do instead of our original plans, which changed the idea of summer for us from my dictating things on my schedule to being a fun and cooperative collaborative adventure for all of us every week.
Hand Out Wish Notes for Groups
When we started involving them instead of planning and organizing for them, things changed gradually. Like most parents, we have approached summer with a set of activities, painting books, and informed them of their schedule. Kids came, participated, and played. Everything happened as it was supposed to. But something felt off. The vibe was flat.
This year, we changed the way we see it. We gave every kid a summer wish note where they could contribute what they wanted to with three sets of conditions. One activity is specifically for them; next, they would like to do it with their family, and the last one with their friends. We also made sure all the activities are outdoors, without any screen time and no repetition from their school playtime. We were surprised by the way they took the task responsibly. After planning for a week, when it was their D-day, I could see them all excited and invested in the activities they wanted to play. When the kids asked us to do the same the next year is when we realized our idea was a hit.
Grant Calendar Control to Reduce Meltdowns
Summer boredom is an excellent reason for many people to plan out their child’s summer. However, the end result will be that they are over-scheduled and thus create anxiety for the child, as the parent treats each summer planning event as if it were a high-stakes management project. The child begins to feel as though he/she is being managed versus being listened to.
This past year was the first “burn-out” school year in history; therefore, when families are feeling overly burnt out by the time school ends and then schedule themselves out (and possibly others) in advance so that every second of the summer has been scheduled, it creates a sense of oppression in children.
Parents give their children a blank calendar and three colored markers. They allow the children to take complete control of all aspects of the agenda for at least two days of the month. By giving children total control of the calendar, most of the resistance disappears. As a result, when children have control of the agenda, it can completely alter the way the family operates due to its impact on how much control each member of the family feels. It replaces continuous, anxious negotiations regarding what activity or vacation event will occur next with actual excitement/anticipation. In more than 80% of families that I have worked with using this strategy as part of our relationship-building process, this simple shift in autonomy decreases the number of behavioral meltdowns significantly during the summer months since the child now feels a level of agency regarding his/her own time.
Let Your Child Lead Themed Days
The first step I took was involving my son in planning our summer activities to make them more child-led. This way, we would be able to organize our whole week based on my son’s ideas. Thus, during the week, we would have various themed days depending on my son’s interests, like craft Monday, mud kitchen cooking Tuesday, take a trip Wednesday, go to the park Thursday, or swimming Friday. My son became more enthusiastic since he participated in organizing all activities. Moreover, my efforts in entertaining him were reduced since he knew what he was going to do.
Offer Pre-Screened Choices for Eager Participation
I presented my daughters with 2 or 3 activity options pre-screened for them and let them decide. Most parents allow their children too much freedom and they are astounded at the lack of results. In fact, open-ended options create paralysis. Over the summers we’ve spent doing this, the negative feedback has been reduced by over 50% using the structured option approach. Their buy-in was instant and logistics improved as they were already predisposed to think about it.
The larger change occurred in their ‘showing up’ on the day of each activity. Children who had helped to choose their activities were eager and ready rather than coerced. Indeed, it was by the very fact of the ownership that the entire situation was altered. The activities they chose most of the time would be the activities I would have chosen anyway, but it made a difference that they chose.
