Phineas and Ferb Were Wrong

"There's 104 days of summer vacation ..." is how the "Phineas and Ferb" theme song goes. But I just did the math, and this summer my kids will have 83 days of summer vacation.


83  days. That's not a lot of time to unwind from 182 days of school. It's not a lot of time to let them relax but still keep them busy, creative and learning.


83 days =
12 weeks (give or take-they end school on a Wednesday and go back on a Wednesday.
1992 hours (and about 664 of those they'll be sleeping)
or 119, 520 minutes


I was thinking of posting this on our summer bulletin board for them to keep in mind how they need to divide their time. For instance, if they played video games 1 hour a day, they'd be playing 83 hours. (That sounds like a lot, right?)


If they practice their instruments for just 10 minutes 3 times a week, that's only 5 hours for the entire summer - not counting vacation time. (That doesn't sound bad, does it?) If you add band camp, that's only 12 more hours for a total of 17 hours.


If they clean up 10 minutes a day for just the days we're home (not on vacation), it's only 9 hours for the entire summer.


Reading for 20 minutes a day, every day totals 27 hours. (Realistically, there will be nights we're out late and they won't read, but I'd be happy with 16 hours, which would be 5 nights a week. And if the older two are reading a good book they like, like any of the Harry Potter series, they might read for an hour.)


If we go to the pool twice a week and swim on vacation, like we usually do, they'll spend about 108 hours swimming.

Biking is more difficult to calculate, but if we go on a bike ride every other week (we have a great park nearby that has a nice circular trail), they should spend about 8 hours biking this summer.


We usually have a Family Movie Night once a week, so that would be about 20 hours watching movies (which I think is a great family activity and a good way to unwind after a busy day.)


Plus the kids are signed up for a week of science camp, which will be 32 hours. (I'm not going to tell them that one, because they'll think it's too many hours!)


I'm not sure how many of these calculations I'll actually share with the kids, but I think if they see how much fun time they get versus how much "chore time," they'd be happy.