When I was growing up, summers were my own. I spent hours and hours reading, often outside on the grass, and I would look up from the page occasionally to watch the contrails in the sky. It’s a wonderful memory-feeling of freedom and pleasure. I wonder how many children today have that kind of quiet freedom? Many of my students’ lives are centered around intense schedules, and so many of their parents spend lots of time and money on ways to “keep them busy.” I took piano lessons, and sometimes a drama or crafts class during the summer, but mostly my summers were simply filled with books and friends.
School is finally out, so today marks the beginning of my summer break, (hooray!) and I am so looking forward to a few weeks of freedom filled with books, family and friends.
A Fondness For Reading 
Those are the kind of summers I remember too, with a few camping trips thrown in which also included lots of reading time! I sure wish I had the summer off work to spend with my boys. Enjoy!
*smiles*
Kim
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Thanks, Kim. That’s one of the big reasons I went into education — so I could spend summers with my kids. Nowadays I get to spend a little time with the Grandboy! I hope you get at least a day or two off to enjoy your boys this summer, or even a day for yourself!
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I’m totally with you, Robin. I did some fun summer school classes part days in the summer and my mom took us to the free movies each week but otherwise, we were outside playing or inside reading. I am really going to try and be this sort of parent to Z and let him have time to just enjoy childhood.
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Kristen, oh yes! those free movies, and the Saturday matinees, were great! I know that times have changed in many ways, but I do hope that there are still freedoms that young children can enjoy. As a teacher, I just see so many kids that are scheduled to the max. I hope they have time for books and play dough and blocks and imagination and contrails…
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School’s out for summer!! 🙂 Time to play, read until the wee hours of the night, eat ice cream before dinner, walk through the grass in your bare feet, run through the waves and live like a child. Enjoy your summer!
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Thanks, Les. Your summer description sounds heavenly! We all need to do those things and all would be right with the world!
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When I was a kid my mom worked all day so she farmed us out in the summer. First my sister and I would visit my grandparents who were live-in managers for a fairly large chain of motels in CA. We would do chores in the morning to earn some spending cash, then walk to the Chuck E. Cheese to spend it on arcade games, then swim the rest of the day away. Then we would go to dad’s for a month. We went to the $1 movie theater, walked the mall and wandered through the nearby orchards. But the best was at night when my dad would visit his friends in the neighborhood and us kids were free to walk around the neighborhood until late. Summertime has many fond memories for me.
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I remember summers like that as well. Unfortuantely, for a multitude of reasons many kids don’t have summers like that now, mine included. I’m looking forward to some time we have later in the summer when we can do nothing.
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Petunia and Tara, it’s such a different world nowadays, isn’t it. We can’t give our children some of those freedoms we used to have and enjoy because there’s so much more danger for them than there used to be. But summers were such a great time when I was growing up, and I have very fond memories of those times.
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