When I exclusively homeschooled I didn't understand mothers who were stressed about their kids being home from school for a week. I had my kids everyday, ALL DAY LONG. Well, now that my kids attend public schools, I apologize for my judgmental misunderstanding. I now understand.
I came upon this great method for dealing with my kids during breaks especially long ones. I don't use this during the summer, because I don't want it's novelty to wear off.
Each kid has an envelope with their name on it hung on the white board in the kitchen. Inside each envelope they have tickets for screen time that are worth 15 minutes of screen time. They start out with two tickets at the beginning of the week. They can earn more tickets by doing the two chores I assign them each day. I also offer EXTRA chores if kids want to earn more tickets, but that's limited!
In order to redeem any of the tickets they have to have their bed made, their hair fixed, their room straight, and be WILLING participants in our 10 minute straightening times.
The beauty of this system is that I don't have to nag my kids to do their chores, I don't have to put up with their constant whining and questioning if they can play on the iPod, or watch TV. Two of my biggest annoyances are gone! I let them redeem their screen time whenever they want. It works great!
I do have to stipulate at the beginning, that watching someone play on the computer counts as screen time for them too. I also have to be vigilant about checking their rooms, and beds, and I have to keep a timer going when someone is doing their screen time, but I can handle that.
It's also a great motivator. Children who are misbehaving can have their screen time tickets taken away from them. My oldest likes to save all her tickets and redeem them all at once. I have another child who will pay to have people do chores for him. That's okay too. It's a very flexible system, you can use it anyway you want.