Living Life with Littles: Morning School Routine

The school year has started. For my older kids they are already well settled.  My little ones, however, are still trying to get back in the grove but will be there soon.  We have a pretty set morning routine that our kids follow.  I guess I should say I have routine I make them follow.  So set, that I made Tony learn it because he kept messing it up and messing our whole morning up.  I'm thankful for a husband that is on board and does learn what the routine is, rather then blowing me off as a nut job. 

The basics of the routine are the same for each kid.  They must get dressed BEFORE they eat breakfast.  This has been a huge time saver for us.  I've found the kids are way more motivated to get dressed if breakfast depends on their speediness. 

As my kids have changed, each of their routines-while still holding the basic structure-have become individualized.  I've also discovered that trying to remember the details of all four routines takes up brain space that I can't afford to loose.  So this year I made up these sheets for each of the kids.  I have one to hang on each of their bulletin boards in the living room, one for the fridge, and one for each of their dressers.  In reality, I only have the living room one hung up.  Before the end of the year I promise I will have it in the other two places. 

All it took was Word and clip art I found by Googling.  I used the same images on each child's thing.  Big brothers is typed in words, not pictures, to encourage him to read more often.  A set routine has saved our mornings and gets us out the door without too much panic or yelling.

Living Life with Littles: Daily Helper

My kids ALL want to be the one to choose the show.  They ALL want to help in the kitchen.  They ALL want to pick the drink for supper.  NONE of them want to help with dishes.  NONE of the them want to set the table.  Based on this post by I Can Teach My Child we dealt with it all in one fell swoop. 

Every day, based on age order, we get a new helper.  Each child spends 3 days doing something and one day "off".  Sometimes that means they do or get a lot and other times it doesn't really affect them.  It all depends on how our day goes.

Choice Day:

If it's their choice day then that child gets to make all the choices for the day.  They also get to be first at everything.  So they get to choose the show, what we have to drink for supper, what they want for lunch, and on and on.  They love it when it's their choice day.  I love that I'm not constantly trying to remember whose turn it is for each indivual thing.

Kitchen Helper:

The Kitchen Helper gets to help with meals.  They also set the table at supper time.  Over all they really like this job and I like that it gets them in the kitchen more.

Dishes Helper:

The dishes helper helps clean out the strainer (to the best of their ablitity) and they help rinse and put dishes in the strainer when mom is doing a new load.

These three things have taken so much "thinking" and "remembering" away from me and taken a lot of fight out of our day.

Living With Littles: Chores

There are lots and lots of blogs and Pinterest boards toting the best way to do chores with your child.  I find other family chore systems so interesting.  We approach ours in three different ways.

Family Chores:

We are a family and there are jobs we will do because we are a family.  Helping get ready for dinner and clean up dinner would be a way that we work together as a family.  Their is no reward for this.  We simply expect our children to chip in.

Baby Girl holding a root beer float at the park, one of our chore rewards

Daily, Personal Chores:

Every day we have a list of chores for our kids to do.  Usually they are doing around two to four chores each day which includes helping to pick up the house, bringing down the dirty clothes basket, cleaning the landing, watering plants, vacuuming, etc.  For every chore that our child completes they get a rock.  They can also earn up to three rocks per day based on their attitude while cleaning: happy heart, fast feet, diligent hands.  We are working together to fill a jar, when the jar is full we get a fun family activity.  For these jobs their is a reward but it's aimed at building family togetherness.

Sweet Pea with the elephant she worked several weeks to save up for.  We were so proud of her!

Paid Jobs:

We adapted this system from some friends.  We loved what they were doing but needed to modify it for our family.  Tony and I don't believe a child should necessarily get paid to do regular household jobs, we also don't believe in allowances.  However, we do want our children to learn about budgeting, tithing, and wise spending.

Each Saturday we make a list of "above and beyond jobs" for the kids.  This includes everything from washing down walls to picking up sticks in the yard to cleaning out the van.  These are jobs that we do not require our children to do on a regular basis but may need done on that Saturday.  Each job is given an amount of money its worth.

Starting with the earliest riser (past 6 am) and going to the latest riser we give the kids a chance to choose jobs.  We do not require that they sign up for a job, but if they do its theirs.  "Pay day" is at 5 pm.  We do not hound, pester, or remind the kids of their jobs.  If they are not done by 5 pm then they get to do the job for free.

Side Note: Due to Little Man's disabilities we tend to steer him to certain jobs.  We also require him to do his job immediately after breakfast.  He does not have to sign up for a job.  However, he does not understand the consequences of not working, so we do not allow him a choice in the matter.

It works like a charm.  We get a ton of work done very quickly on Saturday mornings, our kids are learning some great life skills, and they are learning money management.  It's also fun to see their desire to buy something drop when the realize that it's their money they must spend.  The first three weekends we did this we had a couple of kiddos work for free.  On occasion a child will decide playing outside or watching a movie is more fun the working and time slips away.  However, MOST of the fight of work is gone.

How does your family handle chores?  Do you pay your child to work?  How do you handle money management?

Living Life with Littles: Laundry

When we went from three to four with Our Guy laundry took a huge hit.  However, when we went to six I was shocked at how little of a hit our laundry took.  Maybe because the kids were so teeny tiny or maybe because everything was so overwhelming that laundry didn't quit seem as pertinent. However, as time has gone on it did become overwhelming. We've had to tweak and change our laundry routine to fit our family.  Here's how it goes.

1. Each bedroom has a big square laundry basket in it for dirty laundry. 

2. Each day one child must bring it down and another must sort it. They flip flop this job.  It took me awhile to teach them how to sort but they've got it now (for the most part).

3. I handle all washing and drying at this point.  Sometimes the kids will haul a load of laundry to a machine because they got an "energy drain" or just because they can be really sweet like that.

4. When a load is done I take it over to our folding area (a window seat in the dining room).  The kids maintain their color system that they have in their cups.  Each has a basket I bought at Wal-Mart (I believe it was $2.50) that I sort their clothing into.  We have another basket for Tony and my clothing and a third basket for sheets, towels, rags, etc.

5. When the baskets are full I declare family folding time.  We all grab our baskets, and dump them in the living room.  I typically fold Tony and my clothing and the sheets towels at this time.  When I get done I help the kids fold.  Yes, that means the kids clothing is not folded well at all.  This was really really hard for me to let go of.  Little Man's therapist really worked with me about saying "ok" to this for sanity sake.  I typically shut my eyes and don't think about it, uttering to myself "it's about the process, not the end result". 

6. Each child takes their basket and puts their own clothing away.

And that's what works for us.  How does your family manage laundry?

Living Life with Littles: Meal Prep

One of the things that I am finding so helpful each week is "meal prep".  Every few weeks I go through our freezers and see what we have.  I then sit down and come up with about 15 to 20 different meals I can I make from what we have.  Every Saturday I take that list and meal plan for the week.  Based on that meal plan, I spend a chunk of time on Sunday prepping meals for the week.  I do as much prep work as possible at the beginning of the week to make the meals ready to go.

For the particular week I'm writing about in this post our meal plan looked like this:

• Sunday: Non-soup Chicken and Noodle Soup (kids) and Steak and Pasta Salad (adults)
• Monday: Lasagna, homemade bread, veggie
• Tuesday: Hamburgers and hotdogs, sweet potato fries, pasta salad (left from Sunday)
• Wednesday: Sandwich, applesauce
• Thursday: Chicken and Rice Soup
• Friday: Pizza
• Saturday: Leftovers, extras, raid the cabinets

When I prepped this is what I had ready for the week:

• Sunday: Supper made
• Monday: Lasanga, flour mixture for bread ready for bread machine
• Tuesday: hamburgers thawed and made, hotdogs thawing, pasta salad
• Thursday: soup thawing
• Friday: pizza dough made 

I learned a good lesson on why it's important for me to do this.  Nothing this particular week went the way I planned.  Sunday night I accidentally poked Sweet Pea in the eye, needing medical attention on Monday and Tuesday.  Tuesday and Thursday school was cancelled due to snow.  Tuesday Tony hit a snow drift on the way to work and wrecked his battery.  We had to drive into town (30 minutes) to get him on Tuesday night and back again on Wednesday morning.  On the way home Wednesday the van gave out on us.  Thursday Tony got it running well enough to get it to a shop.  Even with all that we had yummy, warm, home cooked meals, all week.  I know it saved us from going out to eat Tuesday.  We also felt like we were still eating well and didn't have the stress of scrambling last minute to figure out supper.  My weeks go better when I prep the meals at the beginning.

Living Life with Littles: Snack Bags

People always ask me how I do it.  My response, "by the Grace of God."  And that's the truth.  I'm also thankful for some of the helps He has allowed us to put in place.

I've mentioned before that we practically live in our van.  That means we eat in it a lot.  If we are going somewhere we are probably eating either a meal or a snack.  However, coordinating snacks and getting them to be back of the van can be a challenge, especially when you are talking about things like crackers that are small and easily dropped.

 

Our solution: snack bags.  

I always have a box of them in the van.  This has made life so much easier.  If we are running out the door to an appointment I can grab a box of crackers and fill bags in the car.  It's also nice if we get stuck out during a snack time.  I can easily pick up a bag of pretzels or animal crackers and make my kiddos happy.