Thursday, January 27, 2011

Organization - Daily Schedules for the Kids


Sorry that I haven't posted for so many days. My husband's grandfather died and I took a few days off to spend time with my husband and his family. I am going to post the blog I had been working on for Sunday because it is already half finished, and kind of see where I am at after that because I also have some homework to catch up on for school. (I am in school too, not just the kids!) So, here we go:

This week I decided to make schedules for my kids and post them up on the walls so that they would know what to expect from their days. The seed for the idea started when I saw my friend's blog about making similiar charts for her own children here Children Need Rules and Structure and Charts . That seed continued to grow and flourish throughout the week.



My husband and I told our littlest one that there are no electronics after dinner time but he just couldn't understand. Finally, I knew just what would do the trick! A little label on his chart with a picture that said "electronics off" every night! Now all I needed was a chart. 



I couldn't make a chart exactly like the one at Juana Be's because I need something a little less static. My husband and I are both in college and then we have church activities, a co-op, errands, blah blah blah. I wanted my kids to be able to wake up every day and know exactly what to expect from their day so I decided to make a chart that had velcro on it and the activities could be added and removed every night when I fill my workboxes. That way the schedule can vary from day to day! I work hard to keep it as consistent as possible, but this way there is room for the changes in our schedules and it is all visual for the kids.



The schedules went up officialy on Thursday morning, and so far I would say they are working great! Today (this would be Sunday when I was typing this) I told the kids we would be going to their grandmother's at 3:00 and Alex yelled: "3:00! But that is snack time!" It was so funny to see how he is already getting so settled into his little routine and doesn't like to see anything messing it up. He also does much better at doing his chores now that there is a scheduled time to do them every night and there is already no tv allowed at that time anyways so he "might as well" spend some time with me working on his chores.