Morning Routine Checklists

I made a checklist out of our posted routine. I print them out each morning and leave it on the dining room table. The kids are really liking it and I'm liking it, too! They can move about their morning routine at their own pace and I don't have to constantly nag them "did you brush your teeth this morning"? Dan has been taking his shower right after breakfast instead of waiting until right before lunch. This is fabulous!

Our Routines

I'm just really pleased with our routines right now. We're in Season 5 Liberating Your Parenting Potential in the 7 Seasons to LYFE (Liberating Your Family's Education) pilot program.

Here's where we are in August 2011:
Morning Routine includes empty dishwasher, eat bfast, do bookwork (math worksheet, copywork worksheet), chore, brush hair & teeth, shower, get dressed-I read history (H. A. Guerber-Ancient World) and 2 short fairy tales from various sources

Lunch includes eating together and read aloud

Productive Free Time

Set Table-Dinner

Evening

I've decided our year starts in January and I hope to forget someday what grade the kids are in! The school system is artificial and contrived in every way...including the idea that one needs to learn a certain set of knowledge at a certain age! Silly! I think it really holds kids back.

My mother asked how homeschooling was going and commented today that she thought the kids seemed more "relaxed"...YES! They are becoming their true selves!

Amazing that we started this journey just a little over a year ago...I'm SO grateful to have found LOL!

More Family Chores-Play Room

I'm in the season of planning and perfecting our routine. Part of our new afternoon routine is a "family chore". Yesterday we tackled Daniel's counter in the play room (which is really our family room converted to a "play" space, though I like to think of it as an "educational laboratory"). Today (Thursday) I put off the family chore, we'll do Sarah's side tomorrow.

The first photo doesn't really show the HEAP of stuff that was on his counter. The top photo is after we'd sorted and cleared a lot of stuff away. The 2nd photo is today...he has a few things on the counter (not to mention the duct tape that says "Dan") and he's USED his counter several times today. He even did his math there this morning. The process continues...

Season 4-Liberating Your Routine

Reading Marilyn's book.

Life Is Truly A Process - CHORES

Well, I've been convicted that I need to do some more bookwork with the kids so along with that comes looking at my routine. This brings up the need to add some more chores to do together (since they have mastered the one daily chore they are responsible for) so they can learn how to sort (thanks Marilyn!) and clean things.

The kids have a "personal chore" each day except Friday and it gets done before lunch each day. We've been doing that for about 6 months, so we don't have complaining anymore, amazing, they just do it.
Monday-bring down dirty laundry
Tuesday-collect upstair garbage together
Wednesday-strip sheets of beds
Thursday-take up clean folded laundry

Along with this I'm wanting to add a "family chore" for us to do together. Especially, since we have major clutter (A serious MESS!) Life is such a process, yet each moment adds up to a lifetime...so I'm trying to focus on the moments (not the "destination").

I selected a small area for us to sort and clean together today...and we did SO MUCH MORE! WOW, I'm so excited! We needed to vacuum the dining room (Daniel OFFERED to vacuum!) so we did that together and went down the hall and vacuumed the entry, too. Our official family chore was to sort and clean the upstairs hallway (about 4'x12') and stairs. Seems small but it was covered with STUFF (do you know what I mean?) So, I told the kids to sort like-things-with-like...a brilliant way to clean! Marilyn mentioned "teaching your kids to sort while cleaning" on Tuesday night and just this one thought has helped ME focus and helped me model for them. They caught on, though I did the most which was fine. We'll certainly be doing more of this (soon)!

Laaaaa la la la laallalaallaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! We have clean stairs and hallway!