First days can be exciting sometimes. The First Day of basketball practice. The First Day of Friday School. The First Day of summer vacation. Sheer joy and happiness would be flying around the house in the form of four young girls.
The First Day of school after Christmas break is not evoking such joy in my children. It was a long break from school work but far from a relaxing, lazy series of days where we drank hot cocoa while watching movies. We worked on the new house. A lot. I'm sure that contributed to the complaints yesterday when I reminded my little students that school work would be added to the fray this morning. Thankfully, we are trudging through and much is being accomplished.
One thing I knew was that we needed a temporary, effective method for keeping track of chores and school. Some days, I'm in and out of the house running errands or working the entire day. Honestly, those days usually end with a very frustrated group of girls being led by a frustrated momma as we try to pull the house, laundry and dinner together. We still need to live in some semblance of order and cleanliness. We still need clean clothes. And we need to eat.
I decided on daily checklists.
I apologize for all the trees that will be sacrificed for my need of order. Sorry.
Each list contains the basic things I expect from that girl on that particular day.
On the days that I will be out of the house more, things like "Make Addie's lunch" or "Put Addie down for her nap" would be added while some of the cleaning might be taken away.
Lael had to decorate hers, of course. (Mmmmm, see those finger prints? Cleaning the fridge will be on a list soon!)
Lauren copied her. :-)
I don't have any real plans for how I'll distribute the cleaning responsibilities each day. Most likely, I'll be looking around to decide what room is the biggest mess. It's not a long term solution for us, as I like more long term organization, but it's a quick fix for our season.
How is your first day of school going?
The First Day of school after Christmas break is not evoking such joy in my children. It was a long break from school work but far from a relaxing, lazy series of days where we drank hot cocoa while watching movies. We worked on the new house. A lot. I'm sure that contributed to the complaints yesterday when I reminded my little students that school work would be added to the fray this morning. Thankfully, we are trudging through and much is being accomplished.
One thing I knew was that we needed a temporary, effective method for keeping track of chores and school. Some days, I'm in and out of the house running errands or working the entire day. Honestly, those days usually end with a very frustrated group of girls being led by a frustrated momma as we try to pull the house, laundry and dinner together. We still need to live in some semblance of order and cleanliness. We still need clean clothes. And we need to eat.
I decided on daily checklists.
I apologize for all the trees that will be sacrificed for my need of order. Sorry.
Each list contains the basic things I expect from that girl on that particular day.
On the days that I will be out of the house more, things like "Make Addie's lunch" or "Put Addie down for her nap" would be added while some of the cleaning might be taken away.
Lael had to decorate hers, of course. (Mmmmm, see those finger prints? Cleaning the fridge will be on a list soon!)
Lauren copied her. :-)
I don't have any real plans for how I'll distribute the cleaning responsibilities each day. Most likely, I'll be looking around to decide what room is the biggest mess. It's not a long term solution for us, as I like more long term organization, but it's a quick fix for our season.
How is your first day of school going?
keep up the good work!!
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