I divided my day into 5 bubbles of routines. Each has a preferred time on the clock but I am realistic with 4 boys, ranging from 2 years old to 12 years old.
My bubbles are:
- Morning Routine (covers getting up to clean up after breakfast),
- Cleaning Routine (covers self care and chores in zones (FlyLady principles)),
- School Routine (broken into 3 blocks of about an hour, 2 blocks before lunch, 1 block after; L.Arts first for all, Maths second for all, and Science/History/Creative Arts or independent work for my eldest in the afternoon),
- Afternoon Routine (cleaning up at day's end, for our house and ourselves),
and
- Evening Routine (covers from dinner right through to bedtime).
It helps on the "bad" days to just skip a bubble, usually one of the school blocks or the Afternoon Routine, but the rest I find are essential to keeping our day running well.
Just to make it easier for the boys I created bundles of printed index card sized pages for each of them with their colour as the front card. They can clip them onto a lanyard to take with them as they work through their list. I hang the whole lot on the front of a cupboard in my dining room in clear view.
I am finding that my older 2 are really getting the hang of it now, although I can tend to be slack on following up (and there I go confessing my biggest weakness - inconsistency!).
Best wishes
Jen
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