New Schedule

After reading a couple of other blogs and looking at my life, I decided I wanted a new schedule. I am really leaning towards homeschooling my kids next year and I need something that will work for our family. Plus, I've noticed that my kids, and truthfully myself, do better with some kind of routine. So, over Spring Break last week I decided to try something new. I've been reading about working with the kids and wanted a better way to make this work, so I decided that we would have breakfast and then work until our noon meal. Because most of my children are still fairly young I either worked with them or near them. We went through the house systematically and got a room finished before moving on, or until stopping to eat. After our noon meal there was a short "quiet time" period where the baby was supposed to take a nap (that didn't always happen) and after that we had free time where the kids could do whatever they chose. If the weather was decent enough they went outside and rode their bikes or played. If it was too cold or windy or rainy (or all three) then they read books or played make-believe. After dinner we would often do some fun family activity.

So that was the plan. For the most part it worked fairly well. My husband was home quite a bit of this week with a pinched nerve in his back, and so that kinda threw things off a bit. The kids just act different when Daddy is around. Overall, though, we got a lot accomplished. The kids did well with learning to put things away and it also made it a little easier to put their books and toys away knowing that they were going to get to play with them later. I got "help" doing a lot of the housework. I'm sure I could have done it faster on my own, but knowing the kids were helping me was a whole lot better than wondering what they were messing up while I was cleaning up. One day we washed walls, and that was hard. Little arms were getting sore and it was pretty boring. We learned singing songs while we worked helped it to go by faster. The best part, my house has stayed tidier for longer. We still have quite a ways to go because quite frankly, I'm lazy, but we are working on it.

I also tried to make our noon meal the big meal of the day. It's supposed to be healthier for you that way. This worked okay. I would get up and we'd have a pretty good breakfast, not really big, but good. I'd cook for lunch what I'd normally make for dinner. But then I wasn't sure what to have for dinner. That is where the problems came in. So, we would often end up making something heavier than I would have really liked. I would have been fine with a salad and smoothie, but the rest of my family wasn't keen on the idea. Some days they will eat salad, but not very much and the smoothie by itself wasn't enough. We also could only eat leftovers so many times before they wanted something new. I still love the idea of the big meal at noon. Maybe I could just do sandwiches or quesadillas for dinner?

I know a lot of moms (and kids) that just go crazy over spring break because they don't know what to do, but I felt like we all had a lot of fun. We had a plan, we had work and we had play. We didn't go anywhere special or do anything extra ordinary, but our ordinary days took on meaning and having a clean house made it a nicer place to be. I definitely want to use this during the summer. I am still using parts of it now. I am trying to discipline myself to work in the morning so that I can rest and play with my kids in the afternoon. I feel better when I do this, and the kids seem happier, which makes life at home a lot more pleasant. Do you have a schedule for your day?