Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas! As the years have passed and our family has grown, we’ve had to take a brief hiatus from the sending of Christmas cards, once a non-negotiable on our list of Christmas to-dos. The taking of pictures, buying of stamps, stuffing and addressing of envelopes have required more coordination than I am capable of in this season. I am nothing these days if not uncoordinated. 

However, this time of year is a natural one for reconnecting with loved ones, and I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to do so. So here it is: our bloggy Christmas letter. Please imagine that the above picture is hanging on the Pinterest-inspired card display of your choosing and that you just pulled this little missive out of a foil-lined envelope. Thank ya kindly.

This has been a beautiful year in many ways, and we are all well. Daniel still greatly enjoys making buildings not fall down. In July he wrapped up his Project We Couldn’t Tell You About (now The Project We Are Hoping Gets Built). Shortly after, we took a vacation to Michigan and returned to the news that his company had been sold! As of September 1, Halvorson and Partners became a part of WSP Group, a global engineering corporation. He is hopeful about the transition and excited to see how having 33,000 new colleagues might increase the impact of the work that he does.

I am still home full-time with our bunch and homeschooling to boot. It is a joy to be with them so much. I have loved teaching the kids to read and add; I love seeing them curled on the couch with a book or running about the yard in the middle of the day. They are thriving, and I am thankful. We just started our third year and I vacillate between believing that we are finally getting a handle on it and feeling completely inadequate as I try to balance at all. I have felt my weakness more in these past three years than at any other time in my life (as the fourth child still does not sleep through the night), but I have seen how God has taken my meager efforts and multiplied them. There are still piles of laundry strewn about the house and dinner is almost never on time, but I see faith taking hold in our kids and the beginnings of the beautiful fruit they will bear for His kingdom. So I’ll keep my hand on the plow and trust God to bring the increase.

Ava, at 7, is enthusiastic, creative, and intelligent. She loves books, playing piano, and creating all kinds of things out of scraps of paper. She is always thoughtful and asks really good (and really hard) questions. Daniel and I can’t believe how fast she is maturing; we looked at her the other night at the table and were struck by how much she looked like a teenager (with a couple of missing teeth).

Tim is 5 and started kindergarten this year. He is methodical and literal and incredibly funny. He’s reading books now, which is a delight to us. He also loves math, Legos, Sudoku puzzles, board games, and construction equipment. He’s basically a younger and more emotional version of his daddy.

Genevieve, at 3 11/12s, is smart, passionate, and affectionate. She’s never very far from my side. She loves babies, horses, and the color purple. She also loves to read, and will sit contentedly at my side for hours if I will just keep the books coming. She feels deeply, and we pray constantly that God would use her strength of spirit for his glory.

Clara, at 2, is loads of fun. She’s into everything of course, painting her toenails quietly in the bathroom or silently unloading the craft cabinet. She too loves books and can be found sitting for 30 or 45 minutes at a time looking at them. She loves a good surprise and loves to make us laugh. We all get a kick out of her, and she is quickly joining in the pack of children running circles around the house.

We do sometimes get tired chasing them about, but of course, we know that we are richly blessed. We love their personalities; we love getting to be a part of their growth and faith. When we grow weary, we are reminded that our Savior understands. We celebrate that this time of year and are reminded that he came here and walked among us. He understands our struggles, temptations, and our tiredness. We are reminded that he loves us in our weakness and shows his strength in it. We do not serve a God who has insulated himself from our suffering and need. He came to suffer and redeem our weary and sinful hearts. I hope that this truth refreshes and comforts you this Christmas.

Love,

Jill (for the Popps)

Purpose in the Little Things: Getting Kids to Clean Up

 This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

***

Early on in this process of getting more organized, it became clear that if the kids were going to be home all the time, they were going to have to function as part of the "team." I can't do everything! I needed for them to be more helpful and independent. This started primarily as a push to get them to help clean up after themselves.

Getting kids to clean up is hard. You would think picking things up one-by-one would be easy enough to teach, but it has required a lot of training! It's still a challenge to motivate them at times, but through trial and error, we've come up with some things that help.

Here's what has helped us get the job done:

1. Reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Seriously. Besides being a hilarious and enjoyable read, it inspired my kids to come up with all kinds of games to make cleaning fun.

 And speaking of games...

2. Playing a game. My son is especially motivated by competition. I did realize early on, however, that having him compete against his sister was a bad idea. Our typical big clean is during dinner prep, so everyone is hungry and tired. This is a recipe for a tantrum, not a successful clean-up. What we've done instead, is have them compete against me. A typical day has me speaking in a bad cockney accent, pretending to be the "evil kitchen wench," and shouting things like, "I bet they'll forget to clean under the table!" We earn points each task we complete. Whoever has the most, wins. (Note: They always win. Which really means I do).

3. Having a snack. Nothing will derail clean up like a hungry, grumpy kid. Having fed them also allows me to shut down the "I can't work because I'm hungry" complaint more easily. If at all possible, we give them a snack beforehand.

4. Cranking the tunes. We've tried listening to audiobooks or Odyssey, but it usually finds them wandering aimlessly about the room while they listen. Turn on something really upbeat, though, and they get moving (and have a blast!). If you can work out to it, you can clean up to it. Our most recent jam has been the Rio soundtrack, but we have several playlists we use.

5. Having less stuff out. The more toys there are, the bigger and more mixed up the mess gets. We tried the bin for everything method, and it was still a major struggle. It has helped us so much to rotate through the toys. Since I'm not a rockstar mom with lots of time to rotate toys, I use those little bags for washing delicates to zip up a few toys (maybe one puzzle and a few other odds and ends). We keep them up high, and allow them to have one or two out at a time.

6. Making the task as defined as possible. I made these little charts for their bedroom, the living room, and the basement. It splits the mess up into categories, which allows me to make assignments. There's a different colored column for each child, and I slide a bead into the appropriate column to assign that task. For instance, this means Tim needs to pick up the blocks and our books, while Ava picks up the toys and the cleans the craft table. This chart helps them break the task of cleaning the living room down into smaller pieces and it helps me keep each child accountable for helping.

 7. Making a pile. Many times after they finish the checklist, there are still a lot of things lying around. At this point, it is hard for them to see the mess, so often we will make a pile. Since we have hardwood floors, I most often take a broom and push everything that's left together. It keeps me from having to stoop every five seconds and is so much faster. After that's done, I will often sit with them and help them sort all the randomness, sending them to put things where they go. This is often our final push, and where they need a bit more grace. They are still kids. They are learning. As such, they usually need a little more guidance and coaching to finish well.

My seven-year-old is now very helpful with clean up, my five-year-old can be helpful (when he wants to be), and my three-year-old can handle a few smaller tasks. It can still be a major struggle (you know those days), but most nights, the living room is fairly tidy when they go to bed. Except when it isn't.

Keepin' it real, y'all. :)

***

If you'd like a copy of the cleaning checklist, I'm making them available below. Obviously, these are very specific for where things are in my house, but as always, I'm giving you the excel file. Hopefully, you can mix and match enough of the clip art to make it usable for you. :)

Downstairs Checklist
Bedroom Checklist
Basement Checklist

I made these a lot like my morning checklist. If you have them laminated at an office supply store, it might take a bit of work to get them threaded. A thicker needle and a thimble will probably help!

Purpose in the Little Things: Chores!

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

I have always struggled to keep a clean house with kids. It was just hard to find the time to clean when they were all so little. But this magical thing just happened:

My kids got a little older.

It happened when I wasn't looking. I was probably fussing with a toddler. Somehow I missed what the bigger ones could do.

It was around the first of the year that I decided to try to get more of a handle on the house. I knew that the kids were going to have to be a part of that.

There are many of ways to do chores. I decided that we would do our cleaning schedule together.

Since their chores change a bit from day to day depending on what we are working on, I decided to make a chore chart so that it was very clear what each child needs to do. Like my daily routine chart, I used small laminated tiles with Velcro coins on them so that I could easily switch them out. This could probably also work with a small pocket chart.

Daily Chores 
There are a few things the kids help me with every day. Here's how I break down the daily chores, with some notes. Tasks that I give the kids (meaning my 5 and 7 year olds) are in italics.

• One load of laundry: I can't have a laundry day. Just. can't. I can't get down the the basement enough, and if too many loads of laundry go through in a day, it never ever gets folded. So I run one to two loads a day, and try to fold it in the evening while Daniel and I relax and watch something. I have a small laundry basket for each child, and I put all of their clothes in there. The older two put away their own clothes when they do their morning checklist, and my three year old helps me put hers away (meaning I sit with her and show her where everything goes).
• Dishes: This includes a general kitchen tidy and loading of the dishwasher. The kids are required to clear their own dishes after meals.
• Emptying the dishwasher: Someone else unloading the dishwasher is my love language.  
• Clearing and Setting the Table: The older two kids switch off doing this and emptying the dishwasher.  
• Downstairs Checklist: Have I mentioned that I like checklists? I made a checklist for cleaning the our main living areas, the bedrooms, and the basement. It basically breaks down the rooms into smaller jobs and allows me to assign tasks to different kids. (You can get a copy of the checklists I use here).

Weekly Chores
In addition to the daily chores, we spend 20-30 minutes working together on tasks that are completed weekly. This could be cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, cleaning the floors, or tidying the bedrooms, the basement, or the van.

I made a larger task card to go at the top of the chart that indicates where we are working, then I put the tasks I want each child to complete in their individual sections. When those tasks are done, I move them to the done side of the chart.

Here’s how we break down the weekly chores. Again, the kids’ jobs are in italics:

Bedrooms: 

• Bedroom Checklist: Again, this basically splits the cleaning up into very defined tasks.

Bathrooms: 

• Clean Toilet
• Clean Bathtub/Shower: I love the Dawn/vinegar thing!
• Sweep/Swiffer Floors
• Mop Floor
• Clean Mirrors 
• Wipe Sink--We use a vinegar/water/dish soap solution that is pretty family friendly.
• Empty Trash

Floors:  

• Wipe table: You might wonder why this is on the floor list. It's because I like to work top down in the kitchen. I always clean off the eating and cooking surfaces before I clean the floor. I hate to do a thorough cleaning of the floors and have crumbs immediately getting knocked onto the floor. Gotta wait at least five minutes. ;)
• Sweep kitchen floor: The kids sometimes help, especially with the dust pan (ours has a little brush, which makes it easier for them).
• Scrub kitchen floor: We have laminate floors in the kitchen, and they hate water, so I can't mop. We have to scrub on hands and knees and dry with a towel.  I did, however, just discover that our kids love this job. Because water and soap and sloshing. So last time we did it together, and it was fun. And wet.
• Swiffer under couches: My kids love to swiffer. Like, they would love to come swiffer your house.

Dusting:  

• Dust bookshelves: My kids love the Swiffer 360 duster and actually fight over who gets to dust. So that's a win.
• Dust furniture 
• Dust blinds

Laundry: 

• One load a day
• Put clothes away

Van 

• Clean out van: The kids help with this. Or just pretend to drive while I do it. :)
• Vacuum

Basement:

• Cleaning the litter box
• Basement Checklist: This is basically our playroom/family room, so there are a lot of toys. Just like the living areas and their bedrooms, I have a checklist that splits the cleaning of the basement into defined tasks.

Rewards
We decided early on not to tie the kids’ chores to allowances. There might be jobs in the future that we pay the kids to complete, but for now, we want them to know that being part of our family means being part of the team. That much is, and will always be, expected. We did, however, want to reward them for their participation, so I created a small sticker chart. Each day the kids complete their chores, I put a sticker on a small sticker chart I made. If they don’t cooperate, they lose that day’s sticker (but can do extra chores to make up for it). When they receive seven stickers, we go out for ice cream (or frozen yogurt). If they save up two weeks worth of stickers, they can get a book at Half-Price books. I like this system, both because it’s motivating and because it’s been my goal to have less sugar in the house. It allows us to enjoy a family date together at the end of the week, without having sugar be so much a part of our every day.

Extra Chores:
There are sometimes chores that we don’t get to, so I often put those aside as extra chores. Dusting, for example, often ends up being an extra chore. There are other chores too that are not as much a part of the daily functioning of the house, like helping to put away groceries, cleaning out the refrigerator, shoveling snow (believe it or not, my son loves this), and picking up sticks before Daniel mows the yard. I put a few extra Velcro buttons on the bottom of the chart, and I will often put extra chores there that the kids can choose to do for extra stickers. I also sometimes reward the kids with a sticker when I see them doing something helpful, like yesterday, when Tim emptied the recycle bin on his own initiative. It’s helpful for me to have them looking for extra ways that they can help.

We usually do ice cream trips on Saturday, so it usually works out that the kids need to do one or two extra tasks during the week to get the reward. We aren’t really that rigid about it. Mostly we go if the kids have generally done all the things that we’ve asked of them without too much complaint, and most of the time they have.

Learning to be Servants 
It’s amazing to me how helpful it’s been to have the kids doing these small jobs. I had hoped that I would be able to do some chores of my own during their chore time, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. I generally supervise and help them with what they are doing, and corral the little ones who are not as able to help. I think about this as training, and it’s still helpful. For those 20 or 30 minutes, they are moving in the same direction as me (and not tearing things apart while I'm trying to put them together). They are also gaining valuable skills for when they are on their own and learning to be servants of the people they love.

***

If you'd like a (editable) copy of this chore chart, the chore cards, or the reward chart, feel free to click the links below!

Chore Chart
Chore Cards
Reward Sticker Chart 

Purpose in the Little Things: Cleaning Checklist

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

  Have you seen this e-card?

This is true. My friend texted me other day to tell me she had just gotten down on hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor. And then her kids spilled half a gallon of apple juice. Isn't that always the way?

Even so, we all know that the housework needs to be done. Even if it's very quickly undone. Even if it's repetitive and never-ending.

We sometimes complain about this, but author Rachel Jankovic points out that we might complain less if we thought about this repetitive work the way that a pianist thinks of practicing or a marathoner thinks of training. It's necessary, and it makes us better.

In the past year, I've come to appreciate that housework is so repetitive, because it has allowed me to create predictable processes for getting it done.

Right now, I do not have a day that I can devote entirely to cleaning. I can't do that when all the kids are here. They just aren't able to hang with it yet. So right now, I have a cleaning schedule.

I use the term schedule loosely (like I always do). There are days that we typically devote to cleaning certain places in the house (Mondays we clean the bathrooms, Wednesday, the bedrooms, Friday, the basement). Sometimes our schedule shifts slightly, and I shuffle things around. And sometimes it's just me looking at what needs to be done most.

I made a little checklist of all the things that need to be done in the week. It looks like this:

There are things that we do daily (like emptying the dishwasher) and things that get done weekly (like cleaning the bathtub). When Daniel saw it, he joked that he needed to pay me more.

There are several big categories that the cleaning tasks fall into: bathrooms, bedrooms, floors, the basement, dusting, and the van. I will typically pick one of these categories to work on each day, assigning some of the tasks to the kids. I highlight those tasks so that I remember what I'm trying to accomplish that day.

Ideally, we would get all of these things done in a week. Most weeks we don't, and that's ok. We still get way more done than we used to.

I find that having this list helps me in a few ways:

First, I'm less likely to look at the mess and think "AAAAHHH!" (Direct quote). This list helps me find a starting point, and break the things that need to be done into manageable chunks.

Second, things don't get as out-of-hand when I am dealing with them on a fairly regular basis. It's far less overwhelming to think about cleaning the shower and takes much less elbow grease to accomplish it if it's only a week's worth of gunk.

Third, I know what I need to be working on in the small chunks of time I have. I don't have hours of free time in a day, but I might have 15 minutes here and there. I'm far less likely to waste those pockets of time I have some direction.

Our house is very rarely completely clean; it sees a lot of use and time is still in short supply. But things get done on a more regular basis and we are never as far from completely clean as we once were. Having a cleaning routine has helped me immensely, because I think the hardest part for me is just knowing where to start. So even though the crumbs are falling to the floor as I sweep them up, most of the time they do actually get swept up. I guess brushing your teeth while eating oreos is better than not brushing at all.

***
If you'd like a copy of this checklist, you can find it here:

Weekly To-Do

Beauty in the Mess

The house was a mess, and I was frustrated.

I worked so hard. Why did it so often look like I did nothing all day?

Daniel was reassuring: "The most important things get done, Jill. You love the kids. The house will get better with time."

But I still felt like I was drowning just trying to get the basics done, and I asked God for perspective.

The next day, it was like He peeled the blinders off.

Everywhere I looked, the kids were being creative: Ava making little crafts, Tim making a tower of blocks, Genevieve and Clara sitting in a pile of books.

Beautiful things are happening here. Sometimes beautiful things are messy. 

I want to be clear: I am not saying that the mamas with clean houses are doing something wrong. There are many excellent mothers creating wonderful learning environments and keeping their houses clean and tidy. I'll be the first to acknowledge that cleaning is not my gift. I don't have that switch in my head that tells me to put things back where they belong, turn off the light switch when I leave the room, or close the cabinet doors. I wish I did.

I am saying is that the messes that can be so frustrating to a mom are actually signs of blessing, of little ones learning, of life. When I can keep this perspective (which is admittedly not always), it helps me not get so frustrated about the every day messes.

So when I see this:

I see a tiny engineer designing a building.

When I see this:

I see a budding artist with plenty of inspiration.

When I see this:

I see the little one who already loves books.

When I see this:

 I see kids learning to add and spell and make circuits.

When I see this:

I see a night spent with Daddy building forts.

When I really look, I see beauty in this mess and life within these walls, and I am thankful.

Purpose in the Little Things: Independent Work and Assignment Sheet

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.

***

There are many things we do together during school time. We read most of our materials aloud. We review math facts together, and I teach the lesson. I call out spelling words, and introduce the spelling rules.

There are now a few things, though, that Ava can do on her own. She's an excellent reader, so she is capable of reading and following directions. Since we schedule most of our one-on-one time for school in the afternoon, I decided to try to lighten our afternoon load by assigning independent work in the morning. This would make our day flow better, and make the later part of the day less intense. 

I decided to make Ava a notebook specifically for independent work. She basically does what would be "homework" if she were in school: map work and coloring sheets for history, workbook pages for math (reviewing material from the previous day), and her handwriting worksheet.

I make her an assignment sheet at the beginning of the week with all of her work, specifically noting her "morning work." This goes in her notebook.

It looks like this:

It has a column for each day and a row for each subject (all in cursive, because my girl is super fancy). I copy her assignments from my planning notebook, and she checks the little box when each task is completed.

We also bought these awesome Avery pocket dividers. I made a divider for each day, and I put all the printables and worksheets she needs to complete her work in the appropriate pocket.

I put her math workbook pages in sheet protectors in the binder rings. She completes them with wet-erase markers (vis-a-vis), which allows me to reuse the workbooks for all the kids. Because I'm cheap.

All this helps in a few ways:

It helps Ava know specifically what needs to be done. This helps her to monitor her own progress throughout the day. She knows when she's done with her morning work, and when she's done in the afternoon. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is motivating for her, and she fights me less about school.

It grows her independence. Even though I like that we do so much together, she needs to know how to function as a student. As she grows, she should need less and less input from me.

It cuts the longer subjects in half. I hate to try to teach beyond a student's attention span. They glaze over or get fidgety and the returns are diminishing. Now, for math and history, we do a lesson together in the afternoon, and she does the practice work on the following morning. So. Much. Better.

It keeps me from searching for materials all day. Everything we need for the day is right there, from her worksheets to her rekenrek. This way, I am not running around all day printing off worksheets and the like.

There is still so much one-on-one time required at this stage, but I have been surprised how much giving ownership of just a few things to Ava has helped to streamline our day.

***

If you'd like a copy of this assignment sheet, click on the link below. Feel free to edit and share!

Blank Assignment Sheet

Purpose in the Little Things: Task Cards and Wall Chart

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.

I had done a lot of work to establish structure for our day. I needed a way to communicate that structure to the kids. I wanted a visual of our day that was easily adaptable.

In doing research, I found this system. I really loved it, and downloaded her free task cards right away. After looking at it though, it wasn't exactly what I needed (even though it was close). I tried the individual task cards our first year of homeschooling, but found that everyone needed to be able to see not only what they needed to do, but where it happened in relation to the whole day. We needed a bird's eye view of what everyone was doing, so I modified her idea slightly and made a wall chart.

I started by making "task cards" for every subject and also for things like free play, free reading, going outside, morning checklists, and cleaning up. I then made a chart that looks a lot like my planning notebook. It has a column for me and for every child (all the way down to Clara). I had it all printed 11 x 17 and laminated at FedEx Office (forever Kinko's in my heart). After that, I cut apart the task cards, and attached small Velcro dots to each one and to every space on the chart.

Every day I go through my plan book and transfer the "tasks" to the chart in the order they are to be completed. For each block of time, I put a task card with the name of the child I am working with, or if I am doing any tasks like cooking or putting kids down for naps.

For example, in the first row, I'm working with Ava on math while Tim plays outside, then spelling while he plays inside. The next row shows Ava reading alone while I work with Tim on math, then all the kids cleaning up while I cook dinner. You don't see the other two kids because they are mostly down for naps/ rest time in the afternoon.

I also let the kids put some cards on where they have some free time. I don't care if they do that activity ("You said you were going to play! Why are you coloring?), but it helps them to realize that they have some choice. 

I love that at a glance we can all see what everyone is supposed to be doing and when. I also love that if things don't go according to plan, I can just rearrange the task cards. No big deal.

***

I'm offering a free printable of my task cards and wall chart. Click on the links below to download your own copies. I left them in excel, so that you can adapt as you see fit. Enjoy!

Task Cards
Wall Chart

Purpose in the Little Things: Homeschool Planning

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.  

 Since we just talked routine, I thought I would show you the nitty-gritty of how plan my homeschool day.

My first year of homeschooling I used a regular lesson book I got from Lakeshore Learning Store. It helped me get down what I wanted to do every day, but it didn't help me plan when I wanted to do it. It also didn't account for all the other things I have to balance: cleaning the house, making dinner, doing laundry, and the list goes on. It really didn't give me enough information for me to get everything done.

In the end, I made my own homeschool planning pages. They look like this:

There is a spread of pages that cover a week (last year we did a four day week because Ava had co-op on Thursdays). Each day has a column for Ava's work and Tim's.

Each row is a block of time (not a standard block of time--I'm not that good). One might be used for circle time, another for chores, another for free time, another for an academic subject. In the left most column for each day, I denote who I am working one-on-one with for each block of time. For instance, Ava might be doing her handwriting (which is independent work) while I do Tim's reading lesson (which is not). This helps me balance the demands of homeschooling younger kids, which is more hands-on that I assume it will be when they are a little older.

Usually on Saturday, I sit down and look at all my curriculum. Much of it is mapped out by week. Some of it has a nice 36-week schedule (literature and history), some of it shows me how much to accomplish in a week (spelling and handwriting) and some of it, I simply schedule the next thing (math). This process might change a bit this year, because we have a new co-op, and Ava will be coming home with work. But basically, I look at what work needs to be done, and I split up their weekly work throughout the days.

My curriculum schedule

I left places to mark down what we are having for dinner each day and any other unrelated tasks that might have to get done. It has helped me tremendously that all this information is in one place. I just leave my planning notebook open to the correct week, and all the things I need to get done in the day are staring up at me. And most of the time I don't feel like I'm losing my mind.

This system has allowed me to be proactive in a way I never have been before in my life, but also retains the flexibility I cherish (and need). If a child is having a hard day, a little one is up early from nap, we have a doctor's appointment, a friend drops by, it might have to change. That's ok. I simply erase and rewrite or draw an arrow to "reschedule" the work. If all else fails, I move it to the following week. We still almost always get everything done that I plan.

One of those days when we needed to slow down for math. And change what we were having for dinner. Yay for staying organized even though I'm super indecisive!

This may all seem organized, but in truth, I'm not an organized person. I couldn't do the amount of things I need to do in a day if I didn't have a plan. My brain is too disorganized. These planning sheets are like a map to navigate the chaos of my life. Using it, I'm able to make a plan, but I hold it loosely. Proactive and reactive. Both of these things are vital.

***

 I'm providing a printable of these planning pages. It's blank (meaning I took my kids' names and all of our subjects off of it). I print these out front and back so that I can see the whole week. Feel free to adapt it for your own use. I hope it's helpful for you!

Blank Planning Pages

Purpose in the Little Things: Daily Routine (and How We Built It)

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.

***

After we established a good routine for getting ready in the morning, I spent a good deal of time thinking about what a typical day should look like for us. There is an awful lot to squeeze in a day! We try to make time for devotions, reading aloud, chores, play, going outside, meals, naps, and of course, all of Ava's school. It's like a big complicated puzzle.

I should say at the outset that I am more of a routine person than a schedule person. If I tried to go strictly by the clock, I would drive myself crazy. I'm just not wired that way, and there is too much unpredictability in my house to be able to schedule activities with any sort of precision. Our days do have a general flow to them, however. We do the same things in the same order most days, which works just fine for us.

I started building a routine by thinking about the things in our day that tended to happen every day at about the same time. This consists primarily of meals and naps for us. Those became the backbone of our day. As I looked at those things, I began to see that there were small “pockets” of time between them: the time between breakfast and snack, the time between snack and lunch. I also realized that the kids had small pockets of time that I didn’t have, like when I was preparing lunch or putting the baby down for a nap.

I made a list of all the things that we needed to do both daily and weekly and began to fill in the gaps. I realized pretty early on that not much school can happen when all four kids are awake. There are too many demands; Ava and I can barely have a conversation, much less do a lesson. From the get-go, I knew that the bulk of our school would have to be in the afternoon.

When we started the school year, Clara was taking morning and afternoon naps, Genevieve took an afternoon nap, and Tim was taking a quiet time (which sometimes turned into a nap). We did, at that point, have a little time in the morning to do something more organized (usually art or something similar). By the end of the year, though, Clara had dropped the morning nap, Genevieve's afternoon nap has morphed into a quiet time, and Tim was up all day most days. All that to say, routines have to change frequently when you have babies and toddlers. There are some growing pains with that, but we've generally been able to find something that works at every transition point.

As it stands right now, our general routine looks like this (note the lack of times):

Wake up 
Eat Breakfast 
Circle Time--Rarely are we actually in a circle, but we tend to gather for devotions, catechism, poetry, read aloud time, and either art or composer study (This is a lot for them to sit through, so I might tweak it a bit this year).
Morning Checklist--Since the three oldest shared a room (until just this week), we waited until everyone was up and had already eaten breakfast before getting ready. Basically, I didn't want them up there turning on lights and slamming drawers and waking the rest of the clan.
Chores—What we do shifts from day to day. (You can read about how we do chores here).
Free time for the kids until lunch—Depending on the day, we might do a quick clean-up here or we might just go outside for a nature walk. If we are in the house, we might listen to Ava’s Spanish cd or the composer we are currently studying.
Lunch
Free time--Play outside for a bit and/or read books together.
Clara naptime/Genevieve rest—The kids have a small pocket of time while I put the little girls down for rest. I sometimes have the kids listen to an audiobook or the Spanish cd here too. They can color or work on a sudoku or play while they listen.
School—This is our time for the subjects that require more input from me. We generally start with math (because that requires the most focus), and move on to literature & history (which this year came from our Ambleside curriculum), spelling, Spanish (maybe 2x a week), and sometimes handwriting. I sometimes do a little school with Timmy while Ava is working on something more independent. He likes to do school, so I schedule his work. However, if he would rather play legos, that's fine with me. I think there is a lot of value in play, and he's not even in kindergarten yet. 
Dinner Prep/Living Room Clean up—The kids usually do a clean up while I’m fixing dinner. I’ve started freezer cooking, which makes it easier in this time to help them along when they get stuck. Cleaning the living spaces is a big job most days, so they usually need guidance and direction from me.
Dinner
Family time—this might be a walk or a bike ride when the weather is nice. Depending on how much time we have, we might read a chapter of a book together.
Evening Checklist
Bedtime for the littles!

There is a very delicate balance to all this, and sometimes in the moment I have to tweak it or decide that something just doesn’t get done that day. There are days that the baby goes down late and it’s too late for Genevieve to take a quiet time (lest she never ever go to sleep that night and keep everyone else up too) and she’s along for the schooling ride. It’s not ideal, but there’s grace for that, and I’ve designed the routine to be flexible.

Even though we sometimes have “off” days, having a general plan helps me not feel paralyzed by all there is to do. I know that there’s a pocket of time for the things that have to get done, and I know what to do when. It also helps the kids transition better from play to schoolwork, because they know that they have set times for everything. Things run more smoothly, there are fewer arguments, and we get more done. Win, win, win.

Purpose in the Little Things: Morning Checklist (+ a Printable)

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

***

Mornings at our house have always been a little haphazard. Feeding all the kids, picking out all their clothes, and brushing their hair and teeth was an overwhelming task. It seemed that we could never get ready in time to actually get out of the house. In addition, it seemed that the tone for the day was set in that first hour or two. If that was spent directionless, our day tended to be directionless too.

I decided that if we were going to try to manage our time better, we would have to start with a good morning routine and work out from there.

As I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that the older kids were able to help get themselves ready in the morning, but I needed to help them by making their tasks clear.

First, I came up with a list of things they needed to accomplish. This includes getting up, going potty, having breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth and making their beds.

I decided to make a morning chart to help the kids know how to get ready in the morning. I wanted something that was pictorial, interactive, durable, reusable, and all one piece. Pictorial, because 3 of my 4 kids were pre-readers; interactive, so they could really see what they still had to do; reusable, so I wouldn't have to print out a new sheet each week; and one piece so we wouldn't be chasing cards or magnets all over the house.

This is the first design I came up with:

I really liked it; we put a morning checklist on one side and an evening checklist on the other. They would start by opening all the flaps, and close them one-by-one as they completed a task. This only lasted a month or two; it just didn't stand up to wear-and-tear (mostly tear).

In the end, I went to a single laminated sheet with a morning checklist on one side and an evening checklist on the other. I threaded string from each task to a check mark and put beads that the kids can slide across when they complete the tasks.

My 5- and 7-year-olds can now get themselves ready for the day and for bed completely independently. My 3-year-old can do about half of her checklist solo. Even though they don't always do it willingly, it helps that they know exactly what's expected. And it helps me so much because doing everything for everyone is just not feasible anymore. Mornings can still be crazy (why does everyone only have one shoe?!), but everyone at least knows now what they should be doing. It makes them more independent, and me (a little!) more sane.

***

Throughout this series, I'll be offering some printables. I'm no graphic designer, but I put quite a bit of time into them, and I'd love to save other mamas that hassle. They are mostly word and excel files, so feel free to adapt them for your own use! Hopefully the formatting won't be terrible for you! I got all the clip art for free online (mostly from Microsoft's site which seems to be defunct), but if you need other clip art images, there are many available for free on both Google and Bing. I hope these files are helpful to you!

Morning and  Evening Checklist--Girl
Morning and Evening Checklist--Boy

Practical Notes: If you plan to have this laminated at FedEx Office or a similar place, expect that the lamination will be difficult to punch holes in. They use a thicker laminating sleeve than home laminating systems. In order to get the beads on the sheet, I used embroidery floss and a thicker embroidery needle. I had to use one of the "pushers" from a fabric-covered button set to get the needle through. A thimble might also work. :)

One Thing at a Time

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.

***

It had all caught up with me: the chaos, the lack of organization and planning. It felt a little like drowning; but how to get my head above water?

I decided early on that I would start with one thing.

I think where I had gone wrong before was trying to do a complete overhaul all at once. I wanted things to be fixed the next day! But two or three days into a new system, I would be overwhelmed and quit.

So I started with one thing. You might think that we started by planning the big picture first: things like making a calendar and planning the following school year. As it turned out though, it was a lot more necessary for us to deal with the everyday chaos. We don't really have a lot of outside activities yet (ballet, t-ball and the like). Other than the occasional doctor appointment or play date, we are mostly at home. So the calendar on my smart phone (with its alerts and notifications) is about all I need to keep track of that stuff. Neither did I need to plan a lot for our homeschool year because the curriculum I was using pretty much did that for me.

Since it was summer and we weren't schooling, I decided to start by establishing daily and weekly routines that would help during the school year and work out from there.

Little by little, things got better. We established routines for a typical day, for getting ready in the morning at at night, for cleaning the house. I learned to plan everything from our meals to our homeschool week. Our kids grew more and more independent, taking charge of cleaning up their messes, household chores, and even some of their schoolwork.

The cumulative effect of all this has been dramatic. There is still always more to do and lots of chaos (which is normal with little kids to some extent), but we are far more equipped for the task now. I do sometimes (ok, often) get behind, but we are never quite so far from order as we once were. The result is that we are able to do this thing that we know is right for our kids, and that I am less overwhelmed.

Taking care of a family with four little kids is still demanding work and I am still stretched thin, but things are so much better. I now (most of the time) feel like my head is above water.

Time Management in the Crazy

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here.

***

Hi. I'm Jill, and I'm very type B.

I'm not sure if it's nature or nurture, but there is something inside my soul resistant to structure, schedules, and order.

I have always wanted to be one of those moms who has it all together, but my nature and this stage of life has always seemed antithetical to that. I never knew where to start getting life in order. I mean, my life is crazy. How do you make a plan that is flexible enough to use in an environment as unpredictable as a home with four little kids?

My solution was not to plan. I resisted blocking off too much time for scheduled activities for fear of not being able to respond to immediate needs. In doing this, I tended to be somewhat directionless; I never knew what I needed to be doing at any given moment. I got so behind on routine tasks that I was frequently overwhelmed by them. I felt the weight of all that needed to be done, but couldn't see where to start.

After reading this article, though, things started to come into focus. I realized I had been primarily reactive in my use of time. This is not all bad; it allowed me to respond to the child who was having a rough day or to be hospitable at the last minute or to chat with people who or who really needed a listening ear. I just needed to, as David Mathis exhorts, "let love for others be the driver of [my] disciplined, intentional planning."

I love my kids, my friends, my neighbors. Much of what I was doing was motivated by love. I had just never brought that love to bear on how I scheduled my time. As a result, I lacked intentionality.

But what to do? The following passage proved incredibly helpful in setting a framework for how to plan my time:

"Learning to let love inspire and drive our planning likely will mean fairly rigid blocks for our proactive labors, along with generous margin and planned flexibility to regularly meet the unplanned needs of others... Without scheduling, we will falter at the proactive; without flexibility, we’ll be unavailable for the reactive."

Looking back in those years of having babies and toddlers, I don't think I needed to have a highly structured schedule. I don't even think it was even wrong to be primarily reactive. There are some areas that I could have planned more carefully (meal planning and grocery shopping, for instance), but overall, I was ok with letting the kids decide what they wanted to do each day. They learned to play creatively and independently, and even now if we have a day off, they can entertain themselves.

However, now schooling my children at home, I have to be far more intentional with my time. Loving them now involves providing them with the structure they need to learn.

In the following posts, I hope to lay out how I found a way to be both proactive and reactive, intentional and flexible. Essentially, I learned to function as a type-A while maintaining my type-B soul.

Purpose in the Little Things

Growing up, I loved shopping for school supplies as much as I enjoyed shopping for school clothes. My mom and I would go out and buy all the necessities, of course. And we would always buy me a student planner.

I never used it.

I really wanted to be organized; I spent inordinate amounts of time planning new systems to make it happen. I just never hit upon a system that worked for me, and I never followed through.

I carried my lack of organization into motherhood. By the time I had three children, I was overwhelmed, the house was a wreck, and I still hadn't done much to figure out how to manage it all. We squeaked by, but barely.

And then, in the span of a month, I had my fourth baby and started to homeschooling my eldest daughter. This is when I realized that what I had been doing wasn't going to work anymore. I needed to be running my home, not the other way around. There simply was not a way for me to homeschool my children in chaos.

We coasted through kindergarten. It helped that Ava was already reading at the time. We simply read a lot and did a little math. We figured out what we believed about education. We learned a lot, and by God's grace, we survived.

By last summer, though, it was clear that I was going to have to climb the steep learning curve of home management. We tweaked a little at a time, and now we are at a place where it mostly feels possible to be doing this crazy home education thing. Or maybe even just this life with four children thing.

I'd really like to share a little bit of this journey with you. I'm not a natural homemaker, nor do I have everything figured out. Organization and planning are difficult for me, and there is still a lot of craziness at my house (which I'm convinced is always true to some extent when you have small children). Still, we have learned so much in the past twelve months, changing little thing after little thing. I hope these posts help and encourage other moms, particularly those struggling like I was.

Sometimes what we do as moms feels unimportant and small. But little things can be absolutely vital to the big picture of the ministry that happens in our homes. The little things help us love our families well and create an environment where life and learning can happen. They give discipleship the space it needs to occur. This knowledge fills our days with purpose, even when they are full of what feels like little things.

***

This is a series of posts. For ease of navigation, here are links to all the posts in this series! Enjoy!

Post 1: Time Management in the Crazy 
Post 2: One Thing at a Time
Post 3: Morning and Evening Checklists 
Post 4: Daily Routine (and How We Built It) 
Post 5: Homeschool Planning
Post 6: Task Cards and Wall Chart 
Post 7: Independent Work and Assignment Sheet
Post 8: Cleaning Checklist
Post 9: Chores 
Post 10: Getting Kids to Clean Up

Master List of Printables

And because these two topics have also been a huge part of this journey (but I don't want to necessarily re-post them):

This is How We Do It: Meal Planning & Grocery Shopping (now with a printable)
This is How We Do It: Dinner Time & Freezer Cooking

 

This is How We Do It: Date Night

--> This post is part of a link up hosted by my friends at the Boutelle Family Blog and Grace Mountain Diaries. You can find that link up here and here.

***

When my son was little, I bought him a onesie that said, “Mommy needs a date night.” And it was true. Sometimes you just need to get out of the house.

But the more kids we’ve had, the more complicated it’s gotten for us to be gone at bedtime. None of our last three kids were great about taking a bottle, and they were all born so close together that we’ve had a Baby That Was Hard To Put To Bed in the house for more than five years. There are also a lot of them, so I feel bad asking people to put my kids to bed alone when I struggle to do it alone.

We do get out for some longer dates sometimes, and have even managed to do some overnights here and there. But a lot of times, even if we get out, we grab dinner and try to be home in time to help put the kids to bed.

More often than not, though, we have date night in. I’m really ok with that. It’s nice to get out, but the goal of date night for us is staying connected to each other through this demanding season. So sometimes date night in is just us sitting at the kitchen table catching up and talking about the things that we're thinking about over tea. A lot of times it's catching a show on Netflix while we fold laundry or getting a movie at Redbox (which sometimes takes three nights to watch). I assume that a little further down the road date night will be easier, but for now, we spend time together. We talk. We stay friends. And that’s the most important thing.

A Year in Books

C.S. Lewis once said, "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

This is one of the real treats of parenthood for me: introducing my kids to beautiful books and also experiencing them myself.

This has been the year of the chapter book. We have read many, many picture books this year, but my three oldest have all come to love longer stories (so much so that they make Daniel tell them stories in chapters at night). The books below were some of our favorites. Daniel and I have enjoyed them just as much the kids have, if not more.

Charlotte's Web--This was the first chapter book we read together as a family, and also the book that made me realize they were all ready for a steady diet of chapter books. They didn't want me to put it down!

Winnie-the-Pooh & The House at Pooh Corner- These are charming, funny, oh so cleverly written. We all loved them, but Timmy and Genevieve named them their favorite books we read together. The stories work independently of one another, so we often go back and re-read our favorites them when the mood strikes.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle--A series of books about a woman with cures for all kinds of ills that strike children, from not wanting to make their beds to refusing to take a bath. Laugh-out-loud funny, and also good for kids who might suffer from these conditions too.

Peter Pan--Daniel's favorite read of the year. This one is also extremely clever and laugh-out-loud funny. A classic for a reason! I do, however, prefer this as a read aloud because there is a bit of language (Tinkerbell has a foul mouth!).

A Little Princess--A beautiful book about a girl left at a boarding school after her mother dies. When her father dies, she is left destitute. A beautiful story of redemption, it had me crying (sad and happy tears) with each chapter. This one was my favorite (I think...so hard to choose!). 

Homer Price--This book is old fashioned in the best way! The stories are humorous and McCloskey's illustrations can't be beat!

The Moffatts--A collection of stories about a poor family who have lots of adventures in the small town where they live. This one gave us warm fuzzies and a lot of laughs.

My Father's Dragon (series)--An adventure story about a boy who sets out to rescue a baby dragon. Highly imaginative. I read these to Tim before naptime, and he loved them. I think we read the whole series in a week. He still asks to read them often.

A Bear Called Paddington--These are sort of a cross between the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and Curious George. Paddington is a charming bear who gets himself into lots of trouble. Very funny.

Just So Stories--These stories were on our reading list for school. They had the kids (and me) in stitches. The language is a little thick, so I would recommend for older children.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe--C.S. Lewis is incomparable. Every time I read about Aslan, I fall more in love with Jesus. The kids were spell-bound.

The Night Fairy-A beautifully written adventure about a fairy who must learn to survive without her wings. Everyone loved this one.

Blue Fairy Book-This book was also a part of our curriculum for this past year. It is a collection of fairy tales, many of them the original tellings (Perrault's Cinderella, for instance). Ava loves fairy tales, so she picked this as her favorite. We have also loved this volume from Usborne. Also beautifully told and illustrated, but the tales are shorter and at a more accessible reading level.

This has been such a fun new adventure for me as a parent. I have so enjoyed experiencing these stories together as a family. I'm looking forward to reading aloud with them as long as they'll let me!

What books have you enjoyed reading with your kids?