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. 

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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.

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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. :)