When I hear those words coming from my kids, I know it’s time to get my butt in gear and stop wasting time. When I am lazy, my kids are lazy too. My kids have watched WAY too many episodes of iCarly and Good Luck Charlie lately (NETFLIX can be a bad thing). And it’s gotten to the point where all I am hearing are quotes from the shows, and everytime I turn around, they are sneaking the TV back on. It’s summer. We should be outside, enjoying the warm weather, doing things we don’t get to do during the school year.
Last night my sister and I had a conversation about this very thing…about how when you let your kids watch TV first thing of the day, it sets them off in this lazy funk, they cop attitudes with us, are mean to their siblings…both of us noticed this from our kids, yet when they know what to expect, when there is a schedule, something to look forward to, attitudes seem much more positive…it totally makes a difference. Today is our first day on the new schedule and job rotations. It started out a little shaky, because we had to have a meeting this morning and there was a little resistance (but not a lot) and then we made up the job charts and so we were a little behind so we skipped a few things. But we discussed that we might not always follow the schedule EXACTLY because we may go to the lake or go to a friend’s house.
So I should say that I have done job charts in the past, used them for a while and then gave up. Mostly because they required a lot of time from me. We’ve tried job sticks, job cards, and our kids have accounts set up on myjobchart.com which works very well for us for earning rewards. But, if the kids don’t take the time to check off their jobs at the end of each day, they don’t get credit for it. And, personally, I think it works best when the job chart is in front of them on paper and they can physically check off their jobs.
So after chatting with my sister about how her and I need to get something in place (because dealing with grumpy kids all day is NOT enjoyable), I searched around on some blogs to see what other people have done with their kids. No sense in reinventing the wheel, right? So I happened to stumble across this blog post and was excited about the way she had jobs for her kids on a rotation and also she had assigned Zones for her kids to clean and tidy. Two things I haven’t thought of yet, and I think it could work. I took her summer schedule and changed it a bit and then made up the job rotation.
Here is our summer schedule…and as I said, it is subject to change, depending on what’s going on that day.
SUMMER SCHEDULE
7:30 Wake up, family scripture, get dressed, make bed/clean room
8:00 Breakfast
8:15 Clean up Breakfast, morning jobs
8:30 Morning Exercise – walk, ride bike, run, jump on trampoline, etc.
9:00 Clean Zones. Pick up house.
10:00 Read/Quiet time
10:30 Outside play or swim
12:00 Lunch
12:15 Clean up Lunch
12:30 Brain Fun: Board Games, friends, building toys, play outside, crafts or art activity
2:30 Jasmin Nap/ Wii free time, computer time, DS
4:30 Pick up house
5:00 Dinner time jobs – Set table, unload dishwasher, dinner prep
5:30 Dinner & Clean up.
6:00 Play with friends, play outside, special adventure
7:30 (on days when we are home) – Movies for kids who were kind, courteous, and civil to their brothers and sisters…violators go to bed.
And here is a link to her job rotation that she used:
So I adapted that and made up some simple check off charts for each of my kids. Jasmin is only 3, so I may make her a different version that is a little more simple and easy for her to understand. I velcroed them to the side of my cupboards, but they aren’t staying very well, I am thinking some plastic hooks & some clipboards. The nice thing about the plastic sleeves they are in is that you can use a dry erase pen on them and we can stick their reading logs from the Summer Reading program, at the library, in the back. I wanted to make these really cute and crafty, but I just wasn’t feeling too inspired today, maybe later. The idea is that they check off the tasks as they do them, the weekly task can be done anytime throughout the week, or on Saturday, and there is also an extra job for Saturday. Each night we will check the charts and if all the boxes are filled in, they get a sticker for the day. The kids and I are working on proper rewards for earning stickers. (We are thinking like 1 sticker could be a sucker or a stick of gum, where all 7 would be something really cool like a movie or a new book…but we are still working on it) So after the sticker is given (or NOT), we erase the chart and have it ready for the next day. We will change to new rotations on Monday…so like, this week Savannah is on rotation 1, next week she will be on 2, so we will just erase her name on 1 and write it on 2 and next week she will be doing the jobs on rotation 2. Here is a PDF of the 4th rotation: ROTATION4JOB
So, anyway…we will see if it works. I just had to send Max to his room for talking back to me and fighting with Karson. I don’t know what the answer is to keeping peace in the family during these few months at home…but I am hoping (deparately) that this helps. 🙂
