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So now that you are convinced that “delighting in the dailies” will help you accomplish your goals, how do you get them started (and keep them going) during the initial stages—when there isn’t a lot of fruit to show for your efforts, and you are convinced some day that you should just forget making dinner and go play solitaire or buy some sort of farm equipment (on the computer…lol)?

Here are some tips for learning to truly “delight in the dailies” and make those dailies a long-term reality in your home:

1. Start out with a few of the very most important dailies—and make these things happen every day for a couple of weeks.

(See “Delighting in the Dailies—Part I of II” here.)

Don’t make a huge dailies list and wake up on Monday morning assuming that the magic list will all happen on that day. At times, my “dailies” (not including the children’s daily chores) could be thirty tasks long. If you are not used to doing certain things every day, this can be very overwhelming.

There are two ways to start tackling your dailies (which will eventually lead to your delighting in them):

a. Start with the four or five most important dailies for yourself and one or two per child and tackle these. Attach them to something that you already do every day (get up in the morning, eat breakfast, eat lunch, etc.). And start carrying them out over and over again. Once this is going well, add more. See my post about making a change a week or a change a month here.

b. Start with the first thing in the morning—and do your morning dailies only (for everyone in the family). (You might do others, but focus on making sure the morning ones are done consistently.) I often give the advice that when you want to change the way your days are going, start with the first hour of the day. Get this hour looking exactly like you want it to look (constantly!). Then move on to the next hour, etc. I personally like this approach because I love to make my day great by getting my morning started right.

2. Find someone who “delights in her dailies” and get a vision for this way of life from her.

Believe it or not, I actually knew several moms (either in person or through seminars/conventions) who were “delighting in their dailies” as many as thirty years ago! And this prompted me to make this a way of life. I could see the fruit of their daily disciplines, and I wanted that in my home as well. A well-run home is a beautiful thing, and we older moms need to teach and help younger moms learn these vital skills.

3. Believe in the daily approach to life.

Additionally, as an incremental type of teacher, I knew that “precept upon precept” and “line upon line” was the way that my children would master their subjects—and that incremental learning comes through dailies. I also knew from past experience that skipping things that needed done all the time in favor of things that either didn’t HAVE to be done or things that needed done less frequently didn’t work.

I had to believe in this approach in order to really carry it out. If you are waning in your ability to carry this out, make a list of all of the benefits to doing the dailies on your list (i.e. new reader will blossom through daily reading aloud to Mom, no more five o’clock scrambles for dinner, etc.). Pull this list out to help you “believe” when your faith is weak (and, once again, Farmville is calling!).

4. Notice the fruit (the real fruit!).

After a very short while, you will notice that something (or more than one thing) you have developed as a daily in your life is REALLY benefiting your family. Note this! If your struggling mathematician suddenly knows his x8’s because math drill became a daily for him, you have some juicy fruit! If your husband happily puts on his clean dress shirts in the morning (instead of the former morning clothing scramble!), then you have fruit. If you don’t dread four o’clock any more but actually sit down and read online articles for a while until sweet angels wake up from their naps, you have an entire fruit bowl! Notice it. Enjoy it. And realize that this fruit is there because you learned to delight in your dailies.

5. Believe that these dailies are truly the most important parts of your ministry to your family right now.

Anybody can swoop in and be a hero once or do something big here and there—and those have the potential to be ministries to your family too. However, when we understand and truly believe that what we do when we get up first thing in the morning is truly a ministry to our family, we will look at our dalies differently.

I know there are entire books written about the ministry of magic of motherhood. And they are right. But we have to do more than believe it in theory. We have to have it deep within us that when we consistently cook with our ten year old every day for lunch, we are doing God’s work. We have to breathe it in, take it in, and know it at that moment. When we lie down at the end of the day, we have to feel, believe, and KNOW that we have fulfilled an amazing calling on our life that day—because we did our dailies, God’s task list for us at this time in our lives.

6. Realize that you have accomplished a great thing.

Have you ever heard about the research for mastery in life? Some studies show that it takes repeating an action ten thousand times to become accomplished in it. Just look at each time that you do something (plan the next meal, do a reading lesson with a child, reach out to your preteen’s heart) as a step towards mastery. It really works. You will become so good at the things that you do over and over and over again!

It is rare to find a “work-at-home” mom who can juggle really well. How many times have you personally heard someone say that she could never do what you are doing—that she couldn’t spend all day with her kids or that she wouldn’t have the motivation that you have or that she can’t get organized without the structure of employment? What we are trying to do here—manage a home well, educate our children, and spend all day every day with kids—is not easy to do. If you continue to improve yourself as a home manager and a homeschooler, year after year, you will get more and more accomplished—and you will soon realize that you have done something very rare and very great.

7. But don’t get smug! 🙂

After delighting in your dailies for a while, and continuing to add more and more important dailies into your life, you will be amazed at the skills you have. Bask in that. It is such a great feeling to delight in your dailies. Such an awesome peace that comes with knowing that you are doing—day in and day out—what you are supposed to be doing. Actually, this feeling alone is enough to keep you going. (While I don’t advocate in living on feelings, there is a calm and peace that comes with doing what you are supposed to be doing—and THAT is a great feeling!) So enjoy it…but don’t be smug! Soon there will be someone else who wants you to help her learn to “delight in her dailies”—and you will be just the gal to do it!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies—Part II of II appeared first on Character Ink.

We all want to raise children who love learning—and if they love homeschooling, too, well, that’s even better. I wanted my kids to love learning and homeschooling so much twenty-five years ago that I wouldn’t teach a child to read unless he could learn within a few weeks with no tears. (Otherwise, we put it on the back burner for a couple more months.) I was serious about this love for learning stuff!

However, in an effort to be sure our kids enjoy homeschooling, we often run into something that makes it hard for us parents to enjoy it—and something that actually handicaps our children in the future. This concept is one of indulgent homeschooling vs fun homeschooling.

Just like our children “don’t like” this or “don’t want” that or “have to have” this or “can’t be happy without” this–and thus, are often not happy with the “normal” things of life–so it is with our children in homeschooling.

Before I come off sounding like an ogre, I want to assure you that we had a fun homeschool. If you were to ask our children (seven of them ages seventeen through thirty-three) if our homeschool was fun, you would hear answers like the following:

“Oh yeah! Dad used to use these huge red pressboard bricks to teach Bible stories. We would build the temple, Zacchaeus’ tree, and even Jesus’ boat!”

“Fun? How many kids do you know who got to sleep at the top of the jungle gym at Science Central overnight—WITH their parents!”

“I can’t imagine more fun than having your mom read to you for two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. School was definitely fun at our house!”

“It was a blast! When Mom and Dad got us new books and other fun things from the homeschool convention, they would wake us up at midnight when they got home and show us everything and start reading them to us!”

However, one reason that our children found homeschooling fun was because everything didn’t always have to be fun. Just like an indulgent child can’t be happy unless she gets to have a friend overnight, order pizza, and buy new make up to do make-overs often, a homeschooled child will not think school is fun if he has to have fun all the time. I call this the fun factor in homeschooling.

So, strange as it may seem, my first suggestion to making school fun and helping your kids love learning and love homeschooling is to not try to make everything fun.

Our kids knew fun times were coming. They knew that Mom and Dad loved learning and loved homeschooling and would make things fun at times. They knew that we had something fun up our sleeves to pull out any time.

But they also knew that school was their occupation–and it was often just plain hard work sometimes. And it needed to be done. Day in and day out. Just like Dad went to his job and worked his tail off–so Mom and the kids do the same at home.

Our mantra was “daytime is for learning and working and evenings are for fun and family.” (Obviously, we did fun things during the day too—see partial list above….but they knew that they couldn’t just do anything they wanted during the day. They needed to be learning, working, growing. It was their occupation. (And yes, we did have play time for youngers; breaks; etc.!)

We didn’t need to have bells and whistles all the time because they began to love normal (just like their parents did—hint hint–modeling!). They always knew the expectations, and they knew that every day they had to get up and follow a routine for learning, growing, becoming, and maturing.

They learned the joy of following a loose (block) school schedule, setting goals and meeting them, completing tasks, and of gaining knowledge.

They knew that there were many things we do just because they are the right things to do. Every subject, every day doesn’t have to be fun. Chores don’t always have to be games and contests–or rewarded (though sometimes they were!).

Independent lists were there to keep them on track. They were their to-do lists every day.

Chores were a part of our day because chores make a home run smoothly—and give us more time in the evenings for fun family activities.

We taught our children a contentment in homeschooling–in our way of life—that made the fun even more fun, the special even more special, and the extraordinary even more extraordinary.

The Fun Factor in Homeschooling–the fun begins when the normal is good too.

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We had some definite advantages to raising children and homeschooling during “the stone age”! 🙂 For one thing, we didn’t have many choices of activities, so it was much easier to stay home and build good study habits, household work schedules, and family time. (Obviously, it can still be done today, but we were forced to stay home more in general.) Secondly, we were blissfully unaware of the demanding academics of today. We didn’t know that our kids needed to know everything that is now required to graduate and go to college. We didn’t do labs, advanced math, and other more strenuous academic pursuits with our first born at all. (I’m not saying this was good–I’m just saying it gave us more of a precious commodity that everyone longs for today–time.)

This “stay-at-home, do-your-work, learn-to-get-along-with-the-friends-you-have-here (siblings!)” way of living was actually pretty sweet. We had long, wonderful days together, and I will carry those warm memories with me throughout the rest of my life. (Sorry, I tend to wax nostalgic over days gone by quite often lately!)

With those long days at home came some things I am forever grateful for–in addition to the closeness of our kids and warm memories. The time and necessity of developing habits.

Time to develop them because we were often home all together doing school and household things twelve hours a day while Ray was at work. Necessity because we were often home all together doing school and household things twelve hours a day while Ray was at work. 🙂

Now that I’m all grown up and an entrepreneur working from home, helping parents, sharing health, teaching other students besides my own, and still mentoring grown children (and babysitting grandkids each week), I am so aware of the power of habits in my own life.

With seven children grown, ages 19 to 35, many still in various levels of college and post grad school as well as some with their own businesses and growing families, I am aware (and grateful) fo the time and necessity that we had to help build habits into their lives.

(Want my take on applying all of my productivity tips to homeschooling and entrepreneurship? Check out my productivity video series at Donna Reish blog.)

Below are some links to books I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

One of my favorite books on the topic of habit building is The Power of Habit

But for time saving purposes, I recommend an amazing TedX talk on this subject. It emphasizes the importance of teaching habit, self-control, and self-regulation to our children. I think you will benefit greatly from it whether you are a parent, homeschooler, or educator. Take a look here:

Here are some resources/posts that can help you in building habits in your children in the new year!

Attaching Important Things To Your Schedule

Love-Hate Relationships With Homeschooling Schedules

How to Build Chores Into Your Daily Schedule

Age Appropriate Printable Chore Posters

Independent Work Lists for Junior High and High School

How to Use Independent Work Lists for Elementary Children

Video: Using Check Lists for Student’s Independent Work

The post The Importance of Building Habits Into Our Children appeared first on Character Ink.

When we watch diligence webinars or attend diligence workshops, we have a tendency to think in terms of how we can teach our kids to be more diligent.

I have written and spoke about this extensively….check out…..

• Children & Chores: Creating A Balance of Independent Work Vs. Working With You
• Wondering Wednesday: Children & Chores
• Age-Appropriate Chore Posters [download]
• Independent Work Lists [download]

But just like everything else that we want to help our children develop, diligence must first be in us!

I have spent the past three decades trying to become more efficient, more organized, more productive….and, yes, more diligent.

I have learned some benchmarks to test my own diligence. I have also learned some tricks to become more diligent—just a few here and there!

Guess what? The better we get at working in our homes…the more diligent we become….the more thorough and organized we are….the better our homes run.

True story.

So check out my video below and consider what diligence changes you can make this summer!

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The post How to Become an Amazingly Diligent Mom! appeared first on Character Ink.

Welcome to Wondering Wednesday, a podcast by Donna Reish where she answers readers’ questions about homeschooling, home management, child training, and more!  Have a question for Donna?  Email her at characterinklady@gmail.com.

 

Click on the pictures below to go to the podcasts you want to listen to, or click here to see a list and listen to all of the podcasts right here on this page 🙂

 

Subscribe to our Podcasts in iTunes!

 

Click on the podcast you want to listen to below.  A free printable handout will pop up after a few seconds into the podcast.

 

 

 

 

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When homeschooling moms hear the word “schedule,” they either cringe or celebrate. It seems that there is a division of camps when it comes to scheduling. While those who “celebrate” the schedule might be guilty of micro-managing their children and maybe even putting undue pressure on them, those who ‘cringe” when confronted with the idea of scheduling might suffer from a lack of productivity due to their disdain for schedules.

I have found that you do not have to have a love-hate relationship with schedules, but rather you have to figure out which type of homeschooler you are—one who loves schedules and wants to follow one to the letter or one who doesn’t care for them and would do better with a looser type of schedule that still provides some sense of structure.

If you love schedules, then you will probably do better with a moment-by-moment, or at least hour-by-hour one to guide your day.

If you are “allergic” to schedules, you might find a block type of schedule in which you do certain things in a certain order during certain time periods to suit your time management style. I used a combination of both—but always had the “block schedule” in mind for even our toddlers all the way through high school. I divided our day up into

Early morning

Morning

Noontime

Early afternoon

Late afternoon

Early evening

Dinner hour

Late evening

While I might not firmly make 10:00-10:30 math for everybody, I always knew (and the kids always knew) what to expect based on the block of time it was.

Regardless of what type of schedule you use, there are a few key things to being successful in homeschool scheduling. I will leave you with a few of these: (a) Change the schedule every few months as needed, based on the ages of your children; (b) Write the schedule out and “advertise” it for everybody in your family to see all the time; and (c) Attach things that are really important to you to things that are already in your schedule.

(a) Change the schedule as needed.

I found especially with little ones that I needed to change the schedule to adjust to their needs and my availability. When I had littles, I actually revised the schedule every season—based on how long the baby was nursing at that time; how long the toddler napped; who could do which chores now; who needed longer blocks of school meetings with me; etc. I wasn’t locked into the exact same schedule for the entire school year, but I changed it as the children changed throughout the year.

(b) Write the schedule and “advertise” it.

I posted our schedules on the refrigerator, in the fronts of the kids’ binders, on their lesson plan/check sheets, etc., so that everybody could always look and see what was supposed to be happening in our day at a certain time. The lunch person always knew what time he or she was supposed to be in the kitchen; the laundry person always knew what time laundry was to be done each day. By “publishing” the schedule for all to see, I made it more official—and I could even get Dad involved in helping me enforce it if I had a true, posted schedule.

(c) Attach important things to things that are already in your schedule.

We learned this trick (along with dozens of others) from Gregg Harris twenty-five years ago—and have used it every year since then. He said that if something is really important to you to do in your family, attach that activity to an existing one. For instance, if reading aloud to your children is something you really want in your schedule, attach it to breakfast, lunch, or bedtime—times that are already established in your home. We did this with many, many things—attaching things to existing things until our attachments had attachments attached to them—and our day was one big attachment! 🙂

Scheduling your homeschool doesn’t have to be drudgery with everybody following thirty minute time boxes and nobody enjoying it. Make your schedule work for you and your family!

OTHER SCHEDULING HELPS:

[Video] Wondering Wednesday: Scheduling Q & A

Using a Block Time Approach to Big Work Days

Podcast Handout For ” How Can I Turn My Day From Chaos to Control? From Rowdy to Routine?”

The post Love-Hate Relationships With Homeschooling Schedules appeared first on Character Ink.

Then you get home and start to make the charts, create the checklists, and hold the family meeting…and you suddenly have questions. A lot of questions….

Wowsie, I remember those days twenty-five and thirty years ago…like yesterday. (I’m so grateful that I remember so many happy memories associated with our thirty-two years of homeschooling!)

Well, this post is for those times. I recently did a 32 Scheduling Tips From 32 Years of Homeschooling presentation. Afterwards, I received emails and FB messages with those nagging questions that mamas get when they are going home and trying to implement something they just learned…

So consider this the follow up to the speaker that you heard and got so excited about. We all need that sometimes! 🙂

Love and hope,
Donna

P.S. Find other chore podcasts here.

The post Q&A Morning Routines, Chores & More! appeared first on Character Ink.

But here it is….let me know what homeschooling, parenting, language arts, writing, Plexus, and marriage questions you have….I’ll make you a *short* Wondering Wednesday video or podcast. 🙂

Be sure to check out the handout here!

Here’s the YouTube description: “In this video, Donna Reish, author of seventy language arts curriculum books, brings you thirty-two organizational and scheduling strategies from her thirty-two years of homeschooling experience. Donna explains the importance of using an ABC prioritizing system, having chore sessions in place, starting your morning out right, getting kids on board with cleaning and chores, meeting your family’s goals, and much more.”

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The post [Video] 32 Organizing and Scheduling Tips From 32 Years of Homeschooling appeared first on Character Ink.

Summer. That care-free time when we make a list of fun activities—and a list of good intentions for teaching and growing. To be sure that the summer doesn’t pass you by with unmet goals and regrets, I wanted to apply some of our goal setting information to your summer!

If you have heard us talk about goal setting for your family, you know that we encourage you to make your goals like this:

1. List an outcome you want

2. Determine an action that will help you achieve that

3. Put the action into the schedule or routine

Let’s walk through a couple potential summer “to do” items to see how you can make these real for your family:

Sample ONE:

1. List an outcome you want: Learn More About Creation Science This Summer

2. Determine an action that will help you achieve that: Have each child choose a creation science book to read for the summer

3. Put the action into the schedule or routine: Have creation science reading time after breakfast and chores each morning (or at bedtime or whatever…follow our attach it to something in the schedule advice! 🙂 )

Sample TWO:

1. List an outcome you want: Talk to kids more often and without distractions

2. Determine an action that will help you achieve that: Fire Pit Talks With No Electronics (Read about Techno-Free Talks here!)

3. Put the action into the schedule or routine: Thursday night easy dinner followed by marshmallows and fire pit with no electronics and whole family for one hour

One thing I didn’t mention is to be sure that everybody has the action on their schedule/calendar! This is more likely to happen if you have calendar meetings or other family times that give direction to the family’s week.

The point is that good things do not just happen. Those things have to be purposeful, planned, and followed through on.

We can make abstract goals and ideals forever…but until they are given actionable tasks and times, they are just goals (i.e. dreams) and ideals. You can make good things happen for your family!

Tell us about a dream/goal/ideal that you have for your family this summer—and how you are going to make it happen!

Links

When You Want Mamas to Feel Great

Do It More Often Than Not: The Secret to Consistency Without Defeat

Homeschooling Mamas Earning Money From Home (Join my Team!)

My Busy Mamas Plexus Upline: You Can Do It, Too!

[Series] 52 Weeks of Talking to Our Kids

[Podcast] 30 Tips from 30 Years

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