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.

This was definitely me before I started keeping running grocery lists in the NOTES on my phone.

I don’t want fancy grocery apps. I don’t go to several stores a week, etc.I don’t want handfuls of coupons. I just want a quick list with healthy foods on it! 🙂

Here is what I do:

1) A different page in my notes for each store I go to plus Amazon. (For me, that is Sam’s, Kroger, and Amazon. Plus a page for when my husband runs into Walmart once or twice a month.)

2) The bottom of each page has the ongoing list of the things I usually get there…somewhat grouped by area (though I will admit that the notes section is not nearly as user friendly as a WORD doc!).

3) The top of the list has the current grocery list for that week (or the next week…I alternate Sam’s then Kroger’s, etc.). I have been adding to this since the last time I was at that particular store.

4) When it is time to go, I do the following:

a. I ask everybody what needs added and add those items to the top.

b. I look at the meat sales and produce sales quickly (as in while I am getting my cart in the front of the store).

c. I decide sort of what we are eating next week. (With only four of us at home, this is not a huge deal…plus, I have my freezer entrees.)

d. If there are good meat sales, I add that meat in bulk a little– plus anything else it takes to make a few freezer entrees out of that meat (to the top for today). (I.e. If ground beef is on sale, and I just used our last lasagna, I will add eight pounds of ground beef and the lasagna ingredients for four pans of lasagna.)

e. I skim the bottom of the page (where the “things I often buy at this store” list is). If I remember we are low on something, I add it to the top.

5) Then I shop!

I had much more elaborate systems (too elaborate!) when we had seven kids at home, homeschooling–all meals and snacks at home! But this works for our little family right now and for the number of hours each week I am working.

Even if this is too simple for your home, I hope that you will see that sometimes “less is more.” Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Sometimes it doesn’t have to as long and laborious as we think it does.

KISS—Keep It Simple, Sister! 🙂

The post Using the Notes App on Your Phone for Grocery Shopping appeared first on Character Ink.

Donna Reish, from Character Ink publishing and Raising Kids With Character, answers parents’ questions about children and chores. Donna introduces some foundational diligence training tips that have helped her in her home management for over twenty-five years. She then introduces toddlers and preschoolers habits and chores and then branches out chore sessions, dividing up chores, paying for chores, and much more!

Click here to download the printable handout.

Subscribe to our Wondering Wednesday podcasts in iTunes.

The post Wondering Wednesday: Children & Chores appeared first on Character Ink.

At the end of a recent post “Time in a Bottle”, I promised a Timely Tip article, so here it is!

After thirty-two years of parenting (and thirty years of homeschooling, beginning with homeschooling my younger sister), we have learned a ton abut time management. Some of it we use every day. Other tips were used during certain seasons. And still others we use just occasionally. Here are “Five Timely Tips“ (in no certain order) that I hope will help parents find more time to train their children, love their children, play with their children, and just be WITH their children.

1. Attach things to things already in your schedule

Twenty-five years ago we were blessed to learn from an amazing family teacher, Gregg Harris. One of the things that he taught us that we began implementing immediately–and continue to use to this day–is the concept of attaching important things to things already in your schedule.

Mr. Harris said that our children (and we!) already eat three times a day; they already get up in the morning and go to bed at night. If we want to make something stick in our routines with them, attach that important activity (reading to them, devotions, talking together, etc.) to one of these “already-in-the-schedule-no-matter-what” activities).

We came home and started attaching things to our meals, rising times, and bed times–and before we knew it, we were attaching attachments to our attachments! It really worked!

We started out simple–just keeping a family devotional by the dinner table for one of us to read while the rest cleaned up the meal, moving the kids’ breakfast to the little table where I planted myself on the end and read as they ate, etc. But before we knew it, a little bit at a time, we were doing many wonderful things that we thought only really disciplined and perfect families did.

2. Watch out for time robbers

 In “Time in a Bottle,” I described how we would respond if someone were to break into our car and steal our wallet–and $100. We would be outraged! It would serve us well in our families to be a little bit more outraged by time robbers in our lives–those things that steal our time (or that we allow to steal our time).

The statistics on television viewing, “screen time,” and more are alarming when you consider the number of hours we spend on entertainment vs with our children. I like movies and entertainment as much as the next person, but, thankfully, we were taught by intentional parents many years ago that we cannot let entertainment overtake our lives–and pull us away from the important things in life–God, spouse, children, and others.

Rather than tell you to get rid of this or that, let me leave you with this thought about time robbers: If the latest stats about average weekly “screen time” of thirty-three hours per week per person are really true, can you imagine what would happen if any of us who are logging that kind of “recreational” screen time simply took half of that time to be with those we love, to truly raise our children, and to serve others and the Lord?

3. Understand Seasons of Life

The aforementioned Gregg Harris also taught us about an important concept concerning time and priorities: the seasons of life. At the time that we heard his teaching about doing things that are in “your season,” we were a young couple with four small children trying to do what “elders” should do–and wondering why there wasn’t time for everything.

Once we understood that our season was “babies and business” at that time, we were free–free to raise our children (and work really hard at that!) and free for Ray to work to earn a living, but not necessarily do everything else that men without four small kids were doing.

Guess what? We started to get good at what we were doing! We started being successful in our parenting–simply because we had the time to do what we really needed to do.

If you have trouble saying no to things that are obviously out of your season, I recommend that you get this teaching (Ebay?) and take it to heart. Even if you don’t get the entire teaching, consider these few paragraphs here. Are you continually trying to “fit it all in”? Maybe some things you are trying to do aren’t really for you right now.

4. Skip the good to do the best

This sort of goes along with Tip #3, but this, too, was a “great awakening” for our family. Everything looks “good”–all of the dozens of activities for our kids, many programs and hobbies for parents, even Bible studies and Christian groups. And now with the internet, we are bombarded with good things to do all the time–ways to make our home more beautiful, our food more healthful, our children more cleverly-dressed, and more.

And there is nothing wrong with any of those. But I would appeal to you that some of those things are good. But just good. That’s all. Good, but not best.

Each family has to determine what is their family’s “best.” Nobody but you and your spouse can do that. However, when we went through our family’s schedule and rated things as simply “good” and “yes, best,” it was another eye opener for us that allowed us to streamline our lives and make the most of our time.

Hint: The “bests” for all of us will include at least some time with our kids–and probably less running!  🙂

 5. Show your kids their value to you by giving them the greatest gift of all–-time

Okay, so you are tired of hearing me say this. But if you had unearthed the most amazing tool for raising children ever to be discovered, would you be able to keep quiet about it? Smile…. (Okay, maybe the Reishes didn’t “unearth” it, but we are still shouting it from the mountaintops anyway!)

In our parenting seminar (“Raising Kids With Character”), my husband loves to tell the story of Absalom in II Samuel. In summary, the people who came to the king for help kept stopping outside the gates and getting advice from Absolam. The verse says, “And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (Ii Sam. 15:6).

As Ray likes to tell it: What did Absalom do that allowed him to “steal the hearts” of the Israelites? He was available.

There is nothing that shows people their value to us like the giving of ourselves, the giving up of our time for them. This is true in the marriage relationship–and it is also true for our children. Our children will “give their hearts” (as in the Absalom story) to those who are available to them.

I am persuaded that one of the strongest factors in the relationships that we have with our teens and young adults (seven kids, ages sixteen through thirty-two) is our availability. They know that we will give up anything of our own to spend time with them. We show them their value to us by giving them the greatest gift–the gift of time.

I pray that this article helps families. If you are being helped by Character Ink publishing and “Raising Kids With Character,” tell your friends about us. (We are still Positive Parenting on Facebook.) Or host a parenting seminar in your church or community. And whatever you do, do the next right thing. 🙂

The post Five “Timely” Tips appeared first on Character Ink.

The secret to a clean refrigerator is FREQUENT attention! That is, the secret is in the frequency with which you deal with said refrigerator.

A refrigerator is a lot like a toddler. It doesn’t need long, drawn out time periods from us–it just needs lots of little snatches of time! I can remember when my littles especially were toddlers and preschoolers. It was easy to get busy with the olders and not spend as much time on the littles. I made it a point each day to put in my schedule little snatches of time that I would devote to the little guys. A quick story. A little rocking. Getting out something interesting for them to play with or do. Putting Lego heads on their Lego men. Just little snippets of time—but lots of snippets throughout the week!

I try to spend time with my refrigerator at least once a day–and sometimes twice a day….but only for thirty to ninety seconds at a time (consider it the equivalent of putting Lego heads on your little guy’s Lego man….we do that without thinking, sometimes several times a day!).

I go in, say hi, rearrange what the other people who don’t appreciate that refrigerator as much as I do messed up. This goes back in there; this goes over there; what are you doing here, ketchup?

I might pull out something and put it in the chicken slop bowl. I might wipe down a shelf. I might put an open package into a zipper bag. I might move a couple of things from too-large bowls into smaller ones and stick the dirty ones in the dishwasher. In forty to sixty seconds, the refrigerator is happy (just like a toddler!)–and I am happy.

Not to belabor this point, but there are many studies nowadays proving that little tiny snatches of success, as well as “busy-ness of hands” (not just mental work–which I tend to do too much of), are like anti-depressants. I believe it! My fridge and I are both very happy!

The post The Secret to a Clean Refrigerator appeared first on Character Ink.