Ready... Set... Summer?

Oh what do you do in the summertime... when your house is full of kids?

In the past, my summers were pretty hard to manage.  I was either pregnant or nursing for six years straight.  Focusing on growing babies and keeping them alive past one year did not leave me a lot of time to think about doing anything else.  I struggled to get out of the house and to not rely on screens to keep my toddlers occupied without giant messes that stressed me out.  I was really grateful to my brother for rescuing my oldest child from my toddler/baby world by taking him on outings with his family during that time.  The main event every summer was going to visit our family in Utah and other than that I was pretty lazy.  Sometimes I would buy one of those big books of school worksheets with the intention of having my kids work in it everyday.  I paid around $8 for them to work about 4 pages out of it maybe 2 or 3 times PER CHILD.  That means I paid $24 for 3 different grade levels and used about 12-16 pages total.  What a waste.

To help get us out of the house more, I made a goal last year to write down activities to do on a schedule for the week every week.  I committed to myself that I only needed to spend 2 hours doing the outing and that made it easier to stick to our plan.  We had purchased passes to the Safari Park Zoo for the year (with parking) so I wanted to go at least once a week.  Plus the beach was on the list.  For several years I went to the beach only once a year or sometimes not at all.  This was mostly because my little ones could not swim--1 mom and 3 potentials for drowning are not a good combination.  Fortunately, I got my kids swimming lessons so I wouldn't be afraid to take them once a week finally.  We were also lucky to have someone at church pass a sign up around to all the pool owners willing to have people come over on Tuesday each week.  Only a couple people took a turn twice and we could visit the pool once a week too.  It was an awesome summer last year.

Instead of buying an expensive worksheet book I pulled out a blank composition notebook and wrote "Family Journal" on it.  I thought, "If I get them to write a journal entry, maybe a few sentences about what we did on our outings and draw a picture, then they are getting something educational out of it right?"  Boy, was that difficult.  My oldest ones agonized over what to write and my younger ones dictated long things to me that barely talked about what we did and then drew a picture of what they talked about.  Well, I did get them to write a couple times so that is something.  We filled about 10 pages of the notebook.  So yeah.  Pretty much the same amount of effort and consistency.  But I did get them out of the house more and we loved it.  I am definitely planning to do a similar goal of scheduling outings this year.  But I have been wondering, "How will I help them to keep up on their math and writing skills?"

Out of the blue...a couple weeks ago I got an email from someone asking if I would consider doing guest content on my blog.  I was actually extremely flattered.  I feel like a very, very small fish in this ginormous internet pond even if I have been trying to swim around a little more in Pinterest, and Etsy.  So I am pleased to introduce the few of you who read this to Education.com.  I looked through their website and it is very easy to navigate and filled with plenty of great content.  They have free printable worksheets, learning games, and even simple lesson explanations of the skills.

Warmer weather is right around the corner. Why not celebrate with some summery reading practice? For little ones, read this with them to promote early word and shape recognition. Visit Education.com for more learning games, resources, and activities.

If you have had similar experiences to mine then you probably know what I am talking about.  So how am I going to make sure they actually do some of these worksheets?  Well fortunately, I got back into my chore chart habit a few months ago.  Remember my post about teaching my kids to do chores?  My youngest is 4 so it was time to get back to the original way of doing it.  That first version with the "Have To" and the "Can Do" lists really works well for the younger kids.  And I really had to make 2 separate ones because the 6 year old needed to work on his chore skills too.  My 10 year old enjoyed helping me make a couple "wallets" out of card stock to hold their dollars and we taped them to the wall of their bedroom.

As you can see, I personalized them.  I let them pick their favorite colors for the highlights and then I let them pick a bathroom chore to learn.  When I had one child I was ambitious enough to teach him to clean the whole bathroom but now I have 5 kids... so they can share the bathroom chores.  Here is a generic version I made in case you would like to use this for yourself

I learned from the theory of motivation that we are not just motivated by pleasure or pain but also by what we know to be true and by having choices.  I use this knowledge to focus on helping them know that they CAN do their chores and that they have CONTROL over their choice to do them.  When my youngest says it is hard I say "I know it is hard and you can do it!"  When he cries that he doesn't want to do it I reply, "You don't have to do it.  You just don't get screens until you do."  Then I walk away and let him decide if he wants to do it and get screens.  About 90% of the time he decides to do it about 10 minutes later.  The other 10% he ends up taking a nap and then doing it when he wakes up.  I don't make my standards impossibly high either.  For the first month I did help them with each chore and focused on how they could get it done on their own but I could be available to help them for a minute or two.
This is how the 4 year old made his bed completely on his own this morning:

4 year old bed making skill

It is a sheet because he didn't want the big blanket.  He likes his baby blankets still (which are piled up on his pillow) and he is warm enough at night so I can let it be that way until he is ready to trade for a bigger blanket.
Here is how the 6 year old made his bed entirely on his own this morning:

6 year old bed making skill

I love that he lines his dolls up on his pillow there and his precious 10 color pen that he purchased yesterday is sitting in a place of honor where he can access it when he is ready to draw.

I also added in a couple ways to earn dollars for "non-chore" skills that my young kids need to work on as well.  Playing nicely together outside for 30 minutes and playing a board game or card game nicely (no tantrums or fighting) for 30 minutes.  The learning curve has taken a month but my young boys finally don't whine that making their bed is hard work or brushing their teeth is hard work--at least not every day.  As a side note, for me, some days making dinner feels as difficult as lifting a mountain. while others I can put together a 3 course meal with ease, so I can relate and have some compassion for their perspective.

I also found that for my older kids, who don't need the dollar system, it still helps for them to have a visible checklist to know what I need them to get done.  So I created a morning and evening checklist for them and put some ambiguous things like "Put away 10 things" for the bedroom and "Put away 15 items" for the general house and "1 Kitchen chore."  They get to control a lot about those directions like which items they put away and which kitchen chore they do (which can include preparing a meal for the family).  They are old enough to have that kind of freedom.  Plus, I could put more personal reminders on there for acne care and flouride application.

I have a separate one for the middle child too which is like a combination of the Responsible kid checklist and the younger kid checklist.  She is young enough to still need the dollar system but old enough to have more chores for morning and evening so that is all the explanation I want to give right now.

I realized the need to make a homework slot on the younger kid's "have to" list because next year they will be doing homework and I want to start the learning curve on that NOW when I have 6 more hours to help them come to terms with it.  The best thing I have learned about teaching young kids work is to keep it simple and focus on one thing at a time.  That is why I am excited about  Education.com.  This website has free printable worksheets from pre-k up to 5th grade.  No need to shell out $30 for 4 different grade levels.  You can print a worksheet as needed.  This is the perfect answer for me and my family.

In the past when I tried putting a big book in front of my child and asked him to work on a page, it was intimidating.  If he didn't like the page he would want to flip through the book and then we spent 10 minutes just trying to find one that looked good to him.  Instead I can print a couple pages or just 5 for the week like the teachers do for homework packets and tell him we will work on one a day.  Plus their website has games and explanations for the skills.  Even my older kids can keep up on their math and reading comprehension skills and be better prepared for next year.  A lot of you probably know about Starfall and PBS kids websites and I love those too.  It is always nice to have some variety and choices.  I love free content.  Let me know what you do to get out of the house and keep up on your kid's learning during the summer in the comments.  I hope you have a great summer!

Responsibility Training

Necessity is the mother of invention.  Motherhood is the necessity of invention.

I am often using creativity to help me find solutions to my motherhood struggles.

Some one told me that you can have a sanity, a clean house and kids but you can't have all three.  It would look like this:  You can have sanity and a clean house but no kids.  You can have a clean house and kids but no sanity.  You can have kids and sanity but not a clean house.  It's pretty true.  I visited my brother's house for the first time since he moved in a year ago and my first impression was how beautifully clean it was.  I admired his clean floors and walls and white carpet and the beautiful decorations he could have sitting out every where with no fear of sticky fingers playing with them and losing or breaking them.  It is a level of clean that you just don't have with 5 kids.  Still...

I have been a parent for almost 13 years now.  I have 5 kids now and I have been working on teaching my kids chores for a long time as soon as they were old enough to understand:  

Would you put this in the... 

...trash?

...sink?

...dirty clothes?  

They actually start helping as early as they can walk and reach those things.  I have learned that every child is different and some strategies work better than others but I have a system that I am using that has been succeeding.  We first used it for my son when he was 4 years old.  I was pregnant with our second child (finally) and we were in our new house.  I had already done chores with him many times but I wanted him to be motivated without me standing next to him the whole time since I would soon be taking care of a baby.

My husband was a great influence at this point.  They sat down together and created a list of chores that should get done every day and some that would get done once or twice a week.  They called it the "Have To" list.  Then they created a list of chores that he could do with little or no help from us and called it the "Can Do" list.  He made a chart that went from Monday to Sunday and we laminated it and printed out play money dollar bills and laminated those too.  We started using it and it worked great!  The dollars were turned in to the bank to "pay" for play time on the computer or tv or with toys.  If he cleaned up the toys he got a dollar back so the toys were practically free.  He actually loved hoarding his dollars.  I found it a great motivator for encouraging good behavior too.  We had issues with wetting pants still even though he was 4 so I imposed a strict rule that he would lose ALL his dollars for having an accident but I would pay a dollar if he used the toilet.  It took only a few times of losing all his dollars for him to remember to use the bathroom even when he was playing on the computer.  As he got older we changed it to include more "Can Do" chores but the "Have To" list stayed pretty stable.

The system worked great for 3 or so years and then we noticed a trend.  Sometimes I would ask him to do something for me that wasn't on the list and he would respond with "What will I get?" or "Will I get a dollar?" even when it was a relatively small task.  We wanted him to learn that sometimes service is more important that "getting" so we decided to take the dollar system down.  By this time we had 2 more little ones and we explained that we still expected him to be responsible and do things before playtime.  He adapted well to the change and one day when he was about 9 years old after doing the dishes he chose on his own to wipe the counters and table and when I thanked him he said, "I just wanted to do it because it felt good to help."  That was when I knew we had done the right thing taking the dollar system down.  It had served the purpose of motivating him to learn to work and now he was working because he could see the value of it without the dollars.

Well my young girls were growing and I was still getting pregnant and nursing and the work was getting overwhelming even with our oldest most diligent helper.  I adjusted things for them but it was not the same situation.  One child was easy to monitor and teach but when you have to share rooms with a younger sibling that doesn't understand that mom expects you to have a clean floor it creates a whole new level of struggle.  I couldn't figure out what to change at first so I gave up and worked on just teaching them how to do their chores when I had moments between nursing and changing diapers and running to and from school.

  My life was basically kids without a clean house or sanity for a few years.  

In the meantime my oldest child has done more than his share in helping keep the mess at bay and I knew the answer was to get the next 2 children trained the way I trained him.  I tried using the dollar system for the girls when they were 3 and 5 but they were resistant and was still really hard to monitor while I was nursing.  I needed a low maintenance system.  Plus my oldest child felt like he could never ask for a break because the need for help seemed endless.  I was inspired to create a checklist they could refer to that would allow for some wiggle room.  Assigned chores was purposefully ambiguous so I could ask them to do age appropriate chores that I needed done at the very moment they were willing to work.  I could tell my oldest exactly how many chores I wanted him to do versus the one or two chores I would ask the girls to complete.  The downside was that I was always the one doing all the thinking here.  Even my oldest did not have the intuition to recognize the need for clean dishes before clean laundry or a clean floor.

Now I am done being pregnant and done nursing so I finally got enough sanity to figure out my conundrum.  I sat down with my 7 year old feisty daughter like my husband did so many years ago and we adjusted the list.  My 5 year old daughter gave her input as well.  We made a color coded chart so the kids could see which chores they had committed themselves to and we tried it for a week.  I also printed out more dollars because with 3 kids we needed a lot more.  I learned years ago when we made changes to the original chart that a plastic sheet protector works just as well as laminating and you can reuse it when you want to make adjustments.  We tried it for a week and then I made changes.

We were still having the fight over who had to clean the room.  I tried offering 2 dollars if one sister didn't help but it didn't work.  Another problem I knew to avoid was assigning any chores that depended on another chore first like putting clothes in the dryer doesn't work if you didn't wash any.  Putting away dishes doesn't work if the dishwasher was never loaded and vice versa.  But the girls still were not getting things done and they were still blaming each other for not doing their own work.  So I went back and changed "Clean bedroom floor" to "Put away 25 things."  I debated doing it based on age but I decided simplest was best.  If their room was the only messy place in the house then putting away 25 things would get it clean.  If their room is clean already then the other rooms would get cleaned by their effort.  Since we have a small house and still have 2 more small boys there is usually something to put away.  I told my oldest son it would be a miracle to have nothing to put away in our house.

We had the carrot but I still needed a stick to get the girls moving faster in the morning.  I had already instituted a ruled that they could not have breakfast until they were dressed.  I moved it up to dressed and bed made.  Because they love school I even took them to school after their list is done two times.  Now I say "Checklist before Breakfast."  They know I mean it so it works.  I took away the assigned chores they had chosen and highlighted the most essential daily chores in yellow.  On the "Have To" list I put a box that said "1 yellow chore"  This solved several problems.  My seven year old likes to have a choice and this gave her a range of choices.  It also meant that at least 3 essential chores would be done every day before school.  It means that I get to start my day with the floors vacuum ready, sweep ready and I actually got to clean out under fridge because I had time!  I even had time to start writing this post!  The other thing that supports this is my husband.  He has been pitching in during the evening time and making sure the kids help clean a little before bed.
It means that I get to enjoy a new level of clean house that I have not seen for 6 years and still have Sanity!

So here is the other page to the chart that is helpful.  In the past I included other game systems we had like Playstation and LeapFrog but we don't have them now.  I even charged dollars for getting Nutella on pancakes (because he was hoarding dollars by then and we were eating too much Nutella).  I let it get pretty complicated as he was getting older and more skilled but I see now that is when I could have dropped the chore chart altogether.  So I plan to the do the same with the older kids when they get to that point.  But for now you may have noticed that I included babysitting on the chore chart and I included the option to turn in the play money for real money.  I decided that my oldest deserved a chance to receive pay for all the work he does.  I also want the kids to appreciate the value of managing real money.  So that is why you see the offer for $0.25 per a Family Dollar.  It may not seem like much but considering that I am paying them to get dressed and brush their teeth as well as do laundry and dishes I think it balances out pretty well.  When they really start to turn in their dollars for real money I will probably put a cap on it.  But in the meantime when I had to go out and get new frames for my son's glasses because he had chewed on them I insisted that he help pay for half of the cost in Family Dollars.  When we went shopping I had the girls pay for half the cost of one article of clothing.  When the kids ask for things I point out that they can turn in Family Dollars for real money to buy those things.  This way they can equate work with real money too.  

Also you don't have to laminate your Family Dollars.  They last well but I printed out some and haven't laminated them and they have been fine.  The kids are just moving them from the bank to their baggie and then back to the bank again.  It's all next to my fridge.  Print some money out.  Get lot's of one dollar bills and a few bigger ones.  My kids want to have a hundred dollar bill because they like saving them so much.  I use a different dry erase marker for each kid.  We also have wet/dry erase markers.  Initially my kids were excited and then my 5 year old lost momentum quickly.  But I remember when my oldest was 4 and doing this.  It was hard for him at first too.  I am just sticking with my rules and consequences and she will learn to do her work and realize that she can do it pretty easily.  One of my tricks to motivate them in the morning is to offer double dollars for doing it promptly.  I will have them "race" me to get dressed and make beds.  Racing each other just creates an argument but racing me is much better because I can give them wiggle room.  I don't go slower, I just get other things done while I am doing the task so it looks like I went slow.  For example I might change a diaper or put away some laundry in the middle of my task.  I also stick to the consequences.  

I know kids can learn to work and they will be happier for it too.