Second step of Summer Scheduling

I love lists, my kids love lists. We all need a schedule. My kids need to know ahead of time what is expected and when. It keeps peace in my house.



 We have had schedule outline almost 3 years now. We change things up as kid's needs change and responsibilities change.

Each child gets  up, gets dressed, makes their bed and cleans up their room.

They go to the barn and each child has certain animals they care for. Elizabeth always takes Bubbie with her. He will only listen to her and the boys get annoyed at him. ;)

                                                      


Fayth works better close to me and she is more of a girly girl, so she helps me in the house. Her morning job is to vacuum the living room and help me with Nesiah's morning care.

Each morning one kiddo makes breakfast. I used to be the cook of all meals, however I received to many complaints. So now each child gets to cook what THEY want for breakfast. Which has really really cut down on the complaining. The one's who want scambled eggs, get scrambled eggs on their morning. The one's who like dippy eggs, get dippy eggs on their morning. They do not like when other's complain about their meals, so they stop their own complaining. A win, win situation. I do cook breakfast on Sundays and Fridays.

After each meal, each kid has a special job. They rotate jobs every day. One person cleans the table and counters. Another one washes dishes. Another one dries dishes and the last one sweeps the floor. they rotate every day so it keeps jobs from getting monotonous.

Currently I sort and wash all clothing. But the big kids fold and put away their own laundry. I take care of mine and the littles.

They love the story of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Mowing the lawn. We live on 3 acres but most of it is pastures. So we have a small yard which we mow with a walk behind mower. The yard is divided into 3 pieces, each of the 3 older ones mows one area. They rotate weekly. We have them numbered 1-2-3. This has really worked well.


The boys are responsible for keeping the vehicles clean and the girls and I work on the keeping the house clean. Everyone has assigned jobs. If I need them to do my job or some awful/big job, they get paid. But they do not get an allowance or pay for regular activities.

We try to make sure that we get together with friends atleast once a week, the boys play with neighborhood boys more often. We are not putting up our pool this summer because we have a very intelligent, very active, very mischievous 2 yr old that scares the life off me quite frequently. So we hope to play at the local creeks. I bought some fun tubes etc.. plus the boy's friend owns a pool and they are planning on allowing us to swim atleast weekly.


We do lots of spontaneous fun. I like my schedule. I like routine. But I love last minute get togethers with friends and fun roadtrips.

We are still learning to work with Bubbie who is allergic to everything, including the air in the summer! So I foresee some long days of monopoly and dice.I am learning to just be. To just hang out with my kids. They will soon be grown up and then I can enjoy peace and quite.



Today for example: We got up late and got a slow start. While the kids did their chores, I washed up a huge stack of dishes from yesterday. We then made pancakes for breakfast and just hung out eating for over an hour. We watched Tony Evans on the computer then Bubbie and I napped. While the big kids played with the Polly Pockets. We had a very late, find your own lunch. Now the kids are playing with a new game I purchased while I waste time blogging. Nesiah just hangs out with us. She is happy just being in the middle of everything. This... this is the perfect kinda day.

Yes, we have behaviors, no we are not perfect. But if anyone feels the need to ruin the peace and calm, they will get send to their room for a long nap. This has taken years and years of training...

Theses two had so much fun in the creek. This kid biked 4 miles to the creek because I did not room to bring him along.

Our summer Schedule Outline...

Summer Schedule

14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 

7:00 mom up, coffee, quiet time

7:30 Kids get up, get dressed and make beds

8:00 Barn Chores/Journi vacumn

8:30 Breakfast

9:00 Clean up

9:15 Bike Riding

9:30 Brain exercises /cleaning

11:30 Start lunch

12:30 lunch clean up, daily  job

12 to 2 Abraham/mom nap big kids listen to audio story

1 to 4 creek time, bike riding, ball playing, lego time

4:00 clean up and get ready for dinner 

4:30 chore time

5:00 dinner time

6:00 clean up  and odyssey time

6:30 outside play

7:30 bath, teeth, lotion

8:00 bedtime

Mow/Clean Barn on Friday~ wash vehicles on Saturday ~ clean bathrooms and vac on Saturday ~ 

Meals on Mondays ~ Laundry Thursday and Monday

May...

May has been an interesting month...
The last 2 weeks included two birthdays, homeschool evaluations, 3 kids to the dentist and a very short trip to Ohio.



My sister and her husband were celebrating their first pregnancy after 6 yrs of marriage. But sadly Baby Theodore did not get to live very long here on earth. We packed up the house in 3 hours and headed to Ohio to be with them. 

It was a very long 7 hour drive. Very.Long. with all 6 kids. We stayed at The Barn Inn one night. we had planned to go to my parents but supper, but it was really humid and they have a dog in the house. So we ended up ordering late night pizza to be delivered to our vacation house for dinner.

J and K had a beautiful service for baby Theodore. My kids think he must be playing with his uncle in Heaven. 

We drove to Ohio Friday morning and returned home Saturday evening, because Bubbie was reacting to something in the vacation house. He was wheezing, coughing and generally irritable and miserable! The drive home was not nearly as torturous as the drive to Ohio. But by Sunday morning, 5 of my kids were sick with fevers, coughs and colds.

We regrouped and recovered. Then we celebrated birthdays. Bubbie turned 2. We made a dairy, egg and protein free chocolate cake that he loved. I made a smiley face with allergen free chocolate chips, he was quite delighted and ate all of the chocolate chips before anyone else got cake!

He loves to look at books and was quite happy with his collection of birthday books. 

We tried some new hairstyles. She and I were both delighted with how these twists turned out!! She is tired of braids and straight hair... so this was a fun new style. 

Then we had another birthday. This time it was gluten free cake with peanutbutter and honey icing. Lee's favorite! 

For his birthday, he wanted to camp. But as we all know our family has really had to adjust to having a highly allergic child, so we decided to camp out back. 

My landlords/next door neighbors have a little cook out area on the corner of the two properties. We got permission to use it for the weekend. 

We put up the tents, made dinner in the charcoal grill. Because Bubbie is allergic to smoke.... We made dinner, pulled down the tents and dashed inside. Just as it started to pour down rain.
My amazing friend Ada had joined us for this birthday camp out. She knows how to make anything fun. She had brought a game and some glow in the dark toys.

We watched a movie and played lots of games. Ada and the kids slept in the living room. Sunday we had breakfast then played games all day long!! Once again life did not go as we had planned but the kids had a total blast and the birthday weekend was saved.



The last big thing we did was homeschool evals. I am so thankful for an evalautor that understands the importance of working with kids, the calling of homeschooling. She was so encouraging as I worried about the progress or lack of that I see with my kids.

We have another 2 weeks of craziness then school should slow down. Three of the kids had dental appointments. Two need extractions and sealants. So we get to make 4 more visits for those two kids, plus the other 4 kids need dental exams. Plus we have a big appointment coming up for Bubbie...