Summer

We had the best summer ever.  This summer was the first glimpse of all what the future has in store of having 4 kids - rather than 4 toddlers.  I had A LOT of lofty goals for this summer - but apparently not too lofty because they were pretty much all accomplished.  My goals for the summer was to 1)improve academics - especially Brock 2)Really teach my kids how to do REAL chores independently and 3)Have fun with minimal screen time.

I decided to achieve these goals through the use of charts :)  I spent about a month before school was out making these charts and perfecting them.  In the end they worked perfectly.  Let me take you through them.  (also - I want to remember for next summer!)

First off was our schedule.  All of our other charts fit into this schedule somewhere.  This schedule is only meant for Monday through Friday and we kept it probably 4 days out of the week - we usually had one "lazy" day or one "off" day when something out of the ordinary came up.  I did give them 1 week of "grace" for the first week of summer with out much of a schedule - everyone needs that.

The best parts about this schedule were the reading hours. All of my kids are now readers, but they all (including Brock) need to actually read to me for 15 minutes.  That takes 1 hour!  I decided the best way to accomplish that was to have a 1 hour reading block in the morning.  While I was reading with 1 child -the rest were reading silently or working on school work.  It worked wonderfully.  Also great was our screen use.  I decided to stop micro managing screen time and give them more independence.

Speaking of screen time.  I decided to use a whole new method.  I went out and bought some large plastic tokens.  Brock and Noah got 5 tokens on Monday that they could use all week how ever and whenever they wanted.  The girls got one token every morning.  Technically they could have 80 minutes of screen time a day because I wanted them to be able to "watch" each others screen time.  I didn't want to teach that screen time is an "alone" activity - I want it to be social.  But mostly the girls pared up and the boys pared up so in reality they each got about 40 minutes of screen time a day.  Or that was how it was supposed to work.  Brock and Noah decided they did not want to "allot" one token per day.  On Monday Brock would spend all of his tokens and him and Noah would play 100 minutes of x-box and on Tuesday Noah would spend all of his on 100 minutes of x-box (remember you get to play with your sibling with out spending your tokens - but whose ever token it is gets to pick what you play and gets to be first player).  Then they didn't have any screen time the rest of the week.  I stuck to it 100% and it was WONDERFUL.  They didn't complain because it was a conscious choice and we ended up getting so much accomplished.  

Then there was the job chart and the homework chart.  These had to be accomplished everyday - but you could do them whenever you wanted.

We spent Monday mornings deep cleaning the whole house.  This was serious - I really wanted to teach them how to clean.  Most of the summer I was deeply entrenched with helping them clean - we are not to a point where I clean along side them - but almost there, almost.

On top of the you could do jobs for money.

Back on the schedule you saw a place for activities - these were the activities for each day.  This was not by any means a "had to" schedule - is was more help for me in generating ideas.  We did stick to it fairly well - like I said 4 out of 5.

These were our general rules.  Anyone who knows me knows that first rule is not mine.  I would go weeks with out shoes in the summer - I know this because I would leave my only pair of shoes at Katrina's house and then a week later she would give them back and I never even knew I lost them.  But Jason feels passionately about wearing shoes outside - so I am trying to change - boy is it HARD!

We do a high 5 every morning.  I am currently working on  a "low 5" for every night - but I haven't totally finalized it in my head yet.