Morning Job Routine for my 5 year old

I can't tell you how much I have struggled to get my son to get ready in the morning.  When I tell him it's time to get dressed he does everything but that!  It sometimes is 1 hour between the time I say get dressed until he is dressed.  There have been meltdowns for mom and son.  Not good!  I do not want to start my morning that way.  So, I thought and thought and saw this picture somewhere online one weekend and an idea popped into my mind.  I have been trying to get him to be responsible and accountable without me being part of the equation.

So I made a board with 2 cups.  One cup has his jobs written on sticks (just four morning jobs) and the other cup says DONE!  When he does the job he moves the stick to the other cup.  When all jobs are done he reports to me and then gets a sticker for the day and 15 minutes of free time.  It works great.  At the end of the week if he has all 5 stickers he gets 25 cents (5 cents for each sticker).

So far I have kept out of the way and watched my son become responsible and we have had smooth mornings with no meltdowns.

This system has been the best by far of everything that I have tried.  It's easy and I don't have to do anything!

 

 

The jobs are:

Get dressed

Fill water bottles for kids

Feed and water the cat

Check in with mom

Free and Fun Friday: FREE Play activities

I absolutely love finding FREE and FUN ideas for you to use with your kids.  If you are like me, you can use all the ideas you can get.  Melitsa is the author of Raising Playful Tots and she has TONS of great ideas for activities that you can do to play with your child.  I tend to be more academic since I was a teacher for 12 years, but I know that playing with my little son is the best thing I can do with him.

So sign up today to receive FREE activities in your inbox.  I did and I love it!!

Great website: Family Education.com

Of course, I'm always looking for great ideas and I came across this website that has ideas for your child ages 0-18.  I just clicked on the Toddler section and there are several articles on each of these topics:

• development
• behavior and manners
• tantrums
• discipline
• nutrition
• health, hygiene and safety
• toilet training and diapers
• sleep
•  activities
• entertainment
• getting ready for preschool
• expert advice

OK, so here the wonderful website: Family Education.com.  It looks like there is a host of other info, but this is just to get you started.  Find your child's age and see what is helpful for you.

Be sure to come back on Monday for Monday Shareday!  See you then!

Great website! Raising Playful Tots

I was just visiting one of my favorite websites (Books by Tara) and came across one her reviewer blogs.  Raising Playful Tots is adorable!  I signed up for the newsletter and I got a fabulous FREE ebook with tons of great ideas for extending play for children.  I encourage you to check into this!

Activity Bags!

Hi friends-  I'm at it again, looking for great ideas.  This week on Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers, I found a blog that used Activity Bags for some ways to get preschoolers learning.  So I checked out the website and after I filled out a short survey I was emailed a FREE ebook with lots of fun activity bag ideas. 
 
Check out Activity Bags for yourself and have fun planning for teaching your little ones.