My Routine Bubbles

I divided my day into 5 bubbles of routines. Each has a preferred time on the clock but I am realistic with 4 boys, ranging from 2 years old to 12 years old.

My bubbles are:
 - Morning Routine (covers getting up to clean up after breakfast),

 - Cleaning Routine (covers self care and chores in zones (FlyLady principles)),

- School Routine (broken into 3 blocks of about an hour, 2 blocks before lunch, 1 block after; L.Arts first for all, Maths second for all, and Science/History/Creative Arts or independent work for my eldest in the afternoon),

- Afternoon Routine (cleaning up at day's end, for our house and ourselves),

and
- Evening Routine (covers from dinner right through to bedtime).

It helps on the "bad" days to just skip a bubble, usually one of the school blocks or the Afternoon Routine, but the rest I find are essential to keeping our day running well.

Just to make it easier for the boys I created bundles of printed index card sized pages for each of them with their colour as the front card.  They can clip them onto a lanyard to take with them as they work through their list.  I hang the whole lot on the front of a cupboard in my dining room in clear view.

I am finding that my older 2 are really getting the hang of  it now, although I can tend to be slack on following up (and there I go confessing my biggest weakness - inconsistency!).

Best wishes
Jen