Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Big Girl Routines

With Stella starting Kindy this year, it has brought quite a few more jobs to be done for me in the morning and afternoons. To encourage independence (and to help me out a little) we have assigned a few chores to Stella. I was finding that some days she would do them, other days she would forget, get to caught up in playing with Max and Lacey or would just get bitten by the lazy bug!
So.... I created these charts, to be placed in a good position for her, so that she had something to inspire her , and look to when she didn't know what to do next.


I really wanted wording and pictures, as she is not up to the reading stage yet and couldn't find anything on the WWW or even Pinterest. The ones I did find, did not have the chores in the right order and often called the toilet "The Potty" which is obviouly American , but it just doesn't feel right to be using it.
I also found that alot of the charts had the children getting dressed first, in the morning, and then eating breakfast!! Gee, if we did it this way, Stella would be heading to school with Jam smeared all over her top or Milk dropped on her pants from her cereal!




They are very jobs, and ones that she does day in and day out, with a few exceptions of a school bag and lunch box but its nice to have it formalised in some way!
We placed it here, on the end of the kitchen bench as it is at Stella's height, wasn't going to ruin any walls or fall off the fridge etc and is a thorough fare for everyone! Plus her main jobs are bringing her cooler bag to the kitchen to be emptied, etc so it made sense.


So far, so good, but its only early days. The charts in themselves are proving to be quite popular, with Max and Lacey standing there and saying what they think each picture is! SO cute, and great for speech practice (not that they need any, they don't stop talking all day!)
Do you use a chart or flashcards for your morning and evening rituals? Do you do your chores in the same order as we do? I am always curious about that!


If you are interested in using these charts for yourself and your kiddies,  I have made these Charts available as a free printable. They are nothing fancy , but are just what we needed and may be right for you too!

I hope you like them, and if you do end up using them, I would love to see where you have put them!

4 comments:

  1. Love it Liz, I did up something similar years ago when mine were smaller, my older two now have one in words, my youngest still uses the picture one, it is hung up at eye height on his bedroom cupboard.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Liz, I popped over here from Annaleis blog to congratulate you on your award. I love the idea with the charts and the pictures. Hopefully it will save a lot of repetition for you. I must admit that we did this for our son about a year ago. He was 10 and had gotten so bad at doing his daily routine that we sat down together and he thought about what needed to be done and then he typed it out and he put it up in his room near his desk. It worked :-)
    I'm looking forward to visiting again.
    xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ummmmm ...

    How AWESOME are you?!

    P.S sorry to be comment bombing all over your blog ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ohh, I like the idea of making your own routine, because like you say, the ones on the net usually have a different order to what we do. In the mornings, we have a "day of the week" sign, so Monday, Tuesday etc that Blake gets andd puts on his wall so he gets used to seeing what these days look like as written words. Kinda like on Playschool hehe :)

    ReplyDelete

Thankyou for taking the time to read and more importantly comment on my blog. They are all so appreciated! Liz x