Summertime Scheduling (is that how you spell that, it doesn’t look right)

This is another post that is going to make my Mom smile, and want to say “I told you so.” She won’t say it, but I know she will think it. I guess I am just a slow learner!

Schedules. This summer our days are scheduled! It all stared about March, when I was thinking over the changes our family had made, especially our morning routine. I have really grown to love having breakfast together as a family, where we start the day with a prayer, some scripture and good food. I was wondering what was going to happen in the summer time, and I really didn’t want to stop doing it all, it had been such a blessing. The only thing stopping me was my own laziness. I love, love, love to sleep in. I am naturally a night person. My perfect sleep schedule would be to bed around 1 am and up at 10. While the kids are in school that can’t happen, but in the summertime, with the ages my kids are it was entirely possible. However, The Lord has other plans for me, and I knew that in order to keep receiving the blessing we have been, that I needed to keep our breakfast routine. So much for sleeping in, luckily there are still Saturdays!

Then I stared to get little promptings about my kid’s education, especially regarding punk #1. I haven’t quite figured them all out, and I don’t know for sure what direction it is going to take me, but it did have me thinking about this summer. Punk#1 struggles, really, really struggles with life and school in particular. I knew that if I didn’t keep her tutored over the summer all the progress she has made would fall by the wayside. We don’t have money to pay a tutor, and I didn’t feel right about enrolling her in the summer programs at the school, I felt really strongly that she needed to be here, by my side this summer.

I started to look into summer workbooks and free programs on the internet and I found some good stuff and purchased workbooks for everybody. Here is the thing, I do that every summer, and every summer the workbook only has a few pages worked on and the whole thing ends up being a waist of money. That is when I decided we needed a schedule.

All my life I have been fighting schedules, even though I know they work really well, especially for me. I guess I can’t say that I have been fighting schedules, my babies have all had them, eating and nap schedules, I guess I have been fighting a written schedule. The week before school got out I sat down and wrote up a schedule. Starting at 7:00 a.m. and going until 10 or 11:00 I have every 15 minuets scheduled. It has been working beautifully! The kids try to get done early with their chores and their schoolwork (the workbooks are about 1/3 of the way done!) and then the rest of the day is free time. (I am a big believer in free time for kids). It has been wonderfully amazing. The house gets cleaned and school work is being done, all well before lunch time, which leaves us a lot of time for good, old summer fun!