Saturday, February 21, 2009

Our Daily Routine

I made these charts for Caroline. They show what our typical daily routine is like, so she has a way to follow along and see what comes up next each day. This is really for days we are at home all day... if we have an outing of some type, then obviously we don't stick to the routine as closely.The first chart shows our morning routine: Get up, Eat breakfast, Get ready for the day, Focused activity with Mommy, Morning chores (Caroline can help or do some free play on her own), Morning snack, Outside time, Lunch time, Rest time. Then the second chart shows the afternoon routine: Afternoon prayer time, Read aloud and Afternoon snack, Chores and Dinner prep, Outside time, Clean up time, Quiet activities, Dinner, Family prayers, Get ready for bed and Sleep.

I don't know where the time goes in a day!! We struggle to get in our evening prayer time, during which we say a decade of the rosary for now. If we are running late, we get the girls to sleep and skip our family prayer time. We also don't usually end up with much quiet activity time before dinner... I have noticed a little more calm in the house since I have made time for dinner prep, but I still sometimes can't get it together enough for whatever reason, and we eat a little too late to have our evening prayer time. I want to make that a priority... it is hard with little ones, especially with a baby whose napping is sketchy if she isn't napping with me. And if I am laying down with her, it is harder to stick to our routine when I am not free to move around and do things other than lay nursing the napping baby. I know this will change eventually... that is one thing that is certain, things always change with children as they grow!

Does anyone have any tips or ideas related to your daily routines? Feel free to share!!

2 comments:

Charlotte said...

Love it!!!!
I'm going to try something like that now!

mel said...

That's really neat! I've been wanting to do something like that with the pictures for Jack.

Advice...well, my one set up for failure has always been that I don't allow enough time for things. I would plan like half an hour for dinner, which in theory sounds like enough, but when you figure on getting six people to the table, food on the table, time for everyone to eat, and time to clean up, it's not enough time. My shedule was full of issues like this, and so I've been trying to be more realistic. It's hard, it means that I have less time to work with, but really that time was never there to begin with...I was just pretending that it was. hehe.