Member Login

Register
Lost Password?

Power of Families

Ideas and Inspiration for Purposeful Parenting

2 Simple Ways to Establish Good School-Day Routines

by on 85 Comments Posted in: Establishing Systems, Family Activities and Traditions, Timely Topics

Are you ready to get back into school routines? Here are some tips I wrote up a while back:

1. Have a family meeting. Usually, a night or two before school started, we would have a family meeting about our family routines for the new school year. We talked about:

    • What needs to happen at what time in the morning so that we can get to school on time?
    • What needs to happen each afternoon and evening to get homework done, take care of dinner and clean-up, and get to bed on time?
    • How can we all remember what we’re supposed to do without mom and dad having to remind us all the time?

2. Involve kids in coming up with systems to help establish routines. Kids are much more likely to be excited about things they help to come up with! One year, I had my oldest child, then 12-years-old (who seemed to be the culprit for a lot of late-to-school moments and who’s an excellent typist and likes doing computer stuff plus is flattered by the opportunity to do stuff like this) type up a list of everything that needs to happen at what time each morning with his little brothers and sister helping him remember everything.

Here’s what the kids came up with (the kids worked together to find the pictures and everything – please excuse the quality of the printing – our printer wasn’t working well!):

The morning routine chart my kids made

 

after school and bedtime routine list the kids made

We posted a copy of the morning and bedtime routine list on the back of everyone’s bedroom door and posted the afternoon and evening routines in the kitchen and dining room.

We also reviewed this video about the after-school routine that worked very well for us last year.

This method worked very well for our family. Tweak it and try it in your family!

* My sisters, mom and I made a podcast about morning routines as part of our Deliberate Mothering Podcast Series. Please enjoy listening to the podcast by clicking on the link below. Then add your ideas for successful morning routines to the conversation in the comment section below. I can sure use a few more ideas myself!

PODCAST: Morning Routines

 

 

QUESTION: What tips and tricks do you have to offer about routines?

CHALLENGE: Take a look at the routines you’ve got to make them more effective or create brand new routines that will help your family function better!

Originally published August 24, 2012.

Comments

  3. Good nuggets in here! Thank you so much for sharing. I feel so overwhelmed thinking about keeping on top of everything so lists and clear communication is key! We added doing affirmations to our routines this year. Today was great… I hope they will have those memorized by the end of the year (and me too!) We then end our affirmations with 2 Tim 1:7 ??

    Reply

Trackbacks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Send this to a friend