Zone Cleaning

I'm pretty sure I've talked about zone cleaning before, but here what is working for us now.

Since I have four kids at home, I have divided the cleaning areas into 4 zones.

Right now the zones are: Kitchen, Dining Room, Front Room, Cats/Sweep

Each area has at least one daily job and then there is also an extra job every day.

We rotate weekly through the zones.

Kitchen zone requires putting away dishes every day and clearing/wiping the counter.
The extra jobs are: wipe appliances, clean out microwave, wipe down garbage can, empty garbages throughout the entire house.

Dining Room has to clear the table each day and then they also clear off the information center, organize the coloring shelf, clean off the bench seat, dust and wipe down chairs.

Front Room is in charge of vacuuming every day. They also straighten the bookshelves, the front closet, the top of piano, dust and clean under couches.

Cats/Sweep are in charge of feeding and watering the cats daily as well as sweeping (we have wood laminate all upstairs). Then they need to clean the cat's water bowl once a week, empty the litter box, and vacuum the outdoor/indoor rug by the back door.

After quiet time, the kids work on their zones so they can have a snack.

My kids are motivated by food and we've been doing this long enough, that they know the routine.

Any jobs that didn't get full attention during the week are taken care of (or done again) during our regular cleaning day on Saturday.

Saturday is also the day we vacuum bedrooms and clean bathrooms.

Fortunately, our kitchen has been staying pretty clean even though everyone is home.

That's because the kids are in charge of getting the whole kitchen cleaned every night (dishes, table, food, counter) before they can watch a show or movie.

Sometimes I worry that maybe there is too much screen time going on, but a clean kitchen at this time is worth it!

Family Scripture Study

Oops, looks like I skipped over our family scripture study.

The thing is, I am definitely not an expert in this.

We have tried LOTS of different ways to do this.

For sure, morning time works best for us.

By night time, my mom hat/patience is almost gone.

I just want everyone to go to bed.

And I am a believer in letting kids sleep as long as possible.

So, I put off doing early morning scriptures for a long time.

Notice I said "kids" in the previous sentence.

Teenagers are not kids!

When I had kids start high school, we started doing scripture study at 6:30am.

We do that all during the school year.

And then I've always struggled where to fit scripture study in during the summer.

I usually get up and exercise and go to work for a short time and the kids sleep until I get home around 8:30.

Though there have been some summers when I still woke the kids up at 6:30 so my husband could join us.

Ha! There was some rebellion.

Now, that there is not a school schedule to adjust to, I decided to do the 8:30 time.

But, I wake the kids up 30 minutes before for breakfast and getting ready.

Our scripture study goes much better when they are awake.

That being said, what does it really mean that scripture study goes better?

We go back and forth between taking turns reading out loud in chronological order and trying to have kids read before and then having a discussion.

Having the Come Follow Me program has helped us a lot.

I'd love to say that every scripture study is spiritually fulfilling.

But the truth is, I probably only feel the spirit during scripture study hopefully once a week; maybe less.

To me, the important part of scripture study is developing the habit.

I want my kids to know its important to me to make it a priority.

And maybe when they are older, they will remember the importance and make it a habit in their own families.

Exercise

Exercise.

It's important.

The end.



Ok, I'll say a little bit more about this.

(I mean, I did get a college degree in this subject.)


I am a true believer in exercising.

You know how most mom's have that one solution for any problem?

My solution for almost any problem is, "maybe you need to exercise?"

That, and "how much water have you had today?"

This COVID-19 came at a pretty tough time.

Our little town was just barely coming out of the long sleep of winter.

We've been stuck inside because of the cold for at least 4 months already.

And now that the snow is starting to melt and the temperatures are getting above freezing we can't go outside?!

I started a couch to 5k program about 2 weeks before quarantine.

Most of my runs were on an indoor track.

Luckily, there's been some nice enough weather (above 20 degrees) where I have been able to transition outside.

And more importantly, my kids need to get outside.

They're not toddlers anymore, but they still have energy that needs to come out other ways than yelling at each other.

Here's a list of some of the exercise activities they've been doing every day:

Biking (just up and down our street and maybe around the church parking lot)
Walking (up and down the neighborhood not getting close to anyone)
Exercise bike (inside)
Fitbit App workouts
Just Dance (wii)
Sword fighting (you know, the usual)

I have been doing Yoga on the days I don't run.

Yoga used to make me dizzy, but I've learned to only focus on myself and not doing it exactly right and that seems to be helping my head.

I love it!!

Anyway, exercise is important.

Just do it.

Quiet Time

I want to talk about Quiet Time.

This is not to be confused with my Mom Time.

(and it is so important to me, that I'm skipping over exercise time to talk about it!)

When I was just starting out on this parenting journey, I was lucky enough to have an older sister with kids older than mine.

She was a gold mine of information.

But, the number one nugget she gave me was the idea of "Quiet Time".

Every day, there is a time set apart for it.

The rule is, it must be spent in your room and you can't come out until the time is over.

When I first started this, we did only a 15 minute quiet time.

And there was some crying and door holding to get it to happen.

They could do what they wanted in quiet time as long as they cleaned up afterwards.

At the beginning, it would usually turn in to nap time.

As they got used to the idea, we gradually increased the time.

And as more kids came along, there was less quiet and more messy  creative play.

It became 30-60 minutes of my day that I looked forward to having some down time.

Life saver!!


We'd gone away from quiet times in our home.

My kids are older and not around that much anyway.

That is until now.

We are home together all the time.

And Quiet Time is back!


My kids complained a lot at first.

"We have to do an hour and a half of quiet time every day!!??!!"

"What are we supposed to do for that long??!!!"

Guess what?

It's saving our lives again!!

This time, everyone has to spend that time alone.

There's not many naps (though there have been some).

There's a lot of reading.

And a lot of creativity happening. (though no music is allowed - because quiet, right?)

I believe my kids are getting along a lot better with each other, because they have some alone time every day.

They play better together when they are together because they are not together all the time. Ha!

I usually end up working during that time.

Or just enjoying the peace.

If you are just starting out, don't expect perfect results at first.

We did the work to get to this.

But, it is worth the effort to get something like this in place.

Life saving, I tell you!

Thanks Pam.

School Work

I want to write about COVID-19 school.

I have two in high school (10th,12th) and two in middle school (5th, 6th).

Our schools/teachers moved everything on-line rather quickly when they shut school down.

The middle school had packets to pick up for 2 weeks worth of work.

The high school teachers emailed students and sent links to work.

They offer ZOOM meetings for kids to join if they want to; but it's not required.

We had a scheduled spring break during this closure time and the teacher's aren't giving homework during that time.

It was very stressful at first.

I did not want my kids to fall behind.

But, even more stressful, was trying to keep up on everyone's work and making sure that it was getting done.


Sidenote:
I have homeschooled almost all of my kids at different points in their school life.

And it took a while to get the right mindset.

In regular school, there are grades and tests to show where kids are in the learning process.

With homeschooling, there is no one to compare my kids learning with except their own.

I had to figure out that my job was not to "keep up" where they should be, but rather help them develop the learning and skills necessary to succeed in life.

(By the way, COVID-19 school is nothing like homeschool!  No field trips!)


Anyway, it was stressful.

I was starting to feel like the cranky taskmaster that I try really hard not to be.

Thankfully, I remembered my homeschool mindset and it helped me not stress about school work anymore.

We did a family council and talked about all the classes and assignments that each child needed to focus on.

I put the control in their hands, not mine.

I asked them to be diligent and that  I was there to help them not push or pull them.

I asked them to think about what classes they would feel stressed about not being caught up when/if school started again.

And that they should make a schedule and do a little bit of their work every day; especially in Math, English, and Science.

Our schedule has school work between 9-11, with extra time built in after lunch and quiet time, as needed.

And it's working.

My older kids know what needs to be done and they are mostly getting stuff done on their own.

Having a week of no school assignments coming in has been helpful to realize that there's no rush to get things done.

Learning is happening.

I have kids being able to focus more time on things that they really enjoy and want to learn.

And most importantly, I'm not constantly nagging at kids to get their stuff done.

I don't know how long we will be doing school at home.

I'm not sure what it will look like when they go back to school.

Grades don't matter to me as much as learning does.

(Although, grades matter to getting scholarships to college and that is important!)

I want my kids to remember this time at home as different and challenging.

But not as suffocating.

For our family, that means Mom backing off and loving more than nagging.

I promise that some days are better than others.

I truly believe, as Gordon B. Hinckley used to say:

 "It will all work out."