06/25/2015

Chore Ideas for Kids

Having a big family means we have big messes. Everyone is expected to help out because we all belong to the family. So, our children have “chores”. They have some chores that fall into the once a week category, they have others that are every day chores, they have still others that are “extras”.

We use a website called “ChoreMonster” to keep track of our kids’ chores. ChoreMonster is an online version of a chore chart. We’ve been using this for over a year and love it. It serves as a kind of online bank account for the kids’ chore money. I decide how much money each chore is worth and then it gets added to their choremonster account. They are expected to check in to their ChoreMonster account everyday and see what needs to be done. The cool thing about ChoreMonster is that you can actually add the prizes to their account and they can select which prize they want once they have enough money in their account. The prizes can be linked to amazon.com and with your approval, they can purchase them. I think this gives kids a way to learn financial sense in that they are making their own decisions on what to use their money on. It also gives them a goal and helps them learn patience. The other thing I love about ChoreMonster is that it is completely FREE to use!

I wrote about the kids’ once a week chores here. They are in charge of their own laundry basket and their own sheets…getting them washed and folded once a week. They are also in charge of tidying their room and bathroom. The bathroom sink, mirror and toilet is wiped down by the oldest child who sleeps in that bedroom. Then the younger child cleans/tidies up the room. This happens in the morning of “their day” of the week.

There are other chores that are assigned. Over the years I have taught my children how to load the washer and dryer, how to start it up, how to load the dishwasher, how to unload the dishwasher, how to wash our kitchen table, how to sweep, how to vacuum, how to clean the mudroom, how to do a quick toy cleanup, how to make their bed, how to organize our homeschooling room to name a few.

They each need to make their own bed, brush their teeth, and do one task before breakfast. One child takes out the trash, another helps fix breakfast, another cleans up breakfast. We also have a daily cleanup time where for 30 minutes or so we all cleanup the downstairs before Daddy gets home.

The extra chores that they may choose to do are usually for a larger sum of money and are things that I specifically ask if they want to do. These chores are one way they are able to earn money for an extra set of legos or a new CD. These chores might be helping me put together something that requires tools and reading directions (for the older kids), it might be cleaning out and vacuuming the van, it might be a more detailed cleanup of the bonus room. These chores might take 30-60 min to complete and they are compensated for that.

Chores are important in not only keeping the family and our home organized – they are important life skills that every child should learn before they are grown.

For more ideas, feel free to download my free printable: Chore Ideas For Kids.

06/24/2015

Large Family Laundry Routine

Make Your Days Easier with a Good Laundry Routine

Over the years, I’ve tried different laundry routines and schedules. Having a large family means we need a good laundry routine. Laundry seems to pile up faster and faster these days. Pretty soon we could be buried under it if we aren’t careful. This routine seems to be the easiest I’ve come up with. First the basics & necessities: I have one “bin” for each child in the family. Each bin is for clean clothes only. Once the clothes are clean, they get sorted into these bins, ready to be folded. I have 4 hampers in the house. One for the boys, one for the girls, one for the master bedroom and one for the baby. (I wash baby clothes separately for the first several months).

My routine goes like this. I’ve assigned each hamper a day of the week to wash its contents. The oldest child whose clothes belong in that hamper are responsible for bringing it into the laundry room and loading the contents into the washer. I pour the soap in and start up the load. This is done first thing in the morning. At noon we switch it out. They are also responsible for getting their sheets off their bed. I take the sheets off the littles’ beds and throw them in the washer. We only have one load of clothes (and their bathroom towels which are mixed in) and one load of sheets for the day.

When the laundry is washed and dried, we put the sheets back on and fill their cubbies up with clean clothes. The rest goes back in their drawers. They each have a 5 day cubby hanging in their closet. This way, their clothes are picked out in advance for them to wear. The older kids are in charge of checking to make sure there are enough clothes in each cubby. I assist with this and make sure that it is done correctly.

So the girls have one day, the boys have one day, the parents have one day and the baby has one day. On the baby’s day I not only wash her sheets and clothes but also her diapers. We do use cloth part-time currently.

This leaves me doing laundry 4 days out of the week. The extra day (I do not like doing laundry on the weekend unless necessary) of the week is left for odds and ends – blankets from the living room, kitchen towels, etc.

On the day which is assigned to each room, I also make it a priority to vacuum that room and straighten up/wipe down the bathroom that is attached or next to that room. This makes taking care of the house much more manageable and leaves me with much shorter tasks to take care of.

Please share your favorite laundry routine in the comments! Click here for a printable chart of laundry skills by age for your preschoolers – pre-teens.

06/24/2015

Top 5 Board Games to Play with your Kids

Contains affiliate links. Please see the disclosure page.

Games to Play with Your Kids

Over the past several years, we have become a board game playing family. We sometimes play board games after we have finished our formal schoolwork. About three years ago we started what I like to call, “Fun Friday”. A day of baking yummy treats, having a fun family dinner, and then playing a board game around our dining room table. Over the years we’ve added some new games to our repertoire. Here are some of the games we’ve fallen in love with – ones that are fun for kids and adults alike.

10 Days in Europe – Want an easy and fun way to teach your kids European geography? Look no further. This game is awesome. You will all brush up on your map skills while you play this high-strategy game.

This has become a family favorite for the kids 7 and older in our house. My kids have memorized the countries of Europe. They now get 100% right on tests of these countries. We love this game so much that we’ve added to our collection, 10 Days in the USA, 10 Days in the Americas, and 10 Days in Africa.

Carcassonne Board Game– This is a fabulous game that you can buy multiple expansions for. It is played with small cardboard cards that create the surface of the board. Complete roads & kingdoms to score points. The game ends when you run out of cards. Even my 6 year old can play this one!

Sequence – This game is fun to play in “teams”. This is not your typical team game where one person ends up making all the decisions. (Wait, is that only in our house?) So, as I was saying, this is actually fun.

You must sit in a specific order with no two members of the same team sitting next to each other. For instance if you have three teams (we’ll call them team A, B, and C) they would sit like this: teammate number one from A would sit next to teammate number one from B who sits next to teammate number one from team C. You would continue this pattern with teammate number 2 and so on. You aren’t actually allowed to speak to your team mate – no helping each other. It is a fun game of matching and strategy.

Enchanted Forest – This is made for younger kids but the adults in our house (and the older kids) seem to like it. It is a twist on the old “memory” game. The goal is to walk down the path and land next to one of many trees on the board. Once you are next to a tree you may look under it to see what fairytale item hides under the tree. The trick is to make sure not to show anyone else. You don’t want to give away any clues. There is a fairytale card turned over in the courtyard of the castle and your goal is to find which tree the match is hiding under. Once you find the tree that the item resides under, you can make your way to the castle and announce where it is. If you are right, you keep the card and a new card is then flipped over. If you are wrong you must start at the beginning of the path and try again. Once you get 3 cards, you win! This is a game of memory, matching, counting, strategy and patience. It is loads of fun!

Labyrinth – This is one of our newer games we’ve added to our collection. This is only a 4 player game so we don’t always play this for Fun Friday. I’ve included it here because it is a favorite for most in our family. It is a game of strategy and logic. Essentially, the game board is a large puzzle that shifts with each move.

You will be dealt many cards at the beginning of the game. Each card has a different object on the back. Your goal is to make your way to the object on your top card, in order to fulfill all your cards and make it back to your home space. However, because the board keeps shifting this objective is very hard! This game is challenging and fun! It really challenges your visual perceptual skills.

So there you have it! Our favorite board games to play at the end of school time or on a Friday night!

What is your favorite board game?

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this post does contain affiliate links, which means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything from the following links. I only recommend products that I use and love myself!)

06/19/2015

For the weary {when feeling overwhelmed with motherhood}

When You are Feeling Overwhelmed with Motherhood

Are you weary, mama? Are you overwhelmed today as you look down at your to-do list and see the many unchecked boxes. You see the piles of laundry, the undone dishes, the un-swept floor. The little ones that need you. The fussing baby. The crying toddler. They need you. There is so much right now that needs to be done. You don’t know where to begin. You feel like you are swept in the middle of a hurricane and life is flying by you but you can’t stop to see it. You can’t take a break. There is so much. So much.

There are seasons in our lives as mothers that are just overwhelming. We are weary. We are burdened. There are toddlers who won’t potty train but insist on tearing their diaper off and leave them stashed around the house. There are teething babies. There are sleepless nights. There are siblings who fight. There are messes too many to clean. We fall behind again and again. You are fighting a fight today. This battle is real. Be mindful. We need to work against the works of our flesh right now. This is the time that it is easy to give into our frustrations and allow our anger to rule. Anger can be at another person, or at our situation, or at ourselves. It’s too easy to feel that temptation. We allow fear to take the reigns. What do we do when we are weary? We run to God. We find our comfort in Him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

The job of a mother is difficult. It is a challenge. It is not about accomplishing all we set out to do – the day we set out to do it. We are working almost in slow motion, where it seems everything is pulling us back and we keep pushing forward. We must keep at this, but we must give this work to the Lord. As a mom, it is too easy to feel like we have to rush in and save the day.

It is too easy to believe that the weight of all of it rests on our shoulders. What if it does? Then we will fail. We will fail every – single – time. We are not made out of super human strength. We are not SuperMom. In fact, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t exist. I’m not sure who made up such a fallacy, but we must fight against it. We must hand all of our trouble over to the Lord. He will deliver us from these fears. He will deliver us from these problems. He will deliver us in His way and in His timing. Not in our own strength and not in our timing.

I’m reminded of something we spoke of in Bible Study this week. We were discussing a verse in Zechariah.

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin…”Zechariah 4:10

These small beginnings… Isn’t everything we do as mothers made up of small beginnings? As we carried our babies from conception to birth – they are made of small beginnings … as but a grain of sand with a beating heart and a life. Small beginnings. They grow and they become a person with a personality and a smile, with glimmering eyes, with hopes and dreams. Small beginnings. We all come from small beginnings. Our days are made of small beginnings. From the day that we make up our mind to start a new routine. Perhaps a Bible study with our children. Perhaps, a nightly reading time. Maybe they are learning to read for themselves. Small beginnings.

It might be swim lessons – from that very first time they splash in the water until the time they are starting swim team. Small beginnings. It might be their first toddling steps. Their first words. The first of anything. Isn’t our life a series of small beginnings? Some of these beginnings grow into what we are to become. These small things are all around us: the world renowned artist who first had to learn to hold a pencil. The ballerina who first had to learn to stand. We must grow. Do not despise these things. Do not rush past them. Enjoy them with patience and discernment because the Lord is working in your life. He is working in the lives of your children. We must not let our burdens and our boredom with what we see as mundane cloud what the Lord is doing.

Keep going on this journey, one step at a time. Soon you will see what you couldn’t see before. Even what we don’t know now, we will know one day. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity”. Keep running the race, my friends. Even in the small stuff. Even when you look around and it seems like your life is upside down. Keep going through the small beginnings and allow those beginnings to give you hope.

I will leave you with one last verse. This time it is from Isaiah,

“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:30 – 31

We must place our hope in the Lord and not in things of this world. We are tired, afraid, fearful, weary and starting to despise what is happening in our lives. We feel the stress rising up in us brimming to an overflow. We feel that everything might just crash down on us. Turn your eyes to Heaven. Sit for a moment and pray. Then take one step. Just one small step to keep moving forward.

06/17/2015

DIY Bedwetting Solution – Parenting Hack

If you have a child with developmental disabilities and special needs you might run into the problem of bedwetting. Even if you don’t have a child with special needs you might have this problem. However, it is definitely more prevalent in children with moderate disabilities and delays. The way I see it, as a mom, we can hope that our child wakes up dry each day and they might wake up dry… or they might wet the bed. We could end up changing their sheets every other day (or more often) or we can put them back in diapers. What happens if your child is too big for diapers? What happens when that child starts to realize that they are still wearing diapers but their siblings and other children are not? What happens if they regress once they realize that?

I have tried many forms of overnight diapers and bed pads for my son. We want to allow him to grow in his independence while not having these same issues night after night.

Recently, while shopping for groceries, I came across Tru-Fit Underwear. They are located in the diaper aisle. They are real underpants that have an internal gusset and waterproof lining. They come with 5 disposable inserts in the first pack. The inserts are like large disposable pads that fit into this underwear. The beauty of this product is that they truly look like real underwear from the outside. They fit underneath PJs. They allow him to easily use the bathroom if he does wake up while not flooding the bed if he doesn’t. My son was very enthusiastic about using them and they do work very well.

The Good and Bad

One of the problem with them is they look so much like underwear and they are so thick they are hard for the child to tell that they wet. This is good and bad…they contain leaks, the bed stays dry. I do want him to realize when he has had an accident, though. In the morning, he wasn’t sure if he had had an accident. This was going well, until the one day when he by mistake put his underwear in his hamper without realizing that the insert has to be thrown away. I didn’t catch it in time and it ended up in the wash. If you’ve ever washed a disposable diaper in the wash, you know how bad this is. It gets all over everything. EVERYTHING. I must have washed the load 15 times to get rid of all the remnants of the gel. Also, these inserts can be slightly expensive. A pack of 18 is priced between $9-$12. I am partial to cloth diapers. I’ve used cloth diapers since my oldest child was a newborn baby. I truly love using them, so it was only natural for me to try to create a cloth diapering product for older kids.

DIY Bedwetting Solution

I decided to try an experiment. I decided to make my own inserts. We already use cloth diapers on baby, so why not make some cloth inserts?

I gathered my supplies.

Birdseye Fabric (Like in some cloth diapers)

Microfiber Towels

Disappearing Ink Fabric Pen

This is so easy. First, draw a template of what you are trying to make. Then copy it onto your birdseye fabric.

Make sure the fabric is folded or doubled so when you cut, you are cutting two pieces. Fold your microfiber towels the long way by thirds. Place it in the center, sandwiched between both pieces of birdseye fabric. Sew around the edge with a zig zag stich. Then sew around where the microfiber towel is placed with a straight stitch (this is to hold it in place).

Voila: You have created your own insert! This one is more for a lighter bed-wetter. If you have a heavy wetting child you might need to put two towels inside the cotton or follow the instructions below.

Start with a scrap piece of fleece and either two microfiber towels or an old prefold diaper. I used a prefold diaper folded in thirds.

Cut two pieces of fleece the same side. Roughly needs to be the length of the disposable insert. Line them up and sew down one long side, one short side and continue sewing the length of the other long side. Leave the other short end opened.

You’ve just created a fleece pocket. Now turn it inside out so that the seems are on the inside.

Now you just need to stuff the prefold (or towel) inside the pocket. The pocket can be placed inside of the underwear or inside of other waterproof pants. The fleece acts as a barrier that wicks away moisture from the skin.

I hope this helps you and your child sleep better and stay dryer!

« Previous Page

Chore Ideas for Kids

Large Family Laundry Routine

Make Your Days Easier with a Good Laundry Routine

Top 5 Board Games to Play with your Kids

Games to Play with Your Kids

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this post does contain affiliate links, which means that I may get a commissions if you decide to purchase anything from the following links. I only recommend products that I use and love myself!)

For the weary {when feeling overwhelmed with motherhood}

When You are Feeling Overwhelmed with Motherhood

DIY Bedwetting Solution – Parenting Hack

DIY Bedwetting Solution

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