Welcome April! Now that it’s official that the kids are home for the month. Here are 3 strategies I’m using to set myself up for a successful month with them. I’m going to make the most out of this because it’s not often we get to all spend so much quality time together. I’m using these 3 strategies in an effort to reduce the overwhelm and stress in my home
Here they are…
1. Set up a Calendar- I'm using a calendar system with my kids to help build structure and predictability for the month. I'm a huge fan of My Starry Chart, which is an interactive responsibility board game for kids. I'm doubling it up this month also as a functional calendar. Each of my kids have chosen 5 household responsibilities they will be focusing on this month (which by the way is super empowering for them) so we will be rewarding them using the chart. We are also celebrating a lot of birthdays this month so we've made sticky notes for each bday and put them on the calendar. I will be incorporating some literacy and math into the calendar- we will be working on counting (1-20 for my son who is almost 4) and skip counting (by 2, and 5 for my daughter who is almost 6). I'm also going to have my daughter start a journal so she will use the calendar to write in the date every day.
2. Set Learning Goals- I've done some goal setting so I have a bit of structure to work with. I've made a list of 5 new skills that I want each of my kids to learn this month. You can choose as many as you think are realistic for your family. Some are academic, some are life skills, some are motor development skills like cutting and using a fork while eating. Don't feel pressure that is has to be academic all day every day. There is so much value in teaching your child relevant life skills. No joke, one of my goals is to work on simply 'waiting'- patience is a big one for my son.
3. Online Activity Routine- I've been completely overwhelmed by the amount of resource available online for kids to learn, to the point where I just stopped paying attention to what's available out there. Not the best coping mechanism but desperate times calls for desperate measures. So what I've done is I've picked two online learning activities/week for each for my children to do. They will be doing them at the same times each week to help build routine and structure. This helps with the mom guilt big time since I know that we have structured learning time set up.
We're all in this together, there's no need to feel alone here.
You've got this!
Cori
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