Summer Habit Training with a Weekly Schedule

After finishing up our second year of homeschooling with a week of testing, it was time for some relaxation.  So for the past two weeks we’ve spent some time on the beautiful coast of Maine and taken some walks in the woods to refresh.

It was a great time for reflection on the past year–what went well and what needs some tweaking.  I’ve been reading (and rereading) some of my favorite homeschooling books and grabbing some inspiration from my favorite blogs.

Time for Some Habit Training

Those of you familiar with Charlotte Mason’s methods know that a tool she advocates is the use of habits, and this is an area where we need some work.  Which is really to say that I, as the mother, need some work.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children. ~ Charlotte Mason (Volume 1, p. 136)

I am often inspired by Barb’s wise council as a Charlotte Mason style homeschooler just graduating her third child.  A post she wrote about instilling habits in her older children is full of ideas and advice and prompted me to focus on some housekeeping habits during our more relaxed summer schedule.  I have been working on chores with my children, attempting to line up their responsibilities for taking care of their spaces and belongings and also contribute to overall household cleanliness.  We have made some headway:

• They each have a checklist for getting ready in the morning, which is helpful in cutting down the numbers of times I have to say “Did you pick up your dirty clothes?” or “Did you turn off your bedroom light?”  I still find myself having to remind them to go check their list for forgotten items, however, and with the list posted upstairs I can forget my responsibility to see that they have checked off the items.  There is no record from day to day, so I feel the lines of habit have not been laid firmly enough for these daily tasks to become second nature.
• I added a daily household chore for each child.  These are different each day and involve things like sweeping or wiping down bathroom counters and when done they really help keep the house cleaner during the week before my rounds of weekend deeper cleaning.  I kept the list of specific chores on my desk, so here again I found myself forgetting to remind them and many days the chores went undone.

The room for improvement is making these tasks that they are fully capable of into a habit with no need for reminding by me.  Taking care of these habits over the summer should let us focus on other habits when full time schoolwork picks up in the fall.

Last year I used a checklist for my daughter to increase independence in her school work and it worked very well.  I modified the lists and made each of my children a summer weekly checklist.

Summer Weekly Schedule Checklist

Each of them has daily tasks on their schedule:

• Morning checklist:  the hope is this will cut down on me having to remind them to complete this list.
• Read:  they have reading goals specific to their age, and this is here to make sure each of them reads every day.
• A household chore: again, with the item on their checklist I hope to cut down on the need for reminders from me.
• Garden chores: they each have their own square foot garden, so they need to weed and water it each day.  My daughter showed extra interest in flowers this year so she also has several potted plants outside that will be her responsibility.

My daughter’s list has additional items:

• Daily piano practice
• Some tasks that need to happen 1-3 times per week but the day is up to her (Xtramath, a chapter in Life of Fred, and typing practice)
• I also plan to check in with her each Monday to help her in setting some personal goals she can add under “weekly goals.”  I found this helps keep her productive in her free time.  We set goals like making something (she sews and loves duct tape crafting) or organizing a section of her room (something she actually enjoys!) or writing a letter to someone (she has several girls she exchanges letters with).

These checklists give us all a central place to keep track of chores and also keep a record of how they are doing at accomplishing each item each day.  The final piece is a reward for weekly lists with all items checked off.  I’m still debating the specific reward–a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast, or possibly good old cash.

In case any of you are also looking to make your life with your children easier by forming good habits Simply Charlotte Mason offers a free ebook that I just stumbled across today called Smooth and Easy Days.  Do you have any specific summer goals for your children or any advice for me as we focus on habits?

Thank you to the wonderful hostesses with fun link-ups.  Be sure to join the fun and see what other homeschoolers are up to!