Morning schedule for kids -

A morning routine for kids - great visual reminder!

Hi! This is just a quick post to show a morning schedule for kids – or my kids' morning routine, as we call it around here, because it's more of a pattern of habits than something on the calendar. I've been asked about routines and schedules for about as long as I've been blogging, and I'm happy to show everyone – but first, I have to mention that I did something that was hard for THIS introvert, at least – I jumped on Facebook Live! I made a quick, live video with my kids running around like tiny crazy people the whole time. It was fun! It was an experiment of sorts – I wanted to see how it works.

You can catch the video on Facebook, where I show the kids' morning routine. I used Makeover Your Mornings from the Money Saving Mom to develop a routine for myself, which includes breakfast, devotions, vitamins, work, and exercise. Once I got that down, I worked with the kids to develop a routine for them. We posted it on our wall, and our goal for this summer has been to have everything done by 8:45am on the days that our community pool opens at 10, then by 9:45am on their sleep-in days. The older kids help the non-readers, and I supervise where it's needed, but my GOAL here has been to create healthy habits that my kids can do without even really thinking about it.

The best thing about setting up a routine (and learning HOW to do it most effectively with Makeover Your Mornings) has been that keeping this routine over the summer has helped us to ease the transition to back-to-school hours, which is huge. Keeping a general routine of some kind definitely helps over ANY school break during the year!

I bought Makeover Your Evenings during the last sale, and one of my favorite things about it was how it helped me to prioritize what I need to do, and it helped me to create a list of things that I will NOT do during our morning and evening routines. This is more important than you'd think, because it is so easy to fill our routines – or even our entire days – with non-essentials that just take up time. Now, if it's 9pm and the floor needs to be mopped, I can remind myself that I am NOT going to do that today – it can be fit in to afternoon chores tomorrow, or another time. It's so freeing!