Friday, December 10, 2010

Daily

I started out with one routine, then when that routine wasn't working, we had no routine for a while. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want our days to look like, and I don't think our normal schedule yet reflects what I'd like our days to be. But in order to both feel that Luke is accomplishing things, and feel that we are not spending time fighting about it, Luke and I had a good conversation cross-legged on my bed one morning. I explained that everyone is important to somebody, and important people have responsibilities. I must have repeated that ten times in the course of the conversation, "Important people have responsibilities." Then Luke told me what he thinks some of his responsibilities are, and I contributed some ideas, too. He wrote them all down on a piece of paper as we discussed. I have a photo of that picture, but I'll post it later.

Luke's daily responsibilities are as follows:

Reading time - when we sit together and I read aloud to him.
Writing time - Variable, sometimes independent, sometimes with me, when he draws pictures, and uses creative spelling to label things in them, or when he asks me how to spell various words and he lists them on a page, when he "writes" stories, or draws pictures and dictates stories to me.
Piano practice - Luke started lessons this fall.
Brush teeth.
Putting away things when he's finished with them. (We're making progress, but it doesn't come naturally to me either. If he doesn't put things away, then this responsibility changes to be "help clean room--a big job.")
Chore - 1 or 2 jobs that Momma needs him to do, Momma chooses.

We have some changes coming to our weekly schedule. I'll post about that soon.

Also, I just need to say that we were not fighting about reading or writing ever. But the picking up toys and other jobs can be contentious at our house.