Morning Chart

School starts this week for both of my girls & getting up and out the door everyday by 8:30ish is going to be a huge adjustment for this family. School starts on Wednesday for one of my girls and Thursday for the other, however we got up early today to run through our morning routine and I plan to do it again tomorrow. It is a bit painful to set an alarm for 6am for the last two days of summer vacation, but I knew we needed a few days to get into a routine. Probably should have started early to bed and early wake ups last week, but better late than never. I know this will probably irritate some people, but my kids sleep in (they never napped for me), but I have been blessed with kids that don't wake up super early. Mostly a blessing, except on the days you actually have to be out of the house "early". For the last few years preschool mornings have been less than pleasant around here, so I decided to make us a little chart to keep the girls on track and hopefully to help them take some ownership on what needs to be done in the mornings. I got this idea from a combination of something my friend Amy did last year & something I saw in a magazine. I will admit I have lots of creative ideas, but I never seem to get to them & furthermore when I do they don't usually turn out like I imagined. I am happy to report that this time I had a vision, I actually made it happen & I'm happy with how it turned out. Here is our "morning routine chart", it does not say that b/c as most of you know I hate my handwriting so I did not want to ruin this with my handwriting (might be a job for you Andrea, next time you are over).

I made one for each of my girls and the idea is that each step of their morning routine has a picture and a marker to help them stay on track & then be able to note when they have completed a task. It worked today, they both jumped out of bed excited to see their charts and we progressed through our pretend getting ready for school morning very nicely... As a side note, I wish it was always going to be pretend, I'm really not doing well with the idea of Kindergarten! Taylor got the teacher we wanted & she has a very sweet friend in her class from a wonderful Christian family which I'm trilled about, but I'm already missing my baby! It's true what everyone has told me... enjoy it while they are young, it goes by fast. It has gone by too fast!

Addison's Chart

Yes, I know I'm nerdy, but it's how God made me :)