Homework

·        Establish schedules and routines for homework.  While kids are doing their homework, treat it as a family-wide study hour where everyone is reading quietly or catching up on correspondence.  This communicates the message that learning is life long, and keeps kids from feeling they are missing out on fun while others are watching television, talking on the phone.

·        To save school papers and artwork neatly, keep a milk crate or plastic bin for each child’s creations in the floor of their closet or under their bed. At the end of the year, clean it out together picking the favorites, and file them in folders by grade.

Navigating After School Activities

·        You have one life; you need one planner for all your activities.  Select a single consistent planner, paper or electronic, which fits in your bag.  Use it to record all work and family related appointments, activities and to do lists.

·        Check your planner every evening to see what you accomplished during the day, and what you have coming up over the next 2-3 days.  Decide whether to carry over uncompleted items to another day, or just let them go.  Very few people ever get to everything on their to-do list.

·        Be prepared for waiting time during after school activities and doctors appointments.  Make phones calls from your cell phone.  Keep a portable correspondence kit (including note cards, stamps and envelopes) in your bag.  Store a plastic folder labeled “Reading” in your bag for articles and catalogs you want to peruse.   Plan to run some errands in a nearby shopping center. Keep a tote of car games and activities for the kids under the front seat.

·        Get a planner for your kids and have them schedule all their after school activities in it, along with important dates such as project due dates or exam weeks.

Cleaning

·        If you’ve been doing all the household chores yourself, it’s time to recreate your strategy.  Making the whole family participate is a gift to everyone—it teaches kids valuable life skills, creates a healthy sense of teamwork and love, and distributes the workload so you are not so depleted that you’re never up for fun time.

·        Call a family meeting and define your goals as a family:  to create a clean and cozy home that is welcoming to friends and neighbors and nice to relax in together.

·        Designate a daily cleaning and clutter pickup time, mornings, after dinner, or before bed.  Create a chore chart to help kids keep track of their contribution to daily clean-up.

·        Rotate deep cleaning on a daily or weekly basis, and team clean the room as a family.  Kids can pick up clutter or polish furniture,   Mom can clean the windows, Dad can vacuum or wash the floor.  It’s more fun to work as a family in one room than separated throughout the house.

·        Bring a bin of cleaning supplies into a room and stay in that room until it’s cleaned. If you find something that goes in another room, pile it up near the door and take it out when you leave.