Your Before Bed Routine

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

 

Dear Friends,

How is your Before Bed Routine going? The habit of the month for September is your Before Bed Routine or Evening Routine.

You start this routine right after dinner, and it will make your morning much more pleasant the next day.

Each evening, we divide and conquer the kitchen clean up. Each person does a task, and we are done quickly. Then I move into my Before Bed Routine. I check my calendar and the weather to see what we have the next day.

After I do this, I am able to lay my clothes out down to my shoes. I remind the boys of anything we have on the calendar and to lay their clothes out, too. (My boys are easy in this regard because they wear a lot of camouflage clothes.)

Next, we put things at the Launch Pad, so we don’t have to search for things the next morning.

Since the sink is clean and shiny from the dinner clean up, I check back on it at the end of the night when I take my bedtime supplements.
Right before I go to bed, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and put on my pajamas. Then, I go to bed at a decent hour, which is usually 10:00 pm.
This is the most important routine of your day. If it is something you have not been doing, I encourage you to start doing these simple steps each night. It will make your mornings more peaceful. It will help your children have a solid routine that leads to bedtime each night.

Your Zone Mission today is to clear the Hot Spots in the Kitchen.

Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.

My menu plan for Tuesday is Taco Tuesday.

Have a blessed day!

FlyLady Works for Homeschool Families

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Getting Organized:
In Your Home and Homeschool

Dear Friends,
The FlyLady received this letter last week, and it touched her. Her passion is for all families to have peace in their homes. The routines are what brings the peace as we get rid of the clutter and chaos.
Dear Flylady,
I am a 16 year old sophomore and I have always been homeschooled. Over summer, I read one of your marvelous cleaning books and decided to get my family to work it into our lives. My family of ten now follow your plan almost exactly, and the results are amazing! I just got into the National Honor Society, and the housework isn’t suffering at all from my academic and social life spent away, because this is so simple. You’ve saved my mother a good number of headaches. Thank you! Fly baby Rey in Houston
 
While you think in your head that your children aren’t seeing the changes. They are. When you wonder if what you do matters. It does. If you question why the change has to start with you. Just do one thing.
The FlyLady system works for everyone who will stop their negative thoughts and move forward with the routines. Once you have the routines established as habits, you won’t believe how easy it is to clean your house.
We love to hear from you! If you have a FlyLady story, email it to us at Homeschool@FlyLady.net .
Your Zone Mission today is to declutter your kitchen counters and wipe them down.
Your Home Blessing for today is to wash sheets.
My menu plan for Monday is hamburgers for our Labor Day cookout.
Have a great day!

 

Your Organized Home

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

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Dear Friends,

Throughout this week I have shared with you about taking small steps to organize various areas of your home. Today, I wanted to wrap it up with the encouragement that you can have an organized home while you are homeschooling.

Some of you think this is a myth. Some of you are just starting to see a glimmer that it is possible. Others of you are living it now.

Organizing your home does not happen overnight. There is not a magic pill or cure for a cluttered home. It takes small, daily steps to declutter and let things go. Going through your home one zone per week will add up over time. I know it is hard to believe, but it is true.

When you start something, you want to see instant results. You are more apt to keep things picked up and decluttered if you work in small steps. If you paid someone to come into your home to help you get organized, they could get you to where you wanted to be in fairly quick order. But if you have not developed the routines of picking up behind yourself and decluttering regularly, your home will not stay in order.

Unfortunately, it is not the natural way for things to stay orderly. Add in a homeschool family who is home all the time, and you have many opportunities for things to be put in disarray. Your routines are essential to an organized home.

Teaching your children routines will help you now, and later, it will benefit them as adults. Routines will set you free from the clutter. Each day commit to 5 minutes of decluttering in the Zone of the Week. You can do this Morning, Afternoon, or Evening. It does not matter when you do it, but it does matter that you do it.

Decluttering is something that will be a part of your routines as long as you bring new things into your home. If you bring home a new pair of shoes, declutter one or two pair. If you bring home new clothes, declutter at least as many items as you brought home if not more.

When you clear a flat surface, put something pretty on it. That will deter some of the piles that like to grow on flat surfaces. If you have a favorite color, get some flowers and put them in a vase. Then put them in a place that you will see often during the day. I bought some inexpensive silk flowers recently, and it makes me smile every time I walk past them.

You are busy with your homeschool, but if you will just budget a little bit of time daily to decluttering, you will see a difference. The trifecta of homeschooling is to get school done, house picked up, and dinner on the table all in one day. It’s a bonus when the laundry is done, too. You can do it!

Start practicing your Before Bed Routine tonight. It’s the new Habit of the Month, and it sets you up for a peaceful start to your morning.

For some additional encouragement, listen to this recording of a session with Marla Cilley, The FlyLady, and me from a homeschooling conference. You CAN Homeschool and Have a Clean Home.

Today’s Zone Mission is to declutter the top of your dresser.

Your Home Blessing for today is to empty the trash, sweep, and mop.

My menu plan for Friday is chicken alfredo.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Siggie - Tami Fox

Your Organized Bedroom

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

 

Dear Friends,
Your bedroom is your sanctuary from the world. It is not the catch all for the stuff you don’t have a place for. We tend to overlook the importance of our bedrooms.
Take a look at your bedroom. Make a list of the things you could do to declutter it and make it look more peaceful.
Do you have clothes piled in the corner? Chairs and treadmills in the bedroom are a clutter magnet for clothes. Usually your clothes spend more time on the treadmill than you do.
Are your flat surfaces piled full? Take a look at the piles. What you can give away or throw away? What needs to be put away? Get it down to the bare essentials.
If you have things piled in the corners, find a place for them or get rid of them. Sometimes we get so used to seeing things in the corners of our room that we quit “seeing” them. Look at your room with fresh eyes.
Think about how you feel when you walk into a hotel room or a vacation rental. Until you unpack, it has clear surfaces. Do what you can to recreate this in your bedroom. If you have cleared off surfaces, you can dust weekly. If your surfaces are piled high, you probably are not dusting in there regularly. It’s time to evict the dust bunnies!
Do you use the underneath part of your bed for storage? Consider not keeping anything under your bed or only a few things. It will be easier to evict the dust bunnies each month when I tell you to clean under your bed.
Look at your bed. Do you need to freshen up your linens, bed cover, or pillows? Adding a few throw pillows can give your bed a new look after you make it each day. If you are slacking on making your bed daily, resolve now to make your bed as soon as you get up each morning. I get up before my husband in the mornings, and I make my side of the bed as soon as I get up.

Now, granted, it is dark, so I am doing a quick job of it. I can always make it a little less wrinkly later in the day. But he is also making his side of the bed when he gets up. So our bed is made first thing in the morning every day.
I saved the best for last. Open your closet. If it is cluttered up, start decluttering a few minutes at a time until it looks better. I do not want you to pull everything out and sort. I just want you to flip through your hangers and pull out whatever does not fit or that you don’t like. It might be one thing, and it might be ten things. Do not tell yourself to hang onto it if you have held onto it for years waiting to lose weight to fit into it. Do not feel guilty if it still has tags on it. Bless someone else with it, if it does not fit.
You can make your room a haven of rest.
Today’s Zone Mission is to detail vacuum the Living Room.
Your Home Blessing for today is to declutter paper and magazines.
My menu plan for Thursday is chicken and a salad.
Have a great day!

Your Organized Living Room

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

Dear Friends,
Your Living Room is a place where people gather, whether it’s your family or your friends. How does it look? This week we are detail cleaning in the Living Room. Your Zone Missions are designed to give you ideas on things you can do in the Living Room. You can use them as a springboard for what you need to do to make your Living Room peaceful.
The Living Room can be one of your easiest rooms in the house to detail clean once a month and pick up the rest of the month if you let go of the extra stuff you have in there.
After you finish reading this email, I want you to walk into your Living Room and look at it as if you were a real estate agent. If you were showing your house today, what would you do to the Living Room?
If you have young children who play in the Living Room, give them a place to put their toys when they are finished playing. Have a daily pick up time with them. If they make more than one mess a day in the Living Room, have additional pick up times.
Look at the flat surfaces near the furniture. Do you have lots of things sitting around? If they do not have special meaning to you, consider moving them. The fewer things you have on the flat surfaces, the easier it will be to do your weekly dusting.
Children have a tendency to lose things down in the sofa or chair. That is why I give you a mission to clean them out. Kids find this a fun mission if you let them keep any money that they find. We call it treasure hunting in our house.
Bookshleves in the Living Room should not be overstuffed. If you have bookshelves in the Living Room, limit yourself to only putting what fits on them easily. Resist the temptation to stack them as high as you can.
If you use the Zone Missions each month, it will help you continually declutter and give you a peaceful home. You don’t have to Crisis Clean if you use the Zone Missions and do your Weekly Home Blessings.
Your Zone Mission today is to declutter anything that does not belong in the Living Room.
Your Home Blessing for today is to wipe your windows and mirrors.
My menu plan for Wednesday is hamburgers and tater tots.
Have a great day!

 

Your Organized Kitchen

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

 

Dear Friends,
How does your kitchen look today?
As I am writing this, we are in the midst of a kitchen renovation.
What I have found during this process is that I have a lot of items in my kitchen that I do not use on a regular basis. As I put things back in the cabinets and drawers, I am going to be selective about what we keep.
If you have followed The FlyLady, you know that we declutter and detail clean in the kitchen each month. This is when you can slowly work your way through your kitchen cabinets and drawers over the course of several months. During the 2nd week of the month, the focus is on the kitchen. You have 5 days that week to spend going through various areas in the kitchen.
Even though I have done this for many years, there were still corners and places in my cabinets that I did not touch the items sitting there until we took everything out for this renovation. My guess is that you have items that you have not touched in your cabinets, too.
As our family has grown, some of our appliances got bigger, too. In some cases, we did not declutter the smaller item. I had three sizes of slow cookers. I decluttered the smallest one.
Take a look at the appliances you have in your kitchen. Do you use them all? I understand that some of them have a specific use once or twice a year. My turkey roasting pan is huge, but I still use it enough to keep it. I will just put it in a place where I don’t need it quickly.
Look at the cups in your cabinet. Do you have too many? Over the years, we collected a lot of plastic cups with six children. I am not sentimental about cups, so I did some decluttering of them. I also decluttered some regular glasses that we don’t use. My coffee cup collection was also larger than we actually need, so I let go of some of them, too.
Peek in your utensil drawer and flatware. Do you have it piled in there? We have a tendency to have too many of one thing and not enough of another. I decluttered some butter knives because I had way too many of them. I am short on forks, so I need to pick up a new pack of them at Sam’s Club. (I use the kind of forks you buy in a big pack for a restaurant.)
Check under your sink. My son, who is a plumber, told me I had too much stuff under my sink. I have decluttered some things that have literally just sat there for years.
You can make your kitchen look fresh and new with a little time and some new organization.
Your Zone Mission today is to have a Hot Spot Fire Drill in the Living Room.
Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.
My menu plan for Tuesday is to dust the ceiling fan and baseboards.
Have a blessed day!

Your Organized Homeschool

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Getting Organized:
In Your Home and Homeschool

Dear Friends,
How many of you want an organized homeschool? We all want to have an organized homeschool. Many of you have challenges with space. Some of you have challenges with multiple children. A few of you have extra items if you are homeschooling a special needs student. A couple of you homeschool in an RV or very small space.
Most of our homes were not designed with the thoughts that we would need an area to homeschool. So we make changes and make our homes work for our needs.
In my home, we keep the homeschool materials in the kitchen, but we homeschool all over the house. I keep reference books in the living room. Science and history references have an area on the bookshelves. Biographies have a section on the shelves. Fiction books are put in order based on the author’s last name. Our Bible reference materials have a special section on a different bookshelf.
Last month, I moved all of our craft items to a craft cabinet. I gave away some books last month to make room for a few new books for this year.
Some of the ladies I talk to regularly are homeschooling in very tight spaces. We talked about ideas and strategies on storing materials in a way that the students can put their books away easily.
We found lots of ideas on Pinterest. You can use magazine holders, plastic crates, plastic bins with lids, or baskets. Kids can also use backpacks, if you are really tight on space. None of these would be costly to use.
If you have a bigger budget, you can use a cabinet with doors like I do, or you can use a rolling cart with multiple drawers.
If you struggle with keeping school supplies organized, you can get the plastic pencil boxes for less than a dollar. Buy one for each student, and use a permanent marker to write each person’s name on a box. I have my own box for my special pens and pencils. You can also buy one of the zipper pouches that clip inside of a three-ring binder to keep pencils and erasers with their paper.
You don’t want to have issues getting school started each day because they can’t find their supplies.
Teacher resources and answer keys need to be handy for you to use but not easily accessible to everyone in the house. This year, I dedicated a special area in my school cabinet for my teacher resources.
If you have to keep certain papers and tests for a portfolio, go ahead and set your files or binders up now. You can add to it weekly, and then you don’t have to deal with it later in the year.
For those of you who have to keep attendance sheets for your state regulations, start those as soon as you start school. If you procrastinate, you will find yourself checking off a lot of boxes at the end of the school year. Update the attendance sheet weekly.
Tell me some ways you have found that help you get organized in your homeschool. If you are homeschooling in an RV, I would love to hear from you!

Your Zone Mission today is to dust the decorative items in the Living Room.
Your Home Blessing for today is to wash sheets.
My menu plan for Monday is lasagna.
Have a great day!

 

10 Ways to Add More Fun to Your Daily Homeschool Schedule

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Dear Friends,

Please enjoy this guest post from TakeLessons:

Daily Homeschool Schedule Infographic

Homeschooling comes with many little blessings. Spending quality time with your child all throughout the day is an experience that most parents, unfortunately, don’t get. Homeschooling does come with its own set of challenges, though.

Being at home with your child(ren) day in and day out can make the weeks feel long and repetitive. A great way to combat this is by adding in some new activities to break up the school day. There are many fun activities you can do together that are also educational!

For example, lunchtime provides the perfect opportunity to begin teaching your child a valuable life skill – cooking! Using the half hour before lunch as a cooking class will allow you to teach your child how to slice different kinds of food, read a recipe, and measure ingredients, (you can squeeze in a math lesson here, too)! The best part is that you will get to enjoy the fruits of your labor together.

If you’re fortunate enough to live near a zoo, this is definitely something you should be taking advantage of. Homeschooling provides the flexibility to plan field trips during the day that are appropriate for your lesson plans. The zoo is a great way for children to learn about habitats, various animal species, and the environment. You’ll enjoy the exercise, too!

Every homeschooling parent understands that sometimes you just need a break. Running a household and a school at the same time can get overwhelming fast. Signing your child up for online language classes is one ideal remedy. Let an experienced foreign language instructor teach your child for 45 minutes per week. Learning a new language is a valuable skill in today’s day and age. It also teaches children to appreciate other cultures.

A majority of people in the U.S. have to contend with bad weather for a portion of the year. This can really put a damper on PE lessons. Physical education is important, (especially if you have little ones who have a seemingly endless supply of energy). When the weather threatens to foil your plans, try PE videos instead. YouTube has loads of kid-friendly videos that show how to have fun and get some exercise indoors.

There are even more fun activities that you can add to your schedule on the infographic below from TakeLessons. All grade levels can benefit from these unconventional ways to learn. Try adding in a new activity each week to make for an engaging and successful school year!

 

Feel free to share this article and graphic from TakeLessons!

 

Siggie - Tami Fox

Hands on History

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

 

Dear Friends,
Many of you have asked me for specifics about my curriculum choices. I wanted to share with you about hands on history today, and later I will share about science and fine arts.
Teaching history does not have to be done solely with textbooks. You can use many resources to teach history without buying a textbook. Typically, I go through history on a 4 or 5 year cycle. It depends on how you look at an election year.
We will study American History, Ancient History, World History, and the Middle Ages. American history usually contains geography, and World History will look at different world events and geography. It can have elements of a study in cultures.
Depending on the time period we are studying, I will gather books about the country, biographies, map information, information about manufacturing, and anything else that will expand on the study with literature, art, and music.
When we start on the topic, I will read to them and assign a project. That can range from an art project to a writing project to a drama complete with costumes. We immerse ourselves in the time period.
We study the American Revolution and have afternoon tea while I read to them. Tea time can be simple, and it does not have to be authentic.
During our study of the Middle Ages, we will learn about kings and queens and have a medieval feast.
World history lends itself to cultural studies, and I bring in art, music, and food elements.
American Geography can be based around map activities and cooking. I spent a full semester on a study of the United States through eating meals that we cooked based on the book, Eat Your Way Through the USA. We ate 50 meals from 50 states and never left our home.
Studying history can be fun, vibrant, and exciting.
How do you study history?
Today’s Zone Mission is to clean under the bed.

Your Home Blessing for today is to empty the trash, sweep, and mop.

My menu plan for Friday is chicken and a salad.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Are you homeschooling high school?

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Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

 

Dear Friends,
Do you have children who are high school age?
High school at home does not have to be harder than the earlier years of homeschooling. You will just need to keep different records. Think of their high school transcript like a resume. You want to give them credit for their core subjects and for their electives. You will also want to document their community service and volunteering.
While not all high school students will go to college, you do not want to wait until their senior year to do a transcript. You need to document each year with the subjects covered and their final grade average. Some colleges want to see a Grade Point Average (GPA). This is typically a 4.0 scale, but you can award higher than that based on Advanced Placement courses. Look at recommendations of several sources for this.
If you student chooses to start at a community college, the admissions office wants to see a transcript, but they will rely more on placement testing. Some high school students choose to dual enroll at the community college during the junior and senior years. This is an excellent way to get both high school credit and college credit for the same class.
High school students can do apprenticeships or become an entrepeneur. These types of things can give the student elective credits that you can put on their transcript.
If you child takes music lessons, art lessons, or other supplemental activities, you can include it on a transcript.
You do not want to include so much information that you have multiple pages. You want to keep as much information as possible on one page. For supplemental activities, you may need to use a second page.
Each school year should have it’s own section on the transcript. You will also want to include the student’s name, school name, address, administrator name with signature line, and teacher name with signature line.
You can use my sample transcript as a stepping stone to creating one for your student. I keep it simple.
What questions do you have about homeschooling high school?
Today’s Zone Mission is to declutter the shoes you are not wearing regularly.

Your Home Blessing for today is to declutter paper and magazines.

My menu plan for Thursday is corn dogs, tator tots, chicken, and a salad.

Have a great day!