Eliminating Excuses

My kids have daily chores to do. Some day they may even have weekly ones.

One of my biggest challenges is that they can never remember what they are supposed to be doing, and so spend significant time going back to finish up missed steps, making ten minutes of chores take twenty, thirty or even more minutes to do.

I have tried many ways to help them, including master lists we check off afterwards, and chore packs that they wear on their bodies. The checklists were forever getting misplaced, and the chore packs bothered my sensory sensitive child, who then would remove (and therefore lose) it. The other difficulty I had, especially for one child, was an inability to work through the steps in a logical order. Do you know how difficult it is to wipe down a counter when you haven't reloaded the dishwasher yet?

I think we may have found a solution that works.

I have made detailed cleaning lists for each room. Each list is being taped inside a cupboard door of its designated room. That way they can just open the door, start at the top, and read and complete one step at a time. Voila!

The lists are being posted tonight as our printer was being ornery, but we have been test-driving the lists this week by putting the computer in the room with the list on the screen, and have had fabulous results.

P.S. I can't figure out how to post the lists in here, but if you would like a copy let me know!

Wednesday Wackies

Some times kids say the most hilarious things! I just had to share a couple from this afternoon.

The first one is a conversation I had with my son T.
I sent him in to the dollar store to grab 2 cans of diced tomatoes. He came back with 5.

Me: I thought you were getting 2 cans.
T: It's not my fault! You didn't give me clear directions. You told me to get 2 cans of diced tomatoes!

(I discovered later that the reason he wasn't clear is that he thought I wanted 2 big Costco-sized cans and they only had the regular size ones, so he wasn't sure how many he should get in that case!)

The second was between my friend C and her son J when I dropped my kids to their house:

J: Mom, where do T, N, and A live?
C: (told him our city name)
J: No, not WHERE do they live, what planet?
C: Earth
J: You mean,  they live on planet Earth, the same planet as us?
C: Yes, John, the same planet, Earth.
J: Really, Mom? Do they really live on same planet Earth?

So now you know, we are aliens who come from a planet where 2 and 5 mean the same thing!

Hope you all had a wacky day too!

Face Paint Fun

Amanda asked for face paint at her birthday party. My mum and sister very kindly picked some up, but then I forgot to use it.

Yesterday Amanda and Nicolas came to me asking for some, and I managed to oblige them. I am not artistic, so I am impressed with how well it turned out. I am sure the true artists are cringing but we had fun! LOL

Birthday Fun

Amanda turns 8 next week, and I got off easily for her party.
Instead of the typical little girl party where I had to entertain them with mind-numbing games she elected to have a BBQ with her friends and their families. Bonus - easy for me!

She had a Hello Kitty theme but I was so behind getting ready that there was no way I could get a Hello Kitty cake done. Instead, she let me off easily and we made rainbow cakes. In fact, I was so far behind, the cupcakes only got baked 6 hours before the party, which meant the icing knocked the top of the first cupcake I iced. The kids called it an icing cookie! After that, I piped the icing on and spread it VERY gently, and managed to keep the rest mostly intact.

Here is how our cupcakes looked:

One of the big advantages of a BBQ is that Michael does the cooking!

Lots of kids, lots of balls, which also meant lots of time digging balls off of the roof and out of neighbours' yards!

The birthday girl getting ready to blow out her candle (there was an "8" candle behind the sparklers).