In Michigan, schools have been shut down for the next three weeks (plus one more week for our Spring Break). I don’t know about you, but 4 weeks of home schooling with limited activities outside the house is a little overwhelming. 

Yesterday was our first day at home and it was a little chaotic because I didn’t have any routine in mind besides saying “yes” or “no” to my 5-year-old’s requests. Today is a new day and I have a new system in place that I thought I’d share. 

It’s a schedule that’s not set in stone by any means, but gives me an idea of what kinds of activities I can plan for so boredom doesn’t set in. 

You can download my sample Daily Schedule here. 

You can customize it so it fits your family’s routine. I used this sample schedule as a starting off point. 

I laminated it with the “Notes” section pretty much blank. Then I laminated the schedule and used a dry erase marker to fill in activities that fit into each subject. 

Disclaimer: do not feel like you *have* to have a schedule in order to succeed or feel like you have to follow this to a T. Here are some ideas to help you shake up your daily schedule. 

Bonus: Head on over to our Maternity Fraternity Facebook page for multiple threads of different activities sorted by subjects. This will help get your creativity juices flowing in these next few weeks. And please feel free to add your own resource links or ideas to the threads as well! 

Dear Jess, 

An elf must’ve bit me this year, because I have the Christmas bug and it only turned December today. Maybe it’s because my toddler is at the age where he’s legitimately excited for the season, but I’ve watched Christmas movies two days in a row already. I’ve also contemplated putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving (the only reason I didn’t is that I have to find a way to baby proof the area). 

This is pretty unusual behavior for me. Not saying I’m the Grinch around the holidays, but I’ve never had the motivation to go all out until this year. 

One of the things I wanted to do this year is establish some sort of daily tradition and excitement. Lots of families do Elf on the Shelf but I don’t think I have the creative stamina for 25 days! Advent calendar was what I decided I wanted to do, but I wanted my toddler to not just be excited for candy every day– that was Halloween’s job. I wanted him to experience the joy of Christmas Spirit. The happiness in receiving and giving, through community service and kindness (to others and to ourselves). 

Dear Jess, 

My youngest son turned six months old recently and I can confidently say I am starting to get the hang of this multiple kid shtick. Sure, every few months during a sleep regression, teething episode, or reflux flare-up, our regular routine is uprooted and our house devolves into chaos, but for the most part I’m in the groove.

During the first few months, bedtime was the part of the day that caused me the most stress. It seemed like every night when it was bedtime for my toddler, the baby decided that he needed to go to be rocked to bed RIGHT. NOW. I wanted to keep things as normal as possible for my toddler so he didn’t feel ignored, but that was hard when he kept whining at every step of our bedtime routine. With my husband working second shift, it was up to me to juggle both of their nighttime routines.

Enter Calvin’s routine chart. I made these a few months ago and it has made the majority of our mornings and nights run a lot smoother. There have been so many benefits of using these charts:

Dear Jess,

Teaching my toddler my second language, Cantonese, has been hard. My main hurdle has been remembering to speak it as much as possible. My husband doesn’t speak Cantonese, so our house is filled with English with a dusting of Chinese every now and then.

I found that doing a game or activity with the kiddo has helped spark more conversations or teaching moments in Cantonese. Carving out 20 minutes each day has started a habit which I hope will snowball into speaking more Chinese in general.

One game that I created recently is basically the shell game where you have three cups and a ball and the object of the game is to guess which cup the ball is under after shuffling them. To make it more fun for my three year old, I turned it into what he calls the “Mousey” game.