Our Routine

Yesterday Deb shared her family’s typical daily schedule, which bears some resemblance to the schedule we’ve been keeping with our kids. I’ve similarly found it works best for everyone to have a routine that’s relatively consistent from day-to-day and incorporates school work, outside time, [virtual] friend time, and family time.

This has been the general flow of my kids’ day, beginning with E bright-eyed (morning person) and C slow-and-cranky (like me, NOT a morning person).

Morning Walk	Rain or shine, they start the day with a walk around the neighborhood. The “leader” decides the route and tracks steps using a FitBit, recording the number of steps on each street. When they get home they each draw a map of the route. I’ll elaborate on this in some future post.
School Work	I mentioned in a past post that each of my kids gets a daily set of assignments from their teachers. My kindergartener gets little out of those activities when I’m not sitting there to guide, adapt, and talk about them, so my home base is at a table with him...but I run back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) to my 4th grader-- usually to help with an assignment, but also to make sure he’s using his Chromebook to tell friends that this isn’t a good time to play Fortnite. For him, the goal to get through the more difficult and heftier assignments first, since this is when he’s best at focusing (despite not being a morning person).
Snack	This is preceded by an onslaught of “Is it snack time yet?” Usually by this time the school has sent morning announcements. In addition to featuring cute kids saying the Pledge of Allegiance, we find it a welcomed excuse to look at something other than each other. E’s kindergarten teacher also has been sending daily read-alouds of books, and even a 4th grader and 42 year-old think this goes great with peanut butter crackers and lemonade.
Exercise!	Ignoring all recommendations to digest before you exercise, Snack Time leads into a daily fitness video. We started with yoga, but we all find it boring. Moe Jones has been a hit, especially on April Fools when you insert a contortionist, but I can’t say I’ve done a landscape review and would love recommendations for fast-paced, kid-friendly exercise videos that work for 3 klutzy people in a small space. If the video’s relatively short (~15 minutes), they each choose a bonus Go Noodle video.
School Work	Same as before. By this time the Math and one or more Reading/Writing assignments are done, so it’s about finishing those and doing the other stuff that their teachers assigned.
Lunch	Self-explanatory, and a time for the kids to be together and away from “school” work. We make a loose plan for the rest of the afternoon.
Afternoon Hodgepodge	Depending on the weather and the day, this usually involves a combination of the following and/or other things that come up: Biking/scooting Backyard baseball. Art: sometimes school sends art activities. They also like drawing videos (Art Hub for kids, Mo Willems videos, and supposedly beginning today we can get a bit of Dav Pilkey) Make your own game: creating modified versions of games they like is turning into a hobby for both of them. I’ll post an example soon.  Board games: prior posts (like here) call out some heavy hitters, like Monopoly. The old Mad Magazine game is also a kid favorite.  Card games like Uno, Spot It!, Blink, or Top Trumps. Independent reading. Nintendo Switch.  Virtual playdates: these are daily for C at 4:30 and involve a group of friends eager to see each other. They yell at the top of their lungs while they play Roblox or Fortnite. E “sees” a friend most days, too, and they co-read a book (Like a Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie book, with each playing a character) or compare Pokemon cards. He does point out daily that C gets to see more friends than he does, and usually for longer. Strong sense of fairness.
Dinner	Now more than ever, all 4 of us are home. Where else would we be? The kids take turns setting the table, with the other one doing clean up. Then they get ready for bed (ABBT: All But Brushing Teeth). We’ve never been a dessert-every-night-family, but yeah, we do that now.
Main Event	This is not a COVID thing. The kids have always required that each night contain “A Main Event,” which is something that they both agree is special. It’s a board game, some kind of tournament or project, or a movie or episode that everyone at home has to watch. While I’ll miss it when the Main Event fades away (and it undoubtedly will), the need to come up with something daily is exhausting.

I feel like it’s important for weekend days to feel really different from “school” days so that we all return to the weekday schedule feeling refreshed and like we had a break from the new norm. In practice, we haven’t figured out how to do this well yet, given that our leave-the-house options are so limited and the weekend weather’s been bad. Hoping for some hikes or nicer outside walks to come.