Organizing Summer. . . .

Yes, that's right. I organized summer. . well, I'm attempting to! This WAS the side of my refrigerator. It was being used to hold important information but certainly wasn't very pretty while doing it's useful job. I had a better idea for this space. . . 

My children thrive on a chore chart system. I'm not sure why a chart telling them to do something is so much more appealing than me telling them to do something, but for whatever reason it works. And, being that I am a staunch believer in picking my battles, I will not battle this one. They want a chore chart. Done. Much better than fighting, right?

So, I came up with the idea for a "Command Center". On the side of my fridge there are all the important things that impact the lives of my family. There is a plan in just about everything that I do, so now the plan is posted on the side of my largest appliance. There is a schedule for breakfast, which lists each day and what we have for breakfast. There is also a snack schedule. Snack time is a BIG deal at my house. We eat lunch around 12/12:30 and supper doesn't roll around until about 7:30, so at 4 p.m. it's snack time. I swear my kids have it built into their internal clock. There is also a weekly schedule. . .so that each day the kids know what to expect on that day. A good dose of fun and responsibility built into our week.

I found this great peel and stick dry erase calendar to do my monthly meal plan on. It works awesome! I color coded things on the calendar - blue is what we are having for supper and red are events taking place that day or week. I found it was important to add events to the calendar as well as meals. For example, one week in June we have Bible School in the evening, that will certainly impact what we are having for supper those evenings. 

Next is our Bible memory verse for the week. The peel and stick calendar came with these cool circle "stickies" and I used them to put our memory verse on. I'm hoping to get into a system of doing family devotions . . . .still working on that one, but it's coming along.

The last thing in our command center is the beloved chore charts. I made small clipboards out of light-weight cardboard, magnetic clips, and scrapbook paper. I then made clothespins with chores on them. I wrote them onto the clothespin and also printed small pictures for each chore (since Eric isn't quite reading yet). The clothespins are placed on the "to do" side of the clipboard when it's chore time, and then as each job is completed, the kids get to move their clothespin to the "done" side. They seem to be quite proud of their clipboards. 

Here is a picture of my completed command center, and fingers crossed, this will continue to be a good idea for the rest of the summer, and possibly even longer!