A great day.

Today I changed our home school and housework routine and it was great. The children seemed to like it too.

I have decided to get the children a bit more involved in the housework and be close by doing other things while they are sitting at the table working on their school work.

So I told them this morning that we were going to do things differently today. We started with prayer and then read a book. We then went in and they helped me clean up my bedroom and sewing area. My sewing area has been very neglected for the last couple of weeks and it tends to be a bit of a dumping ground for the children when I am not tidying it regularly. We did the room in 20 minutes so I let them go and play. Sam was home so I got him to go out and play a game of soccer with them. They really liked this. They had a snack and then played for a while together in the cubby house.

After their break I gave them both their spelling list and activities. I told Tom to do his spelling while Amelia read to me and then Tom read to me while Amelia did her spelling. They both needed to do a bit more work on their spelling when I had finished listening to them read so I went into the kitchen and started to prepare to make some muffins. I was still close by to them if they needed some help. My plan was to get them to help with the cooking once they had finished their spelling. When Tom finished his spelling he asked me if he could draw because they had some new colouring pencils. I said fine so they drew pictures while I cooked the muffins.

While the muffins were cooking, Tom and Amelia did some maths and then literacy. It was time for lunch so we packed up the home school books together and then ate lunch. In the afternoon, they played a couple of computer games and I cleaned up from my cooking and put the muffins away (before the other children came home and helped themselves to them all).

I found the day moved very smoothly and the children didn't object as much to working. I think they liked working together. I was concerned about giving them a break after only prayer, reading a book and doing a chore that they wouldn't want to come back and do anymore school work or housework. They surprised me when they did come back so willingly.

My plan is to continue this for the rest of the week. We will see how it goes. I am pretty confident we have found a good working routine that the children like and I like too. Best of all, the house is tidier than it has been any other day. Steve came home tonight and said wow, everything is so tidy. Hopefully this will continue and we will have a happy balance here for school work and house work.