Summer Time

Ah yes, the time of sleeping in, no school, swimming, BBQ's, and chaos.

Yes. You read that last word right. Chaos.

When you live in a house with children, summertime can become an unbridled mess.
Gone are the days of routine. No more school time, homework time, preparing for the next day time...it tends to seem like a never ending loop of similar days.

How to you reign it all in? If you are like me with a house full of kids that can't drive, be left on their own, don't do overnight visits yet, and you don't feel it appropriate to all the TV and video game consoles to be on all day every day, things can get kinda of tense.

My day usually starts with a chorus of "I'm hungry"s which is only the beginning of the day's requests for food, entertainment, and refereeing. At some point the kids start to debate each other regarding their entertainment for the day (or more realistically, moment). After years of dealing with multiple toy categories strewn across the family room floor, piles of things left out in their bedroom, and stragglers scatter across the house in between I decided something had to be done. I cannot deal with the afternoon clean up stress of trying to get the kids to focus on cleaning and the inevitable sound of whining about how big the mess is and how they need my help.
I am trying something new this time.

I started with the large categories of toys. Things like the train set, stuffed animals, dress-up/costumes, cars, animals, and board games. I wrote them all down on strips of colored paper and put them in a jar. On Sunday I let one of the kids draw one strip out and that would be the toys they would be playing with all week long. The first week landed us with the train set. It worked out well. I let the kids keep the boxes out where it was easy to access every day and even easier to clean up. Then on Saturday we all worked together to put them away in an organized way. Now the train set is happily put away and no one has gotten it out again.
We took a week off as it was the week of 4th of July and I had a lot of work to do. The kids played video games, watched shows and played with toys that did not make a large mess (things like a Star Wars x-fighter, a big firetruck...things that are easily put away without tons of smaller parts)
This week it is dress-up/costume week. I had the kids gather all of their items that fit in this category and they can play with them all week.
I realized though that we needed some down time that did not involve the TV. Something relatively mess free, sort of quiet, and something I could do with them.
That lead to a second set of strips, in a different color of course, being added to the activity jar. On those I put things like handwriting, drawing (pencils only), learning poems, songs, and prayers, and learning about animals and states. I also included reading time where I can read to them or they could read on their own. I then allowed my other 4 kids to draw one purple strip out. This week we have Mad Libs, learning about an animal, handwriting time, and learning a poem. I don't plan on choosing a specific day for the quiet activity but will instead let them chose from those 4 when the time comes.

Now I do have ulterior motives for doing this. Sure, it is nice only have one type of toy out at a time and it is good for kids not to have a huge mess to clean up every day but there are other benefits to this. First, it gives me a chance to see what toys the kids really play with. The train set was a hit. They played with it every day. Some days they built an elaborate track using almost every piece they had. Some days they built two or three smaller sets so each kid could play with their train on a separately. By weeks end they were ready to move on, but I learned that they really play with the trains.
This week it will be interesting to see if they get that far with the costumes.
I am hoping that by the end of summer they will have played with all of their toys thereby giving me a chance to see which sets of toys they play with and which ones they are over. It also gives me a chance to find broken toys to get rid of and when they toys get put away I can organize them properly.

I'll check in every week or so to share how things are going. Right now I have a 22 month old signing at the top of her lungs because she wants more snack!