My boys are the only ones that do quiet time. Since they do it while Chuck naps, I make them stay on a blanket in the living room. Their own blanket. They play with Lego's or pattern blocks or any games from the game shelf (must use for 20 minutes before I'll get another one), Pigby makes his comic books. I sit on the couch and watch Coursera and make sure they are quiet and don't get off the blanket except to go potty or get a new toy. Pigby would be allowed to go do quiet time on my bed if he wanted, he can be trusted. Digby cannot.

Make the kids pick up after themselves about 50 times a day. That's the only thing I've figured out in 7 1/2 years of parenting. You're welcome :thumbup1:

I haven't read all the posts, just some of them. I'm not sure if there's anything useful in here or not. My situation is different than yours. My kids are 7, 4, and 2. The biggest problem we usually have is not picking up after ourselves. Several weeks ago, my friend suggested that I lock all the toys away so Digby could only get 1 thing at a time. He's my most difficult child. He'd dump out two boxes of toys, then go limp noodle when I try to make him clean. He still has plenty to keep him occupied, but the biggest possible disaster he can create has been minimized. Two weeks ago, I forced the kids to clean the entire living room. Now, our apartment is very small, only about 850 sqft total, so know that the living room isn't *that* big. It took them four hours to clean. Granted, that's mostly because I told them each and every single thing to do and had to count down to actually get them to do it. If I had done it on my own, it probably would have taken about 1 hour. Now every single day, I've had them pick it up right before school, right before lunch and right before dinner. It takes them about 5 minutes each time. Our living room has stayed presentable for two whole weeks with very little time spent, very little energy, very little fuss from them. I've also scrubbed the bathroom clean and had Pigby do the daily maintenance of it as part of his chores. He had to clear the floor and counter of any trash or clothing. Put away any items that were out on the counters. Take the trash out and put a new bag in. Wipe the counters and toilet with vinegar spray and give the inside of the toilet a quick scrub. Took him less than 10 minutes a day and it stayed fairly presentable as well. Then once a week, I could come in and do the deeper scrubbing w/o it taking so long. Their bedroom has always been a disaster area too. I culled their books way, way, way back so they would fit on the bookshelf. Only allowed a few toys that could stay in a bucket, organized all their clothing. The day we cleaned, it took them 2 1/2 hours to clean it completely. Now it takes about five minutes a day to pick up. I think the things that have helped the most are that everything needs its own place. If you don't have a place, you need to create a place w/ organizational supplies. If you still don't have enough space, you need to get rid of some stuff. Then watch them like hawks to make sure they form habits of picking up after themselves. Small amounts of daily effort take very little time when all hands are pitching in. I make sure the laundry stays sorted. I taught the four year old all the different hampers we have and now when I need to do laundry, he can go up and toss me down a load. Then it takes even less than 5 minutes to get it started. Folding right after it comes out keeps Mt. Washmore from getting crazy. Kids put away their own laundry, even the two year old. DH washes a load of dishes when he comes home from work.

Oh my heck, this is awesome! I thank you for your remembered forgotten brilliance because it's what helped me figure out how to work w/ DH's schedule. And I'm glad I guessed sorta right on the bee one, I almost said "ladybug" then thought, "Ladybugs aren't known for their work ethic. Why would forgotten genius have picked that one?"

My husband has a wonky schedule. Not as bad as yours, but not "normal". Now there's talk of schedule changing every three months! That's when I smacked my head and thought, "How the heck am I going to do this?" What I ended up doing was assigning school days 1-5. Days 1-4 are the traditional academic days. Day 5 is one of DH's day off. That is either field trip day, project day, art day, nature walk day or something fun day. Right now, day 1 is Monday. Day 5 is Wednesday and days 2-4 are Thurs-Sat. This will help me when they switch and change his days off. But at least I could organize my days according to the type of day we have and know what we'll need to do, no matter what his schedule is. I remember a thread at one point where someone decided to label her days something like "Ant, grasshopper, and something else" (let's just pretend like something else is bumblebee). The ant days were when her husband was gone. They were busy and productive. They got their work done. The grasshopper days were when her husband was home and they could just play. The bumble bee days were when her husband was home long enough that they needed some routine, where they were productive, but still needed some time to play and enjoy his presence while they had it. It might have also worked for the days when he had been gone so long that she was overwhelmed and needed a lighter load. So, she had a basic outline of what each type of day would look like and her children could acclimate to each day. Then she would be able to say, "Ok today's an ant day. I expect all of you to work hard."

Here's mine. We started this week too.

http://andwiththemorn.blogspot.com/ This is mine. It's been sadly neglected, but I'm really wanting to do Weekly Reviews again. I did the Electronic Home Management Binder post on a community blog and it was very popular. We also started school yesterday. That post is up. It was cute

We don't have a school room. We live in a fairly small apartment (about 850 sq feet) with no extra space at all. We are at our max with two bookshelves, three filing cabinets, 2 closing cabinets and a Desk Apprentice in the living room.. We have a little preschool table from Lakeshore Learning that sort of doubles as a coffee table. I put all my lesson plans into Evernote, so I can use my tablet instead of pulling out all the teacher's guides. In addition to the lesson plans, the tablet keeps track of our schedule and has the timer. It also has a couple fun preschool apps for when the little two are at their limit. The Desk Apprentice holds all our supplies for the day: books and worksheets. The filing cabinet holds art and craft supplies, tot school activities, extra school supplies, COAH Letter of the week in manilla envelopes, and anything else I don't want the little two getting into without supervision. The cabinets are about waist high and they hold the more commonly used supplies: markers, pencils, tape, math blocks, notebooks, extra printing paper, and teacher's guides. Digby and Chuck do preschool at the kitchen table while Pigby does Mark Kistler at the little table. It's actually kinda nice schooling in a small spot, everything is close by and easy to access. Then when they're done, we all stay at the little table together. They play with math blocks while he does math, they do their little preschool activities while he works. For big projects where we need more space, we go to the kitchen table.

Persephone. I don't know how to change the name on my tablet though. Not sure what I would name it even if I could

I have a Nexus 7 and I love it. Never have problems with it. I got a 32gb for only $250. Our phones are Android, so it made more sense to use an Android tablet. All the apps that we had purchased on our phones can be put on the tablet without having to pay extra. So if you have a smart phone, I'd vote to keep it in the family. I do wish it were 10". That's the only thing I dislike. I've never used an iPad or iPhone or Mac, so I don't really know how it compares.

http://andwiththemorn.blogspot.com/2013/07/blog-post.html For the life of me, I can't figure out how to attach pictures here. I'm a bit sleep deprived and brain dead, so this is the best I can do. I posted the pictures of our school spaces on my blog, linked above. The first picture is our bookshelf and school table. That school table is a source of frustration. It used to be where our cabinets are, then I decided the cabinets were more important so I bought those and told DH we could sell the school table. Now that it's been several months, he seems to have forgotten that we were going to sell it and wants to keep it. To me, it's just big and bulky, there's no room for it anymore and we could work just fine at the kitchen table. Anyway, book shelf needs to be organized, especially the top. All that clutter needs to be not there. Laundry in the rocking chair ought to be folded and taken care of and all :blushing: The second picture is of my new cabinets. I love them but do not love that the littles can get into them and wreak havoc in there. I just caught Digby yesterday trying to use our brand new dry erase markers on paper. Also, Pigby is obsessed with the math blocks and whenever he loses them, he'll go get more from the cabinet. So we have very few tens blocks in there now. That overflowing basket of library books is just ridiculous. We don't have anywhere else to store them though. Third picture is our filing cabinets and game shelf. Oh the stress these cause. The bottom drawers do no lock, so the littles are always getting into the paints and craft supplies. Last week my house was a disaster of cut paper and tape. I really need to organize all the drawers as Digby has created another disaster in the tot school drawer. I think he dumped his sensory bin out. Plus the littles think it's fun to stick popsicle sticks into the cracks of all the drawers. The top of the cabinet needs to be organized as well. The globe and the clock are the only things that should be on there. I have no idea where to keep the AAS board so the littles don't touch it. I'm sure pieces are being lost all the time. Plus the other clutter needs to be dealt with. The game shelf needs to be organized. It's just a heap of chaos right now. Driving me bonkers. Oh, I forgot to take a picture of our Desk Apprentice. All of that needs to be taken care of as well. Clean folders put in and nicely labeled, papers from last year put into their binders and then put in storage. I still need to print off all the Confessions of a Homeschooler papers for preschool and put them in the filing cabinet. There's a lot to do and it's difficult with three children who follow behind me and undo all the work I've done!

I buy them each a Kohl's cares book and wrap it. We go outside and take pictures with a sign that has their name, date and "First Day of _____ Grade". Then we go on a walk around the neighborhood, come back and they open their present

I pay the bills each month. I handle the budgeting and tell him how much we have in each fund whenever he asks. He has access to all the info, but I found that his, "We need to sit and do the budget soon" never really happened, so I just started taking care of it while he was at work. He handles paying the taxes. IMO, my parents' marriage was only good for learning what not to do. Dad earned the money, gave mom a monthly allowance (literally, he wrote her a check from his main account. She wasn't "trusted" to have access to the whole fund. They were not equal partners), mom paid bills from that, dad spent the rest on whatever he wanted, he'd yell at her for spending so much on junk, she'd hide purchases in the laundry basket. I don't know how DH's parents handled their money. I've never asked

Oh fudge, I don't think that thing is very updated. You know what is updated with pictures of her? Facebook. That's right, come to the dark side! :tongue_smilie:

When I was pregnant with Chuck (that's right, your little pal Chuck) the potassium alone did not help. I had awful leg cramps in the mornings. I read somewhere (because you know, some vague recollection of reading something on the internet is totally legit) that magnesium and calcium are also needed to help with the cramps. My midwife gave me a natural supplement and they really helped. Any day I did not take them ---->horrific leg cramps. Every day I took them---->none at all

If you have an ipad, I think you can use penultimate for that. Try watching the videos on Evernote.com to see how. So far as I know, they don't have it on the Android market yet

After watching one, I remembered that every Evernote account comes with its own email address. So if you create a template for each child's to do list, you can copy it as many times as you need to, adjust any plans on that day's list and email it to their Evernote account. They'll be able to check off all their work as they go. If you choose to stick with paper, I suggest you start a scrap paper folder or box for all the discarded papers. That way they can get a little more use before going in the trash. I love that book you're reading, but I found that if I want to do major amounts of work like I talked about above, I needed to use Evernote's software version not the app or website. It's more confusing to me, but it had a lot more functions. Spend as much time on YouTube figuring out how to use Evernote. I think it's amazing!

If you click on my blog link, you'll see my video tutorial on using Evernote for lesson planning. I know ps teachers use Evernote to share files with students and parents, I would search YouTube for videos on how to do so. Then you can share your children's list with them on their device.

I am with Chuck, but that's mostly because she follows along with Digby while I do it with him and it helps keep her occupied. She likes reading the book and doing the activities, but I'm not sure that she gets much out of it

:thumbup1: Mystie's book is awesome! Totally helped me get many areas in my life organized. I kept losing papers every where. Here's a video tutorial and review that I blogged about. The response has been great. http://www.latter-dayhomeschooling.com/2013/06/creating-electronic-home-binder.html

We're starting July 22. Last year we started July 1. This year we're waiting til swim lessons are over. I'd rather not have to try and get school done after swimming.

In the women's organization at our church, the leaders sit up front, facing the audience. When I was in the presidency of that organization, I was talking to someone before class started. I'd thought I moved in front of my chair. I went to sit down and fell flat on the bum bum because I'd completely missed the chair. When Pigby was five days old, my mom wanted to go to Babies R Us. So we went. As a new mom, I hadn't yet realized that when one side lets down, the other does as well. I'd gone to their lounge to nurse him and was horrified when my entire shirt was soaked. The same thing happened again at church when Digby was a newborn, but that time was because I'd forgotten new breast pads and leaked so much. (I'm such a leaker, I had to wear nursing pads with all of my children for the first year) Once in high school, I went to go visit my cool cousin in California. They were having a church dance and invited me (my dad's a pilot so flying all over was no big deal). My cousin's friend was a super tall, super strong guy who loved throwing girls around in swing dancing moves. We'd danced before and did fine, but this time I was wearing a slippery dress. I slipped and he tried to catch me, but we both fell. Right in front of all the cool California friends. I sing a lot. Loud and probably not very well. Certainly not as well as the original singers. In the summer, we keep the windows open because of the swamp cooler. My friend's husband told my husband that when the windows are open, they can hear everything. I think that was a nice way of trying to get me to stop.

Yes I can, but I'll probably post it on the Facebook group. I'll tag you when I post the video.

I listened to this lady at our homeschool convention today. All six of her kids have ipads and thats what they use for school. For whoever wanted the list of blogs to follow, this one might be a good one. http://inspirationstationfam.blogspot.com/