Technology seems to haunt my home with three little boys in it. Whenever I ask them to do a task, they do it quickly and uncompleted so they can get back to their screen time as soon as possible. When I speak, the YouTube videos compete with me for their attention. During school hours, we whittled their hours down to 1 hour of screen time Monday-Thursday and 2 hours on Friday/Saturday. None on Sunday. This took a lot of energy for Mom to make sure I was keeping to this plan! I needed help.
I created this list to post on the fridge of things the boys needed to do over the summer before they could even think about touching their phones, laptops, or X-box. It is posted and they can’t ask for their devices (which are on top of my dresser) until the list is done. Here is the list I came up with.
Daily Tasks:
- Daily devotional
- Make Your Bed and Straighten Up Your Room
- Eat Breakfast
- Brush Your Teeth
- Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
- Cleaned the Bathroom
- Put Dishes Away
- One Load of Laundry
- Chore of the Day: Monday- Sweep/Mop Tuesday-Vacuum Wednesday- Scrub toilets and tubs Thursday-Dust House Friday-Pull Weeds
- Read for 20 minutes
- Practice an instrument for 20 minutes
- Play Outside for 20 minutes
This list keeps them busy and gives me so much extra free time. They are also learning great skills like doing dishes and laundry. Kids of all ages can help with both. Look for kid-friendly and age appropriate chores for your children on Pinterest. My older boys are 10 and 7 so they do this list with ease.
