Crafts & DIY With Kids – Family Friendly Frugality

School Morning Routine Hacks – Get Out the Door with a Smile (and On Time!)

School Morning Routine Hacks

Back to School is coming up soon and it’s time to start thinking about streamlining that school morning routine! Your routine (or lack thereof), can make or break your day! Learn how to create an organized back to school morning routine using these super simple and easy to implement school morning routine life hacks!

(Not ready for the back to school grind yet? Be sure to check out these fun summertime activities for elementary school students!)

Morning Routines. We all have them.

Pull the kids out of bed (or maybe they pull YOU out of bed).
Turn on the TV so you can get breakfast ready.
Scream for the kids to stop watching the TV and eat breakfast.
Scream for the kids to finish eating breakfast and find some clothes.
Scream for the kids to stop watching TV and find their shoes.
Walk out the door 20 minutes late with stressed out and frustrated kids and parents.

Sound familiar?

Thankfully, these morning routines are easily adaptable. With a few small school morning routine hacks, you can make your morning a well oiled machine that produces a happy family walking out the door ON TIME and with minimal fuss.

Here are some tips and hacks to make your school morning routine a bit less stressful:

School Morning Routine Hack #1:

NO…Absolutely NO Screen Time

If your children are anything like mine, anything with a screen = impenetrable captivation. Let’s face it mom, you canNOT compete with Super Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Skylanders OR Jessie. Don’t even try.

Sure your kids might fuss. Sure they might follow you around the first few days lamenting “…but, but, but what can I doooooooooooooo?“. Remember though, this is for the greater good. Over time though, you won’t have to wage war for their attention and mornings will automagically (it’s a word. Well my 6 year old says it is) go smoother.

School Morning Routine Hack #2:

Wake up EARLY(IER)

I know, I know. You already feel like you wake up at the crack of dawn. If you are scrounging for time though, you aren’t getting up early enough. If you are rubbing your eyes while shuffling kids out the door, you aren’t getting up early enough.

Get up at LEAST 30 minutes before the kids. Grab yourself a cup of coffee (this bulletproof coffee will really get you going for the day!), or a cup of tea, or a tall glass of ice water. Whatever gets you going in the morning. Take a shower. Just sit and read your Bible/stare out the window/do your yoga practice. Just WAKE UP.

When those kiddos run down the stairs you’ll be ready for them.

School Morning Routine Hack #3:

Do as MUCH as you can the NIGHT before (or on Sunday!)

Baths, clothes picked out, shoes and accessories picked out, be sure homework is DONE, bags by the door, lunches packed, paperwork signed, supplies replenished, extracurricular stuff washed/prepped/bagged, etc etc etc.

Basically you want your job to be feeding them (find some tasty ideas for breakfast here!) and getting them dressed and out the door in the morning. That’s it (and trust me…that’s plenty).

School Morning Routine Hack #4:

Set TIME goals so you know early on if you are running behind

Kids wake up at 7? Need to be out the door by 8?

Set up time goals.

You know the kids can eat breakfast in 20 minutes.

Plan for breakfast to be over by 7:20. If it’s 7:30 and they are still lingering, you are running late.

Dressed by 7:40.

The GREAT thing about doing this, is that you can work some padding into your mornings. Time to snuggle, chat, and enjoy each other. Sending everyone off to school with happy and full hearts.

NOTE: Don’t leave TOO much padding. Then they get “bored”.

School Morning Routine Hack #5:

Be calm

Screaming helps no one. Sure you’ll lose your cool sometimes. Try to make the morning routine as fun/calm/peaceful as possible. It will start everyone’s day off right.

Do you have any tips for how to ease the morning rush? Comment below!

Family Blog Fun: Cottonball Counting

Family Friendly Frugality

Today we wanted to work on counting a bit. Noah can count pretty well, but Lizzie is still learning. This activity is very very simple, but very effective.

Cottonball Counting!

Supplies:

cotton balls
paper bag

Place the cotton balls into the bag. Ask the child to reach in and take out a handful of cotton balls. Count each cotton ball out loud. For older children, ask them to get as many cotton balls as possible and challenge them to grab more and more each time.

This activity is good for counting, but also can be considered a sensory activity. It also teaches frugality by showing us how to have fun and utilize the things around our own homes!

I got the inspiration for this activity from here.

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Tot Tuesday: Printable Activities

Proudly Displayed on the Fridge!

My son has recently started begging for homework. I’m being serious! The Mother’s Day Out he attends has a work sheet based curriculum and to my surprise, all of a sudden he loves doing them! Our printer has been put to good use lately printing out printable activities for him to complete.

Printable activities are a good, frugal way to have fun with your kids without spending money on pricey workbooks or homeschooling curriculum. There is so much available for FREE online!

My Favorite Printable Activity Websites

Here are some of my favorite printable websites:

Encourage a love of learning in your children from an early age! Don’t make them do worksheets if they don’t want to and don’t push them to follow the directions exactly. Exposure to educational activities is often enough to encourage interest!

Proof is in the Pictures!

Waiting for his printable to print out!

The green squiggles up top are his name!

Color by numbers from a 3 1/2 year old

I hope you enjoyed this Tot Tuesday post. Tot Tuesday is a recurring series on Family Friendly Frugality. Come back every Tuesday to join in the fun!

Kids Activity: Memorize Your Phone Number

One of the skills we are trying to work on right now is memorizing our phone number. I found this awesome activity from Toddler Toddler.

You print out the numbers and cut them out. We put them in order and would “push” the numbers every time we would say them. They suggest making a different animal noise for each number, let me tell you…that was a hoot! The kids loved this activity. Noah is well on his way to having our phone number memorized. Lizzie is still learning to recognize the numbers on their own, and this activity helped with that as well.

I’d say this activity could be fun for 18 months and up!

Tot Tuesday: Get Your Dance On

Earlier today I was surfing around my favorite blogs and came upon this post on Shibley Smiles. Colleen has lost over 40 lbs since April 2010 by simply eating better and moving more. She’s an inspiration to me, because as simple as eating better/moving more sounds…it’s a very difficult concept for me.

I was getting ready to sit down and write my regularly scheduled Tot Tuesday post, when my son asked me to dance(Pillowcase dress tutorial…I’ll post it next week!). Usually this just consists of a quick boogie around the living room with each kid getting jealous when I picked up the other to dance.

Today though, I was inspired. I picked a Dance-y type station on Pandora and cranked it up.

We danced for a good 30 minutes straight! There was no jealousy, because I wasn’t in a hurry to finish (like I normally am). While dancing, I realized that not only is the dancing in itself, exercise. You can also incorporate intention exercise into your dancing (I don’t recommend this on a public dance floor.) I incorporated:

squats
lunges (side and front/back)
deadlifts
bicep curls (I used a 27lber for this one: my daughter)
aerobic moves (which is pretty much all dancing is!)

Can you even imagine a more perfect fun, free activity to do with your kids?

it involves exercise
it involves physical contact
lots of laughing if done right!
a great social experience!
memories that will last forever!

So next time your kids ask you to dance, don’t just waltz them for a second or two. Crank up the tunes and get your bodies moving and grooving! If it seems simple, that’s because it is. The best things in life usually are!