Habit Cards for Routines

Jedediah is sweeping the kitchen with brooms
my husband picked up for him and Esther.
They even painted them -- Jedediah's blue
and Esther's purple. He and Esther used them
to sweep my room yesterday, thanks to
the prompting of the new habit cards to clean
their own rooms!

Thank God for new friends and new ideas! Arianna, a Charlotte Masoner I recently met at the CM Book Study, shared with me the idea of habit cards she uses with her 4-year-old son. She uses a system by Accountable Kids that displays the habits on cards, then once the habits are accomplished, the child receives a "ticket" that can be used for what you determine.

I took the idea of the habit cards and have been running with it for the past week. I don't give a "ticket" once they're all done, but for the morning habits I do tell the children we can't do X (anything in our day) until we've accomplished everything. So far it's making our morning routines more smooth (and fun for the kids). They even insisted on sweeping my bedroom floor yesterday!

None of it is dogmatic or bossy, but a matter-of-fact as part of our day. Particularly with the "commit your day to the LORD" in the morning and "pray" in the evening, it's something we get to do. If they don't do it, then I just do it in joy. I tell them their relationship with the LORD is up to them, and I don't command it but try to demonstrate mine the best I can -- confessing my dependence.

I didn't include breakfast because it's happens right away no matter what -- the other activities don't!

Morning Routine Habit Cards

I searched Google for lovely images (something I often do), and I labelled them accordingly. You'll notice a couple of them are great works of art. (We similarly incorporated this idea of lovely images into Our Daily Flow.)

Evening Routine Habit Cards
(bath isn't in there every night -- yucky city chlorine water)

I didn't think they were anything worth sharing until a new mom to the Charlotte Mason Book Study asked if I could send them to her. I figured I could share them here, too. You can download the file at Google docs. [Don't print these ones -- I only added the gray lines so you can see the separation.]

 

I put them in powerpoint, at 6 to a page. Once I cut them out, they're quite small and handy. 

The "be loving" one is something we reference throughout the day -- a habit for all day, every day!

Now does anyone have a laminator I can borrow?