Our Daily Schedule

Since a couple of people have asked about our daily schedule, I decided to write a post about in case anyone else is interested :) We are currently in a state of transition with our schedule, and it is changing daily. O and I used to sleep until around 9 am, and she went to sleep around 9:30, but we are waking up earlier (7:30), and she's going to sleep earlier (8:30) starting yesterday. Elliott's is on a new schedule at work, so we are all trying to go to bed earlier :)



So...we start our day with getting dressed, brushing teeth, doing a little light cleaning downstairs (the bedrooms and laundry room are downstairs, and the den and kitchen which is really just one big room are upstairs). Then we go upstairs for breakfast. Its amazing how long this all takes. This morning we finally finished breakfast around 9am. O plays with her toys while I fix breakfast. She primarily has wooden (puzzles and cutting food) and open ended toys (ex. bilibo, felt board, and rainbow stacker) and montessori type materials, but she does have a couple of plastic toys (Mr. Potato Head and dollhouses that a friend just gave her). I put her toys in a toy rotation because we realized early on that she plays better when she doesn't have "too much stuff" (whenever there's is clutter O always says "too much stuff. clean up!") The problem with the toy rotation is that once the toys are gone, I forget about them, and they often don't come out of the closet for months and months :)



After breakfast we either go play on the beach, read books, or play with her toys. Occasionally, we'll do a few montessori activities. It really just depends on what she wants to do. I was surprised that she hasn't wanted to go on the beach lately, but tomorrow I'm going to insist that we go out. I know she'll love it once we get out there. I like to take morning walks with her, but its usually too hot at this time of year. We eat lunch around 11:30 or 12:00, and then she naps for about an hour and a half to 2 hours. This is when I blog and clean the house. When she wakes up, we usually read books for about 45 minutes to an hour. Reading books is her absolute favorite thing to do, and I love to read to her. Then we do a little housework (washing and folding clothes, etc).


After that we go back upstairs and have fun! Today she kept asking for "more activteees" and "more games!" She likes to toddler activity bags a lot, and I'm planning on making more soon. I am a little concerned that she's getting too dependent on me for entertainment, so I'm trying to make sure she has plenty of independent play time each day (and the Montessori work helps with this a lot, since most of it is independent work). She loves playing in her rice pit out on the screened porch, but its usually too hot to go out there in the afternoon. She really hasn't shown much interest in her Montessori work lately, and I think that is because its out on the shelf all of the time. I need to have a place where I can limit her access to it, so it will be more appealing to her. Elliott and I are planning on building a shelf (hopefully this weekend) that will be the Montessori shelf. It will have casters so I can turn it around during "school time," and then turn it to the wall when we are just hanging out and playing. I think our Montessori time will go MUCH better after we have this in place. I'll post pictures once I have it all set up. I'm VERY excited about this, and I can't wait to be more organized.



Back to the schedule...O has her afternoon snack around 4 or 5, and then we try to go outside and work in the garden and check the mail. If its not too hot, we'll play for a while. Yesterday, she had a great time chasing me and riding her tricycle around the yard. Once we have a fence, we'll spend a lot more time in the yard (it makes me nervous for her to be so close to the lake, and I can't take my eyes off of her for even a second).



We eat supper around 7ish, and then she plays or reads books with dada for a while. Then its time for a bath (or a quick shower with mommy) and bed.

I have a list of activities (baking, arts and crafts, etc) that I want to eventually do with O, and I loosely plan to do 1 or 2 things each day. I LOVE reading toddler/preschool activity books and searching for ideas on different blogs. Google reader makes it so easy to read blogs quickly and star the items that I want to go back to, so it has helped me get much more organized. Thanks for the comments, and let me know if anyone has any questions. I've got to go steam the kitchen floor now :)