Easy breezy days

I used to hate schedule, because I think we should react with our children's desires, for example, feeing on demand or when they're interested in exploring the stones, we should go along with it. It just makes sense. However, I've gone too far, from child focus, to child-centred, which makes my family life a chaos! I've just realised this has not done my children any good, as I've always mad! Mad at why the house is always a mess, mad when I'm hungry and I don't want to cook macaroni cheese again!

So gradually we got a part time cleaner to help with household chores, and have a schedule on 'roughly' how the day would go. Very young children actually need routines to feel secure. So here I am have a daily routine and a meal plan for 1 week in advance so I can shop the right amount of food we need to prepare a fresh meal and don't need to throw away 'been in the fridge for 2 weeks' veggies.

Tools I found that makes it a no-brainer:

For my schedule, I take reference from http://www.adaycare.com/ourday.html, and change a bit for my baby & toddler's sleep time and their interests.

For Easy meal preparation
http://www.earlychildhoodlearnings.com/go/kidsmeals/

An interesting article on including your children to do household chores:
http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/klocekchores.pdf

Around 8:30 - 9am, we have a little music and movement section to encourage more physical movement, and movement that helps to develop the left & the right brain.

My playlist for my baby:



For my 3 year old that likes to jump and hop and turn around, Stay and Play and Feeling the beat has a good choice of action songs.





More about movement and development of the brain at brainwave:
http://brainwave.org.nz/995/#more-995

Story telling skills

Just came across a good book on story telling:



This is always a challenge for me, telling and making up interesting stories to tell my children. Sometimes I just couldn't find the right book when I want to tell my children something, like not to bite or hit, or some values that's important for me and I'd like to pass on, telling stories are more memorable than just 'telling'