Our routine for the children during the summer of Covid-19

I know, it’s unusual times and we have to be ready to adapt to these very strange and abnormal days. With all of us being indoors – schooling and working being done from home – we had had to make a lot of changes around the home.

I work from home so relatively not much has changed except for the fact that I now have hubby working from home and the children attending online school. It also means that in the last few months routines have gone out the window, especially sleeping times. They go to sleep later and they get up much later.

They also spend more time than usual on their screens (I’m not talking about school related work). This is something I’m not happy with. A lot of my mum friends have said not to worry about it and that in the circumstances, it can’t be helped. But, for me it’s a big bug bear.

So, we implemented a number of things that have helped lessen time spent on screens. The children have not been particularly happy but they’ve got into a rhythm and they kind of follow it everyday.

Schoolwork – They are on summer vacation at the moment and they do a couple of pages of Math and English. Its workbooks so it doesn’t take them long and they kind of keep up the learning.
Reading – We have an hour of mandatory reading. The children loved to read previously and I was pleased to see that they would have their noses submerged in books. Nowadays however, they seem to avoid reading and it’s really gets to me as I am an avid advocate of reading. So if they don’t do it themselves, we add it to their routine.
Music – I liked that when we were in the UK, the children had music as part of the curriculum. They learned the violin and piano. Here in the US, the option to learn music has been limited to band and it only begins in 4th Grade. Ethan learnt the saxophone for sometime but then thankfully we bought a piano and I have been teaching the kids to play. Ethan has gotten pretty good at it and he actually enjoys it. I love hearing him play piano and now know how my parents must have felt when they had me take piano lessons.
Play family games – After dinner, we have a not-so-enforced rule where we don’t get on our devices. We normally play a game together or watch a movie. Sometimes we do get on devices but its limited and I like it that way.
Exercise – The children all do about 20 minutes of exercise a day – on the stationary bike or the like. Since, we don’t go out much it’s nice that they get that as part of their daily routine.

These are routine days from Monday to Friday. On the weekend it’s free days so they are on devices but they do get together after dinner for family games or a movie together. And of course, we do a lot of baking/cooking together as you can see from my Instagram account.