In today’s episode we’re going to talk all about creating a morning routine that makes sense for a busy mom. This plan will allow you to customize your mornings, have some time for you, train yourself to be a morning person and start your day on the right foot!
Episode Show Notes
2:20 Why you need to bookend your day
4:00 Making a routine around your season of life
5:27 Can you find any quiet time in your day?
7:15 Training Yourself to be a Morning Person
13:34 The Power of Pre-Planning Your Mornings
16:60 Anxiety and that Negative Voice in Our Heads
20:16 Starting Your Moments in Silence and Reflection
22:00 Adding morning tasks into your time block – items for you, for your home and for your kids
23:00 Personal Tasks you can do in the morning
25:00 Tasks you can do for your home in the morning routine
30:00 Adding your kids into the morning routine
Subscribe & Review in the Podcast
Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, make sure you head over and do it now so that you don’t miss an episode!
While you’re there, I’d love an appreciate if you’d leave a rating and review! These allow other purpose driven moms to find the show and help grow our community! Just click here to review, select ‘Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know your favorite part of the podcast! I’d love to feature you as our ‘Review of the Week’.
While you’re there, I’d love an appreciate if you’d leave a rating and review! These allow other purpose driven moms to find the show and help grow our community! Just click here to review, select ‘Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know your favorite part of the podcast! I’d love to feature you as our ‘Review of the Week’.
When you time block, you are looking at your schedule in a way that gives you flexibility AND structure
Time blocking is the concept of looking at your day in extended period of time instead of hour by hour.
Hourly schedules used to work great for me. When I was teaching and in the classroom, I had a million things to remember. I had to be at many meetings throughout my day, show up at certain times and follow a ton of deadlines.
When I left teaching 5 years ago to become an entrepreneur and work at home mom, I thought that using an hourly schedule like I did in the classroom would keep me focused and on point.
Instead, it led me to burn out FAST.
I had left teaching so that I could have more freedom, be more in control of my time and allow my job to align with my top priority – my family.
I found that by using an hourly planner I was stressing myself (and my family) out, felt more overwhelmed and behind and didn’t have a system that I could use to run my home that left space for us to just be human.
This post may contain affiliate links which cost you nothing extra to use but may provide me with a commission. To read my full disclosure head on over here.
How does time blocking help save time?
Time blocking is a mom’s best friend when it comes to time management.
We have so many things on our plates as busy moms and it sometimes feels impossible to get anything done.
How many times have you let overwhelm just paralyze you?
I’ve been there too.
I jam pack my schedule on Monday with a ton of to-dos, pretend that I’m superwoman and can get it all done, and feel overwhelmed and defeated by Wednesday.
When you use time blocking, you give yourself the freedom to live life while still being productive.
Yes, you’ll probably put too much on your plate and there are times when you’re still overwhelmed but if you incorporate time blocking into your day you’ll feel more in control and actually productive – instead of just spinning your wheels day in and day out.
Time blocking helps busy moms manage their time because it gives you and your family structure AND freedom.
Examples of time blocks as a mom
When you time block, you split your days into chunks around events that are happening.
For example, you might have a morning chunk from when your kids wake up until they go to school, or an afternoon chunk from lunchtime until nap.
Time blocking can help so much because you can customize them to what you need and change it each week or even each day.
I make a typical time block for our Monday through Friday that pretty much stays the same. I change it on the weekends when we have more activities or I have to go to work.
This week for example, I have had to switch the entire time block around because of summer camp and sports practices.
Even when you have to move your time blocks around, you can easily shift things from block to block.
Here is an example of our current summer time blocks. It’s important to note that I have a 2 year old who naps 1x a day, a 3.5 year old who goes to summer camp from 9am-12pm and she is currently dropping her nap (I know… I’m sad about it too) and a 12 year old who goes to camp 9am-3pm that is 30-40 minutes away.
I’ve listed below how I space my blocks out and you can read this post if you want to see what I put in each block and how I structure are day!
Time Block #1 Early Morning
5:00 am – 9:00 am
Time Block #2 Morning
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Time Block #3 Afternoon
12:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Time Block #4 Evening
3:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Time Block #5 Mommy Time
7:30 pm – 10:30 pm
As you can see I don’t recommend making any of your time blocks longer than 4-5 hours.
I’ve also anchored our times around an event – school drop off, naps, or bed. This allows for natural changes in our schedule as needed. If for example, the kids naps get switched or someone has to get picked up early, I can just move things around.
When you fill your time blocks, instead of exact times (unless you have an appointment or something you have to do at a certain time) you fill them with general things. It allows you to manage your time but not be tied down.
For example, if my morning time block is always errands and outside play time for the kids, I can figure out what time we need to leave or where we have to go.
If my kids know that during our evening block, I”m going to workout in the playroom and they get a show, it’s predictable for them. The know what is going to happen during that block and I can customize each day with what workout I plan to do.
Why you should have a template for time blocking.
I suggest having a template when you’re time blocking so that when you do your weekly schedule you don’t have to always start over.
Templates allow you to have predictability and help you think of your day and task in chunks instead of saying ‘what do i have to get done each day’
I use my time blocking template each week to pre plan out errands, activities and tasks.
I suggest trying to keep things as predictable as possible for yourself. Try to batch all of your errands on one day or one time of the day (maybe after you’ve just done school drop off so that you’re only in the car at that one time in the morning)
By using a template to preplan things, it also gives you some urgency to stay on your time blocks and allows you to see the week at a glance.
A time blocking template also helps because it will allow you to know the best time to make plans. If you know that your afternoon time block tends to be more time bringing kids to activities than if someone asks you to meet at the park for a playdate, you can suggest meeting during a better time block.
Sample time blocking template and free download
I use a very simple time blocking template each month. I have a general one that I fill out and adjust it monthly as needed.
Again, you can adjust your time blocks daily if you need to, but know the more predictable you can keep it the better! Time blocking is more about predictability and routine that being time bound and super structured!
This template is great to keep on the side of your fridge so that your kids and family can see what the week looks like or to put in your planner so that you have it at a glance.
If you want to start time blocking for your family , you need to grab this free template.
It’ll help you identify your general blocks (or even print one out for each day! Whatever works best for you!) so that you can start being more intentional about how to spend your day and get done what you need!
Make sure you PIN this to come back to later! I’d love to know how you’re using this template! Post it in the comments!
Time blocking is one of the best time management tips for moms out there! As a busy mom is can be hard to figure out what you need to get done, when you will have time to complete your tasks and how to juggle everything on your plate! Time blocking allows you to give yourself a framework for your day without feeling too structured or tied to a schedule.
What is time blocking?
Time blocking is the concept of taking your day and breaking it into smaller chunks. Instead of using an hourly schedule (which can be helpful but not all the time) you’d break your day down based off of events that happen each day.
If you used an hourly scheduling method, you might have a jam packed day and everything planned very structured and stacked. While this can be helpful when you have a lot of moving pieces, a super structured week at work or with kid’s activities, being too rigid with your schedule can make you feel overwhelmed and behind.
This post may contain affiliate links which cost you nothing extra to use but may provide me with a commission. To read my full disclosure head on over here.
Why time blocking works for busy moms
With time blocking, you’ll use chunks of time instead of the hourly planning. This allows to you have the best of both worlds – structure AND flexibility.
When I was a high school teacher, I found myself pulled in a million directions. I had to teach my classes, hold a resource room period, accommodate and modify tests for other teachers and run all of my extra activities. During this season of my life, I needed to be on an hourly schedule for my time management or I would possibly be late to something or miss a meeting I had to be at.
Now that I’ve transitioned into a work at home mom running my own business, I have had to adjust how I schedule things. In the beginning, I tried to stick to this more tight schedule but after my children were born, I learned how hard it really is to be that planned. I was burning myself out with too many things on my to do list, feeling overwhelmed because we’d inevitably get behind at some point each day, and frustrated with my homemaking, motherhood and work tasks.
Time blocking really has been one of the best things that has happened to my schedule and time management! Instead of being so structured that the littlest thing would set off our schedule (and my mood), I now break my day up in chunks around events. I am able to use time blocking to be flexible and accommodate each day based on what we need to get done while still providing routine for my kids and myself so that things don’t always feel frazzled.
How to create time blocks in your day
When you set out to create time blocks for your day, you’ll want to follow a few guidelines so that you can set yourself up for success.
You want to try to keep your blocks around 3-4 hours long. They can be shorter than this but, any longer and you get into a space where it’s easy to procrastinate because you ‘have the time’ to do it later.
Grab your calendar and look at your day and the major events and transitions that you will come across. You’ll want to anchor your time blocks around those events. For example, if you have to pick your kids up from school at a certain time – that’s a great place to start/end a new block. If your kids go to bed at a certain time you’ve found another good anchor for your blocks.
If you don’t have any events to anchor your day around, anchor around your blocks around meals. I know in the summer our days can be more flexible and, maybe you truly don’t have anything planned at all. If this is the case, you can make your blocks between breakfast and lunch, lunch and snack, snack and dinner and dinner and bed. This allows you to still cut your day up in meaningful chunks and has a nice transition time attached to it.
Below I’ve given you an example of my (current) time blocks. You’ll notice that some are longer than others but each one starts at a certain anchor. I’ve listed the anchors that end my block next to each one so you can see examples of what I use to chunk a typical day.
5:00 am-9:00 am – drop Arianna at school
9:00 am-12:00 pm – pick Arianna up at school
12:00 pm -2:00 pm – kids go down for nap
2:00 pm -4:00 pm – kids wake up from nap
4:00 pm -8:00 pm – kid’s bedtime
8:00 pm -11:00 pm – my bedtime
You can make each day the same or have different time blocks depending on the activities you have going on. The above listed is my typical Monday-Friday blocks which changes on the weekends. These blocks are now starting to transition again this summer as my 3.5 year old is starting to drop a nap and my 1.5 year old is moving his nap up. Be fluid and flexible but allow the anchors to guide you when you make your day.
There are a few ways you can distinguish your time blocks in your day so that it makes sense in your planner. I often will make a template of my time blocks on an extra large post-it and keep that in my planner for reference. I also use a Plum Paper planner which I LOVE! You can customize the planner to actually say Morning, Afternoon and Evening instead of hourly time which fits perfectly with how I structure my day.
You can also color code each time block with a different marker or colored pen or use Washi tape to separate it! If you use a bullet journal, you’ll have total flexibility to set it up in anyway you want! Be as creative (or non creative) as you choose!
Here are some great and fun things to make your planner pop!
What do you put in time blocks?
When I first fill my timeblocks for the week, I start with all of the things I can’t change. These can be appointments I have to keep, meetings I am in, kid’s activities or drop offs or events I am attending. This allows me to see the day at a glance and I can adjust what goes in the other blocks accordingly.
Make sure that you also have one event in your day that is where you are working on a goal of yours. This could be 15 minutes planned out to declutter your closet, 30 minutes at the gym, or 20 minutes to read. Plan that in advance so you know that, no matter how busy things get, you’ve scheduled a little time out for you.
You’ll want to add in another time block with a habit that you are working on. I suggest just picking one habit each week and then adding to it. For my morning time block, I simply write ‘morning routine’ down but in a separate place in my planner I write down all of the tasks that I want to get done in that routine.
It’s smart to batch out the rest of your time blocks. Have a lot of errands to run? Put them in the same block! Phone calls that you need to make? Do them in the same chunk of time!
By batching out your tasks, you’ll spend less time doing them and take more action and actually get things done!
One of the biggest tips I can give you if you are going to give time blocking a try though is to NOT put too many things in each block. Each block should have 3-5 things maximum for you to work on. This way you know that in that period of time you need to get things do and can time manage yourself. Since you know that the next block is starting soon, you’ll have urgency that helps you procrastinate less!
Time Management for the Work at home Mom
So what does time blocking look like for a work at home mom? I wanted to share with you what a typical day looks like (when all naps and stars align!) so you can get an idea of how many things I put in each block and how I structure things!
5:00 am-9:00 am
Prayer and bible time
1 Work Task
Breakfast and morning chores
Workout and Shower
9:00 am-12:00 pm – pick Arianna up at school
Daily Cleaning
Phone Calls
Morning Walk
Errands or Play Date (my 1.5 year old is still home with me and the 3.5 year old and 12 year old are at school)
As you can see, I don’t have a ton of things planned but, every day I know what to work on during that block and can be specific for what calls, errands or tasks need to be done when I plan out the next day.
Time blocking is a great time management strategy to help moms get more done without feeling overwhelmed! Post your typical time blocks in the comments and PIN this to read again later!
In today’s episode we’ll chat about how you can create a culture of reading in your home. It’s so important that your kids grow up in a print-rich environment, see you reading, and have great routines that help them become great readers! I’ll break down for you how to start growing that space for them to explore books, how to find time to read as a busy mom, and how you can start helping develop your kids early literacy skills.
Episode Show Notes
6:00 Why your kids need to see your reading
8:00 Why reading is important in the home
18:00 Finding Chunks of Time To Read
25:00 Creating Habit Triggers for Reading
28:00 Using audiobooks and ebooks to read more
29:00 Creating Reading Habits with Your Kids
30:00 How to Do Read Aloud Time in Your Home
37:00 Giving Kids Book Choice
Subscribe & Review in the Podcast
Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, make sure you head over and do it now so that you don’t miss an episode!
While you’re there, I’d love an appreciate if you’d leave a rating and review! These allow other purpose driven moms to find the show and help grow our community! Just click here to review, select ‘Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know your favorite part of the podcast! I’d love to feature you as our ‘Review of the Week’.
It’s important to start to prepare your child for preschool before they start. If they have been home with you since they have been born, there are some skills that you want them to have before going to preschool. While they don’t need to be doing calculus or reading before preschool there are activities and skills you want your preschooler to have.
My 2.5 year old daughter will be starting part-time preschool in the fall and I’m excited and nervous and wondering how this will be.
Adding preschool into our lives was a decision we made for a few reasons. Our main reason was that she’s always stayed home with me and, before her brother was born a year ago our main interactions were playdates or a music class we attended weekly.
Since adding a new baby into the mix (and her getting older), I’ve noticed how much more of my attention she is seeking and her struggling when it comes to playing with others. We’ve had a lot less playdates because it’s just tougher with 2 babies and all the nap schedules to contend with.
I can tell that she is craving more interaction with kids her age and know that it will be good for her to be around others, learn from others, and pick up some of the social skills that I cannot teach her at home.
This post may contain affiliate links which cost you nothing extra to use but may provide me with a commission. To read my full disclosure head on over here.
Tot School Activities for Toddlers
For the past year and a half we’ve also added some intentional learning into our typical routines by starting tot school with our preschooler. Part of this is the teacher in me and the other part is knowing that, no matter what she learns at school, she needs reinforcement from home and any added ‘learning’ never hurt anyone.
We don’t do anything too structured as far as home school but we have implemented some Tot School practices into our weeks. In full transparency, it’s been much tougher and less frequent since the baby was born but, I know that any learning activities we do helps!
We follow the curriculum from ABC JESUS LOVES ME which allows us to have a structure of what is developmentally appropriate while fitting it into our day naturally. We don’t have a time where I announce “it’s school time” but times during the day where we do activities to promote learning. We also add in learning from the Play Through the Bible Book from my friend Liz at Steadfast Family! This book has helped us teach the bible lessons we found most important!
Preparing Your Toddler for Preschool
Having a more casual approach when your child is younger is the easiest way to decrease the stress for both you as the parents and them as the child. You never want to force them to do activities or make it so that it’s not fun because, let’s be real, if it’s not fun, your kids won’t’ do it!
We try to pick a theme for each week and come up with 2-3 activities we can do for that theme. The curriculum is great at giving ideas for what themes might work best and activities to go along with it. I print them out on Sundays for the week and keep them in a divided storage shelf so that I can easily grab something if we have 20 extra minutes in our day and want an activity.
All day, we also are working on learning in our environment however it naturally comes up. We point out letters, find numbers, count things, try to make patterns and categories with toys, and READ, READ, READ!!!
If you’re looking for other ways to incorporate learning and prepare your child for preschool, try to find pockets of your day that allow them to be creative, problem solve, and explore.
This can include outdoor play, games like “I spy” or nature walks, cooking, puzzles, seek and finds and more! There are so many ways to make learning and exploring fun, and those are all skills your child needs going into pre-school!
The more you can talk to your child, explain things you are doing, and share new words with them, the more that they will pick up! My daughter has learned so many new words simply from me saying what they are (“Ari, this is a spatula! We’ll use this to stir”), having her repeat it (“Watch my mouth when I saw that word. Good, now you say it”) and using it whenever it comes up in context (“Can you pass me the spatula? Oh we need to stir… hmmm what could we use?”)
How to Teach Your Preschooler Social Skills
One of the things we are working on now is all of the social skills she will need when going into preschool. We know that sharing is hard for any toddler and that she’ll learn how to do it when those moments happen but, that doesn’t mean we won’t work to help her learn those.
When preparing your child for school you can help them by reinforcing manners during the day. Toddlers are completely capable of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and by reinforcing that AND modeling it when we speak to them and everyone else in the household, it helps them make manners a habit.
You can also help them learn about sharing (we use the phrase ‘it’s time to take turns” all day in this house) as much as possible. We are struggling A LOT with this right now, particularly as her favorite thing to do seems to be to take whatever toy her little brother is playing with at the moment. BUT, that doesn’t mean I won’t try to take as many teachable moments as possible.
Toddler and Preschool Activities
If you’re looking for some activities you can start with your toddler now to get them ready for preschool, look no further! I’ve rounded up some super fun activities that you can incorporate into your week and that your toddler will love!
