My DIY Planner

As the year draws to a close, it was time for me to set up another Planner for the New Year.

I have tried many types of planners (Yearbook for the HomeKeeper, A Record of the Learning Lifestyle, Make Your Own Brain In A Binder, The Schoolhouse Planner, etc…) and they are really good (from simple and basic to more detailed). BUT they never seem to suit my needs fully. So I gave up and started to design my own.

First I had to decide what exactly I needed and will use. And after going through all those planners, I certainly knew what I needed, what I liked but never used and what was totally not useful to me. Then I got onto Microsoft Word and started designing.

It’s really easy – and fun might I add. Use the free clip art function to design your very own covers and sectional headers. Or print off pictures from your own photo album to personalise it even more!  Use coloured paper to make it fancier.

I then laminate the front and back covers (makes it waterproof and smudgeproof!) and bind it all together. Voila! A Planner that no one else has! We own both a laminator and binding machine (basic models bought when Popular bookstore had its storewide 20% sale). But if you don’t own either, you can always visit photocopying shops that’ll do it for you for a small fee.

This is how my Planner is organised. But bear in mind I have only 6 sections or headers versus the multitudes the pre-printed planners usually have : 

• Monthly Calendars
• Homeschooling
• Homemaking
• Personal
• Blog Stuff and
• Health Records

Monthly Calendars :

There are loads that can be printed and downloaded from the net free. I downloaded and customised mine from Free Monthly Calendar or Planner Printable Online. The function of this section was for me to record important events for the year. This is different from the wall calendar that records our usual appointments.

Homeschooling :
a) Lesson Planners : This is where I have my weekly lesson plans printed and filed so I have a record of what they have done and if I have been faithfully grading their work! Their yearly plans are in a Homeschool File of its own.

b) Homeschool Info : Websites, books, curriculum and other interesting nuggets pertaining to homeschooling are recorded here.

Homemaking :

Menu Plans and Chore Lists are in this section.

Personal :

Actually this is like a miscellanous section. Lol! Things like my goals, books read, wishlist can be found here. And for 2009, my Birth Plan* and Things-To-Do-List-Before-Baby-Gets-here list also goes in here too!

Blog Stuff :

This would be where I write down the topics that I would like to cover in my personal blog as well as here on Building Up Moms.

Health Records :

Ah! I am most remiss in this section tho’ I really try hard to keep on top of it! I started this to remember the bouts of illnesses (serious ones) that the children get hit by. Like the recent rotavirus infection the toddler got.

This is also where I am supposed to record major health expenses – eye treatment, orthodontist, chiropractor, etc…But I have yet to be consistent So the records are obviously not up-to-date.

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And that’s it. No need to have unused and wasted pages that other families need but we don’t. No need to figure out how to modify pre-printed pages to suit our requirements either.

Just in case you think I am brilliant I test drove the Planner for 6 months before settling on this current format. I tried various combinations : colours/fonts/forms/covers/etc…till I am finally happy with it now.

I strongly recommend having a Planner to get organised. But if you don’t have the energy nor interest in creating a Planner of your own, try checking out the Planners I mentioned or google for more options. 

And if you are looking for a Chore Planner (which would go under the Homemaking section) to help you keep on top of the number of stuff you need to do (don’t we all?), you may want to look at Motivated Moms Planner with Scheduled Bible Reading thrown in! Click here to view more details.

Have A Blessed New Year!

* I’ll post my Birth Plan in a few weeks’ time for those who might be interested.

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

My Birth Stories

In order to make it easier for you to find my Birth Stories, I thought I should put them all in one post. I hope you’ll be blessed as you read and give glory to God, through Jesus His Son. Happy reading!

• Birth Story #1
• Birth Story #2
• Birth Story #3
• Birth Story #4
• Birth Story #5
• Birth Story #6

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

The Blessing of a Timer

In a large household such as ours where there are more little bodies than large ones, a basic timer is a blessing. Mom no longer has to keep a close watch on the clock.

Example One : Nap or rest time for the 3yr old is 2pm. I set the timer for it and when she hears it, she’ll stop all her play and go up to the bedroom by herself. Without any fuss. In the beginning (as with all new things) she’d protest but after a week of consistent usage, she happily goes upstairs and rests.

Example Two : Computer usage is limited to 30 minutes each. Thereafter, each child who either played or watched is required to rest his/her eyes for 5 minutes by looking out of the window. So before they play a game, they’ll automatically set the timer. There’s no need for me to be the stopwatch.

There are countless uses for a timer – boiling soup/limiting computer usage (for mom!)/etc. So simple. So basic. And such a helpful tool for me!

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For my personal musings, do visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

Teach Obedience, Don’t Just Spank

I have explained our style and method of discipline in our home at Discipline and The Rod? Time Out?

It has been largely effective for us as we train our little ones to obey our authority, as their parents. But I often hear of parents spanking for everything under the sun and this has an adverse effect on the child. The child learns to toughen himself up and learns to ignore the pain after a while. I disagree with this type of spanking. It is not only ineffective but results in much resentment and bitterness between the parent and child.

In our home, we teach each child to heed the call for obedience. And when they do not heed it, we will than spank for disobedience. Meaning, no matter what instruction is given, they have to obey. Any disobedience to the instruction resulted in a spanking.

So we don’t say, “You are being disciplined for not brushing your teeth/not packing your room/not doing your chores/etc…” We say, “You are being disciplined for disobeying mama or daddy.”

Is there a difference? Yes, there is.

With the former, you’ll need to lay down rules for everything you can think of and if you forget to lay down the rule for one item, then the child is allowed to misbehave on that one item. But if you are disciplining for disobedience then every instruction you issue (“pack up now/it’s time for bed/go and shower”) is to be obeyed.

Does that make them robots? Not at all.

As parents, we teach them to obey immediately and cheerfully. As they start to show maturity (and when this happens this depends on the child), they are allowed to appeal or ask the reason behind an instruction. And the reason given is usually a short one. No long stories in this household! But even if no reason is forthcoming, they are still required to obey. They learn to obey because we have told them to, not because they like our explanation or if the explanation appeals to them This cuts down a lot of useless, time consuming arguments with a young child who cannot fully understand logic and reasoning.

I have seen moms explaining to their young children why he/she should put on his/her shoes when they are preparing to leave my house. And the explanations given is not a “we have to put on our shoes because we are leaving now” but a long, protracted conversation about the merits of putting on shoes! And sometimes, I or my children are even put forth as the villian! “Aunty Serene (or the baby) wants to rest now so we have to leave.” Like huh?! Where did that come from?

A similar scenario is played out in shops when the inquisitive child is touching and making a mess of the store display. Instead of telling the child not to mess up the place and have the child obey the simple instruction, I’ll hear the parent explaining that the store owners will be very angry with the child if the child messes up the shop. Thereby putting the blame on the obviously unfriendly store owner.

In both examples the child is not being taught to obey mom but to resent this other person who’s obviously a party pooper!

Obedience when taught well, results in well behaved children (most of the time, anyway!). Don’t spank for everything under the sun. Focus on teaching your children obedience and you will reap a pleasant and peaceful home.

This article by Elizabeth of Raising Godly Tomatoes explains it perfectly. Click HERE to read it. I read it years ago after I had read Preparation for the Toddler Years by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo and am so glad to have learnt these basics when I had one child.

Parenting is tough and getting the basics right is helpful to achieving a peaceful and happy home that glorifies God.

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For my personal musings, come and visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

Organising My Fridge

Every once in a while, the fridge, like any other room in the house, needs to be de-cluttered and re-organised. Instead of buying a bigger fridge, I force myself to look at the junk in the fridge that needs to be cleared out.

No, it is not because I have great self-control that I am able to restrain myself from buying a new fridge. I am held back purely by the lack of space in our home! Recently, as I was exploring the possibility of buying a freezer (more about that later), a friend recommended getting a second fridge instead. Boy was I tempted! But some other friends (thanks Angie and Aunty Helen!) think that a freezer is more practical than a 2nd fridge. Hmmm…I was in a fix!

Our family IS growing and we’ll eventually need more food which needs to be stored somewhere So – do we need more fridge space or freezer space? And bear in mind, we have no space in our kitchen anymore. So whatever we buy has to fit into our already small and cramped balcony/laundry area!

Dh is of course against buying anything But you see, he isn’t the one who has to find space in the fridge and freezer after each week’s grocery trip. He’s also not the one who has to pull everything out of the fridge to get the item that is wanted which has been conveniently shoved to the back coz well, there’s no space for it!

So a fridge/freezer overhaul is needed! And in view of not having any help with food this time round come March ‘09, I need to get organised NOW!

So this is what I did :

FREEZER

I used to organise my freezer space by food type. Eg. all chicken goes to the bottom shelf. All pork goes to the top left hand corner, etc. But now I group the food according to the meals I have planned. Eg. Menu Plan says Chicken  Macaroni Soup for Monday’s lunch. So chicken bones (for soup) and chicken breast gets bundled together and labelled as “Monday lunch – Chicken Macaroni Soup”.

This way I hope to be more efficient and I’d know if there are any ingredients missing immediately instead of finding out on Monday morning when I am doing food prep for lunch!

As I sorted and labelled the food, I noticed that I can only shove organise 2 weeks’ worth of food in the freezer. My plan for the confinement period* is to pre-prepare (cut/marinate) a month’s worth of food before baby’s arrival. Hmmm….I need more freezer space!

FRIDGE

Previously, food was haphazardly placed in the fridge – item goes where there is space So I decided that I had to be more organised. Guess what? I threw out 4 bags of junk! Amazing the amount of stuff I had just shoved into the fridge. It really was a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind! And to think I thought I had no space in the fridge!

After thinking through, this is how I have organised my fridge :

From the top down, I designated half a shelf for my herbal teas (now into drinking RRL tea to tone and prepare my uterus for labour and birth) and the other half for my baking needs (yeast, extra butter, cheese, chocolate chips, etc). Then a shelf for leftovers and breakfast meats (ham, sausage) & spreads (jam, kaya).

Another shelf for de-frosting food. Tip : place a tray under the food to be de-frosted so that any raw juices that may leak out is caught in the tray and not all over the shelf or worse, drip onto cooked foods!

Next is a shelf for my leafy vegetables. Note : I keep my easily perishable vegetables in Tupperware and Lock ‘n’ Lock vegetable containers. I have found that this allows my vegetables to last at least 1 week if not more, compared to just wrapping them in newspapers and putting them into the vegetable bin. But because I use these containers, they are too big to fit into the fridge’s vegetable bin.

So I use half the vegetable bin to store my stash of longans and red date (to make red date tea for the confinement period) and the other half for the hardier vegetables and fruits.

On the fridge doors, I have one and a half shelves for eggs! Yep, we eat a lot of eggs A small space for the butter dish. One shelf is used to store for our vitamins and our cold water jug. And the last shelf is kept for drinks, usually just milk for our cereal or baking needs but sometimes juice and soft drinks.

After all that organising and de-cluttering, it was clear that I do not need more fridge space! I do not even need extra freezer space if I do my grocery shopping once a fortnight. It seems that my disorganised fridge has led to an inefficient use of time all this while!

However, having said that, I do need to prepare to go solo after I birth and there’s no way I can store a months’ worth of food in my freezer. So…we bought a 110litre upright freezer that looks like THIS from NTUC AMK Hub.

(*) It seems at this point in time, that we will be going fully solo after the birth of this baby. We’ve usually had no confinement help. But we’ve always had someone (mom or mil) helping with food. This time round, there’ll be no help on the food front. So instead of opting for tingkat service (no one can stomach tingkat food here ), my grand plan is to have a one month menu plan and pre-prepare (cut and marinated) all the food and freeze it. Then come meal times, I only need to de-frost and cook. Or dh can cook if he is available. This way, I still have freshly cooked food without all the hassle of food preparation.  With this in mind, we’ll need lots of freezer space. And this will probably be our method of keeping on top of the cooking challenge in the days ahead with 7 children (God willing), aged 10 and below!

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore