Fostering Independence: Success With Dishes!

I have done a few blogs about things I do to teach skills towards fostering independence in Gess. Last year I told you about things that I have done for Gess in the kitchen when she was younger and last April I shared how Gess was learning to do the laundry and other chores. At that time Gess was washing her play dishes because I worried about her breaking glass and I wanted to make sure she learned to do a thorough job.  Well, she has mastered it!  There are still a few flimsy dishes I set aside but if I need dishes done, all I have to do is get the water ready and put her to it! I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a child old enough and skilled enough to help with the dishes!  (Yes, we still live in the stone ages and therefore don't own a dishwasher!)  Here is my girl working hard.  I am so proud of her!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Printable Family Chore Chart

Image
You know chore charts are not just for children.  As I have been struggling trying to keep the house work up among all my summer activities, homeschooling projects, exercise, blogging, church activities and other every day life events I realized that I needed a hand.  Since Gess is getting older and taking on more responsibility I though it was a good time to put some order into her routine of helping.  Then Chelsie gave me a great idea that she uses.  By breaking up my weekly chores into daily tasks I don't have to give up an entire day to nothing but cleaning house! Taking her idea and breaking up the daily chores I came up with the following list.  There is one for each of us and an extra one that goes beyond the standard chores.  It's the stuff we do at least once a week to keep our house neat and clean.  What I love about it is that if something happens on that one day I had set aside to clean the house, it doesn't mean that my entire house gets neglected for anothe
Read more

Learning the 10 Commandments

Image
As Gess is getting older we thought it was important to stress having some personal devotion time. I think she needs to know that she can pray and study God's Word anytime she chooses. We always begin her day learning something in the Bible together. Then I have her write and meditate on the portion of Scripture that was the focus for the day. Since she was doing some written work each day we thought it would be good to have a place to keep it all together so that could look it over later and remember what she has studied so far. So we made made her a notebook and titled it My Devotional and keep it with her bible. One of our early lessons this year was to memorize the 10 commandments. I recalled that Living Waters had a great resource for helping kids to memorize them so I went to their site and downloaded their 10 Commandments Learning Aids . They use these images to help tie the number to the actual commandment. They have a full presentation but here is the sheet with
Read more

Explaining Baptism to Kids

Image
Gess is 9 now and often asks questions in church. Lately we have had some people come forward for baptism. Gess now wants to get baptized too because others are doing it. She just really wants to be involved in everything we do. However, we are Baptist and believe that the bible teaches only those who are saved should be baptized or partake in the Lord's Supper. It is hard to explain to a child why they can't do these things. Then I had someone else who told me they had an 8 year old girl ask about baptism because she had seen someone get baptized at her church. Being surprised by the question they were not quite sure how to answer and asked if I could write something up to help explain it. I thought, what perfect timing. This is something I want to share with Gess too, so I did more than just write up a paper. I wrote a small booklet made specifically for young kids to help explain baptism. This booklet is meant to explain what baptism is and in doing that it touches
Read more