The Popsicle Stick System: A Variation to Scheduling
Posted by Cathy Mahady on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
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I find being a full time mom and a home business owner can sometimes have some challenges – time management challenges. I need to have flexibility and an ebb and flow to my schedule. At any moment, one of the two responsibilities will need my attention. My day is not always predictable and thus it is not effective for me to attempt a firm, unyielding schedule. I do have an idea of what I want to accomplish, both personally and professionally, within the day, but as I am a list checker, not getting something done causes stress. And I don’t need to add any unnecessary stress to my life.
This fall my daughter started half day Kindergarten. As it is only half a day, I wanted to “work” with her myself in the afternoons. Not something as formal as home schooling, yet not as free as our summer routine had been.
My original thought was to schedule a formal activity each afternoon. Made sense up front, but as I am not always able to predict the flow of my business day and the needs that will arise, the formality of a curriculum schedule was not gonna work for me.
Yet, I knew I had to create some accountability for being sure our structured time together happened. Otherwise, I’d look up at the end of the day, the week and realize I had not accomplished what I wanted with her academically.
I wanted to incorporate these areas of study into our time together:
- Math
- Reading
- Writing
- Spanish
- Cooking
- Art
- Music
- Physical activity
So to be sure these activities got accomplished in a week, yet, provide the flexibility needed to work around my home business, we devised a new system. The Popsicle Stick System. I have written each of these areas of study on a popsicle stick and placed them into a cup.
My daughter will select the popsicle stick with the activity she wants to engage in next. This assists with her reading skills, but also giving her some control and decision over what she wants to do.
Once the activity is done, we place the popsicle stick into the finished cup. That way we keep track of what we DID accomplish and what areas still need attention during the rest of the week. Yet, we aren’t locked into a demanding and inflexible schedule.
This system allows us to choose an activity for the amount of time available for any given afternoon. Sometimes we may need to select a less time consuming study and other times, we can choose two or more.
Give something similar a try yourself and see if it doesn’t work for you.
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Filed in Time Management | One response so far
Kathy Mooreon 04 Oct 2008 at 9:08 pm 1Cathy,
That is so funny…I did the same thing with my youngest son Josh when he was just starting school. But since I wasn’t working from home then, we used them over the weekend, and made sure we tried to cover atleast 6 out of 10 activities a weekend. Even if it was cooking supper together and figuring out measurements for different things, or a trip to the local orchard and picked apples or peaches, and talk about how they came to be or what were they used in. To a big outing as the Children’s Museum for a Saturday…covering alot of those sticks.
With the ‘popsicle stick system’ being a neat invention and alot of Josh’s friends thinking is was kewl too, it ended up being a Cub/Boy Scout weekend outting tradition. The kids loved it and usually each parent of set of parents would take one of the responsiblities of the “stick” purpose. And then the pack got to vote on the next “stick”I was a leader in each level as Josh moved through the ranks, and they always wanted the