We do our best to have breakfast and dinner together at the table each day. That’s not to say that sometimes meals move to the front room occasionally, but we try to have family conversations. On Saturday mornings and Monday mornings they are called “O’Brien Family Meetings.” (Saturday’s agenda is making a food shopping list and suggesting the next week’s dinners. Monday’s agenda is setting the dinners for the week)
At more and meals Brendan has been talking about classroom jobs. He loves having a job- it is unique to full day children and makes him feel like a big kid. Aidan was the same way at 4. He was called upon to help the substitute teacher once move all the children to the next week’s job and he could do it- from memory.
Jobs are important in a community to make each person feel ownership of their part. Of course the jobs need to be age appropriate but if its fun and understood that its important to help the whole community there is a sense of pride and ownership that even the littlest friends have a big role to play.
Some jobs in our house include food preparation, cleaning up after oneself, putting away laundry, collecting recycling and setting/clearing the table.
