Every morning for the last 5 years, I have been waking up at WHATEVER TIME NECESSARY that requires me to tend to the children. Some days it’s 6am. Other days it’s 9:30am.

Sometimes the kids would wake up and play with lego for 1.5 hours before they actually ask for breakfast.

I would get up and make scrambled eggs on toast, or hot waffles with yoghurt and fruit. We would eat breakfast at a leisurely pace – talking about our day, chatting about upcoming events, reading the newspaper, doing a crossword, listening to birds outside the window… Ok I’m lying.

Basically, my morning schedule was very fluid and floppy. It’s been a great ride, but all that has come to an end.

My 4.5year old son has started school – commencing at 9am, 5 days a week.

That means I have to wake up like clockwork at 7:00am every morning. I have get the kids out of bed, get them to eat breakfast, convince them to brush teeth, change clothes, check their school bags. Then I have to eat breakfast, have a cup of tea, brush my teeth, change, and if I have errands to run in the morning, I have to pack and make sure I don’t forget anything.

I knew I would be completely crap at this early morning flurry.

So I got the idea of a Progress Chart (from the Supernanny).

It’s just a grid, and on the left is a bunch of tasks I wanted my kids to do by themselves.

1. Eat breakfast
2. Eat their vitamins
3. Put their dishes away
4. Wash their hands and brush their teeth
5. Change into their school clothes
6. Check their school bags
7. Toilet
8. SMILE

In this version they get a sticker every time they completed each task – I discovered that this SUCKED, because it took them too long to fiddle with stickers.

In our next version, they gave themselves ticks in each box, then they get a sticker at the end. And they get a little treat at the end of the week.

Overall the progress chart was a complete success.

My 4.5 year old is brilliant at it. My 2.5yo needs a bit of help with brushing teeth, selecting clothes to wear. I really wished I had implemented it earlier.

Initially, the boys constantly ran to the chart to tell me what came next. Which was great because I couldn’t even remember sometimes.

And even better, now it’s two weeks later, they have memorised the list and they just do most of it by themselves. It’s awesome.

Anyway, I realised that I should have set up the grid in a horizontal format, and have 10 ticking boxes – for 2 weeks of school days.

So here is my final grid. I thought I’d also share it, and make it available for printable download – since I couldn’t find any PLAIN progress chart grids online (without silly cartoons and stupid irrelevant titles).

Click here to download a plain, horizontal Progress Chart (10kb).

Right click and save as. Print in landscape format, and make sure you shrink to fit. Enjoy!