quick trick: the days of the week with vitamin C!

Welcome, welcome new vitamin boxes to our table and to our every day!

I have yet to find a better way than this to talk about the day of the week each morning and to make sure that my little ones take their C's.

After about two years of using our trusty pill holders, they've finally succumbed to the wear and tear of little fingers opening and closing them every day.

So while we were out a few weeks ago, doing our back-to-school shopping, we picked up brand-new pill containers, something we use every every single day, especially from September through May.

• Quick Trick--Teach the Days of the Week with Vitamin C: Not really with Vitamin C, but thanks to the Vitamin C my kiddos take every day (or every other day) during the school year, we've had a reason to do a little Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday-talking every day.
  

For the last few years we've been using super-inexpensive pill boxes filled with Maddy, Owen, and Cora's daily vitamins to emphasize the days of the week. On Sunday nights, I usually filled each person's pill box so it would be ready for Monday morning.

Owen's new pill box is pretty schweeeet.

When Cora was too young for vitamins, I put a Cheerio in each day's box, and I put a half or whole daily vitamin in Maddy and Owen's, depending on their age. And every other day--and every day during the wintertime--I'd add a vitamin C.

At some point during breakfast, they take their vitamins. It has been such a great reminder of the day of the week, and even though my kiddos don't know how to spell each day's name, they know which box to open according to the letter the day begins with and which box is next in line.

While I throw down my coffee, we look at the newspaper and check out the weather, talking about that day's weather and what the rest of the week has in store for us. We count the sunny's, rainy's, cloudy's, and (Owen's personal fave) the sunny-rainy's in the week's weather outlook, using each day's name when we can: Oh no! It may be rainy on Saturday, and that's when Maddy and Owen have soccer! Uh-oh....soccer in the rain! May be crazy. . . or, It's going to be sunny today but sunny-rainy on Thursday. We better get outside today, then!

And then we check out everyone's school calendars. We read Maddy's special schedule to make sure she knows whether she'll be singing, computing, searching for books, playing with paint, or running in the gym that day. We talk about Owen's morning at pre-K (if it's a day he attends), and we talk about Cora's morning at preschool. We look at which student is bringing snack, what book the class will be reading, and what topic they'll cover.

We chat about what we're looking forward to and what we have questions about. And then we move onward through our day. . .

Sure, some mornings we hit glitches and we forget about vitamins and don't have time to look at the day's schedules, let alone talk about what that day's weather will be. But on our regular mornings, this is how we roll.

And now--with these snazzy, shiny, name-clad pill boxes, with lids that make a loud 'click!' when they're opened or closed because they're just that new--we're just that much more excited to take our C's each day.