Ready Kids › Home Alone Ready › Badge 3 › Lesson 3.3

Grades 4–5 · Home Alone Ready · Badge 3

What you are allowed to do

Know your written allowed list and waits list, and follow them without negotiating.

This lesson, start to finishLookTeachTeachTeachQuestionTry itFind themSay itDo it

Step 1 of 9

1Look

Ten past four

Still image

Ten past four

A kid on a sofa with the remote in one hand and a phone in the other, a wall clock reading ten past four, the kitchen door open behind.

This is the boring bit. The boring bit is where most of the decisions get made.

2The idea

The boredom problem, answered honestly

Being home alone is mostly being bored. Nobody tells you that. Bored is when you start thinking about the oven, the bike, the friend two streets over, the thing in the garage.

So the list of what you are allowed to do is agreed in advance and written down. It is agreed at the table on a Sunday, not negotiated at four in the afternoon with nobody there to negotiate with. A written list means you are never deciding on your own.

3The idea

Two columns

Allowed: what you can do alone, without asking. TV, homework, the cold snack, the garden if it is agreed, your phone.
Waits: things that happen when somebody is home. The stove, a friend round, going out, the bath, anything with a ladder, anything you are not sure about.

Waits is not never and it is not a punishment. It means the thing needs a second person in the house. Most of it you will do that evening. If it is not on either list, it is a waits.

4The idea

Zara, and the cookie mix

Quarter past four. Zara wants to bake the cookie mix. Oven is on Waits. She messages: can I do the cookies? Mum: when I’m in, six. At six they happen, with a person in the house. Then a friend messages: come over. Going out is on Waits. She asks. Today the answer is no.

That is the list working. Nothing was banned; two things waited and one did not happen today. The list means the answer to a message is quick, because nobody is deciding from scratch.

5Decide

It is twenty past four. Nothing on the list is interesting. A friend messages: come round, my mum's home.

Right. His mum being home is a good reason, and a good reason still goes through the ask. Going out is a waits on nearly every family’s list, because the one person whose job it is to know where you are does not know yet.

Whose house you go to is not the question. Who knows you went is. A message from his sofa tells your parent after the fact, and after is not permission. The ask takes twenty seconds, and the answer is usually yes.

Pick one to carry on.

6Build it

Your own two columns

Interactive

Allowed and Waits

Drag things from a pile into Allowed or Waits. Some are pre-sorted because they are the same in every family. The rest are yours to agree. It prints for the fridge.

Do this with a parent. A list you filled in alone is a wish list.

7Find them

Which of these are waits until somebody is home?

Tap the ones that count.

Find all 4.

8Say it

The sentence for the thing that is not on the list

Say it flat, like it is no big deal

“That's a waits. I'll ask.”

It is the answer to every idea you have at twenty past four that is not on the Allowed side.

9Do it

Before you leave this page

Agree three waits items with a parent tonight and write them on the fridge list. Pick ones you actually want to do, so the list is real.

Tick it when you have done it.

Lesson done.

The list is written in advance. Some things wait. That is not a punishment.

Take the Badge Challenge

Badge 3 · The First Twenty Minutes

3.1The routine 3.2Locked means locked 3.3What you are allowed to do ★Badge Challenge

0 of 3 lessons done