Stacking Cheerios with Life of Dad

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Life of Dad and Cheerios. I received compensation for this post; however, all opinions stated are my own while I am Stacking Cheerios. #CheeriosChallenge

Life as a homeschooling dad of 5 is absolutely wonderful, but not without its daily challenges. Still, I wouldn’t change it for a second. It takes plenty of discipline to keep on track with our planned schedules. Sometimes things just don’t go as we had anticipated. But, we make adjustments and work through it as a team. I think the cooperative effort is what I enjoy most about being a dad of awesome kids and a husband to their terrific mom.

A recurring theme in our home is trying to stay focused. With kids of different ages, it isn’t always possible to keep all of them engaged at the same time. They have different subjects to study and definitely have different personalities in how they go about getting their work done. Sometimes I feel like I am bouncing around from one subject and one kid to another and another. I admit that my own ability to focus can be disrupted. At the same time, I do enjoy all the energy.

Stacking Cheerios

I decided to try the Cheerios Challenge just to see how well I could concentrate for a certain period of time while Stacking Cheerios. I was laser focused on stacking those little round tubes as high as I could without them falling down. My kids were pretty intrigued by my effort.

So, they decided to try it out too. It was amazing how the little ones went from bouncing off the walls into Cheerios stacking stealth mode. I got to see a side of them that isn’t always there when we are doing our schoolwork. There were no complaints and no excuses, like “The puppy ate my homework, really”.

So, here is my new go-to head clearing and energy calming dad trick. When things get a little out of control, I will bring on the Cheerios Challenge to see who can stack the highest. The room gets pretty quiet and the competition is on. It is meditative for both the kids and for me. We are keeping a height chart, just like you would on a wall to measure how much each of the kids has grown over the years. It’s all in good fun for this family. My number one tip for successful stacking is to keep your hungry pet in another room.

As long as we keep Cheerios in the pantry, we are good to go when this family needs a little reboot so we can chill and then all get back to work. And, we get to eat what topples as a pick-me-up snack. It’s a win/win on many levels.