Mornings and bedtimes on rails

What a routine is

A routine has a name, days of the week, a start time and a default number of seconds per step. Its steps are chores — real ones, assigned to the kids who run the routine, each with its own picture, checklist and reward. On the routine's days a card with a Start button appears on each runner's board, listing every step. The chores inside a routine repeat on the routine's days in its time of day, so a four-step routine shows all four steps every day it runs.

The player

• One step at a time: the chore big, its checklist, a countdown ring, Done and Skip for now.
• Spoken cues: each step's name and minutes as it starts, then halfway, five minutes on a long step, one minute, thirty seconds and time's up. An AirPlay button sends the voice to a HomePod mini or any speaker in the kids' room, and it stays there for as long as any clock runs.
• Done folds away: a routine with every step done folds to one line with a check on the board and the fridge chart, so what is still to do stands out; a tap opens it again.
• Read aloud for pre-readers speaks every step as it appears, and they always have the speaker button on a step; Settings › The voice can turn that button on for everyone.
• Live Activity: the current step and its timer on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.
• Siri: “How much time is left in Sheep Chores?” on the device that is playing.
• Time taken: Done records how long the step really took beside the time it was given; the done screen adds the session up, and parents see it in Approvals, the history export and the time report card under Reports.
• One congratulations screen when the last step is done: confetti, the kid's sheep hopping, the time the routine took, and the way back to the board.
• Skipping a step keeps it on the board; the routine counts as done only when every step is. The screen stays awake while a routine plays.
• Two at once: each kid's routine runs on its own clock, and a routine keeps running when the kid goes back to the Pasture. The board and the fridge chart show the step that is on the clock, ticking, until they return or finish. While both run, the voice says whose minute it is — "Kate, you're halfway there." — and the two never talk over each other.

Setting one up

On the fridge chart and the calendar

The fridge chart shows each routine as its own card with its steps; a tap on the card, or on any step, plays it right over the chart, and routines on the clock line up in a Running now strip under the header. Inside the player an Also running row lists every other clock on the iPad — a sibling's routine, a timed chore — so kids sharing one iPad switch to their own timer with a tap. The family calendar shows the steps on the routine's days. A parent can Reset today on a routine to put every runner's steps back to to-do, or put a single step back from the kid's screen with the PIN.

Deleting a routine

Its steps were chores assigned to the kids who ran it, so deleting the routine takes them off the boards too — archived, not destroyed, so finished ones stay in history and Chores › Archived can bring one back. If you only wanted to drop the order they played in, choose Delete, keep the steps as chores and they stay as regular chores. To take one kid off a routine without deleting it, tap their name under Who runs it.

Questions