Sims2: Catching the School Bus

Frances and Renaldo, the teens of the family, are responsible for getting their three younger siblings out the door in the morning with their homework done and breakfast eaten.

This is one of my many "big families in a tiny house".  They can be a bit of a pain, but I really enjoy them... there's so much going on, and so many opportunities for my Sims to interact with each other.  This is one of the downloaded houses I like so much - this one has a basement room that the teens use as their bedroom, but it's actually quite nicely decorated with a bookcase, reading chair and plant.  The alcove at the front of house here would fit a desk nicely, but I put two small tables with chairs so two kids can play on the computer next to each other.  There isn't really room for a proper dining area, but this large table pushed up against the wall works nicely as long as the kids eat dinner early and the teens and parents eat later.  There are only two small bedrooms and a small bathroom upstairs, but they have a nice big yard for the kids to play in, and the powder room on the main floor (in the upper right in this view) takes some pressure off the main bathroom.

If kids are doing something autonomously, they will almost always head for the school bus themselves.  If you direct them to do something like eat or sleep, they'll either do it when their action is done, or in the case of sleeping, you have to wake them up.  Some kids don't like missing the bus, and will get some aspiration points deducted.  If they're really hungry or tired they won't go to the bus themselves, and every now and again I find some kid sleeping away at noon that I thought was at school!