Summer at Home: Week Two…

June 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I believe we have survived our second full week home. I only gained a couple of new gray hairs, so that is somewhat successful.

This week was our Vacation Bible School at church as well, which the kids loved! It was a fun and active week of VBS.

As far as our Summer Vacation Chart goes, the kids chose some fun activities for the week.

Monday, Daniel went to Police Academy and had a great time. The police officers fingerprinted the kids and dusted for fingerprints. He also saw a demonstration with the police dog and got to see in the police car and touch the handcuffs. J He seemed to enjoy it and still says he wants to be a policeman when he grows up.

Tuesday, the kiddos made s’mores. That’s always yummy… and messy. 

Wednesday, was Mississippi Flood- which is what I call it anyway. It’s a game where there is a bucket full of water at one end and an empty bucket of water at the other. You have to get a cup full of water from the full bucket and run it to the empty bucket until the empty bucket is full. The kids seemed to enjoy that.

Thursday, was Under the Sea Day. First we painted paper plate fish.

  

We also made a jello aquarium. I don’t have a good picture of this, but all we did was make blue jello and when it was starting to set we put in gummy fish.

 

I could have gone all out and made a themed meal, but I didn’t.

These squid dogs are cute and so are octopus hotdogs. You could pair it with shell mac and cheese. You could eat fish or fish sticks, but I’m allergic to fish, so I never even think of feeding these things. J I’m sure there are a ton of other cute ideas.

We also made a wave bottle and played Fish Bingo.

The kids loved the Bingo game. We used goldfish as Bingo markers and they got to eat them when they were done.

After a full week with the kiddos and a full week of VBS with a lot of kiddos and a full week of Dan being super busy, I’m ready for the weekend… and a trip to the lake! I might have to arrange that. J

Filed Under: Summer, Summer Vacation Chart, Us? Organized?

Summer’s here… Now what?

June 6, 2010 By 7 Comments

I posted a few months back about my idea for organizing our summer. 

Schedule free is great to an extent, but it doesn’t always work around here. I have a certain seven year old in my house that needs to stay busy, so I’m giving this a shot to organize our days a bit. There is still plenty of room for chilling and doing a whole lot of nothing.  

 

I decorated our Summer board with Phineas and Ferb. Whenever I think of Summer Vacation, I can’t help but think of those guys and how they come up with great things to do each day. Our days, however will probably not involve surfing tidal waves, creating nanobots or locating Frankenstein’s brain.  That could be fun though! 



I have given a theme to each day, so that we have some direction.  We have Movie Time Monday (go the library and check out books/movies), Terrific Tuesday (some sort of outing- park, zoo, etc. or a project) Wacky Wednesday (water play, some sort of sensory play) and this is also our day for chores and errands- like groceries, Theme Day Thursday (Pajama Day, Ice cream Day, Sixties day, etc.- we’ll do all sorts of things around the theme). We also have an ‘I need to find something to do’ pocket for those times when “There’s nothing to do!”  Goodness knows the kids sometimes need ideas on what to do at certain points in the day! 

 

There are several cards in each pocket with activity ideas. I’ll have the boys pull a card for each day at the beginning of the week, so I can get the things together in advance for the day. 

 

I got a lot of the craft ideas from Family Fun Magazine, which is such a great magazine. And I got most of the Theme Day ideas from Whittaker Woman. She does great Family nights with her family and I plan on using a lot of her ideas for our theme days. 

I was going to use cute library pockets, but I never went and bought them, so I used scrapbook paper. I think library pockets would probably hold up better, though. 

I know there are far more creative people out there that could take this idea and tweak it and make it better or cuter, but this is what we’re giving a shot this summer. D3 is very excited about it, so we’ll see how it goes! 

Summer Idea Cards

Filed Under: Being a Mommy, Summer, Us? Organized?

What’s Your Point?

March 25, 2010 By 2 Comments

Uhm… Could that really be Daniel and Luke cleaning the bathroom?

Not possible. Daniel appears to be scrubbing a toilet and Luke is cleaning with a Clorox wipe!

I had to document this moment, because frankly it may never happen again. Well, without a fuss anyway.

On their own they decided they wanted to clean the bathroom.

And vacuum.

And wow do I ever need a new vacuum.

Anyway, Dan has come up with a point system around here that seems to be working wonders. And I do have to give him complete credit for it.

It all started when we were car shopping. Before we headed out on an all day search for a new car, he told each boy that they had 3 points each and if they behaved and had at least 1 point by the end of the day they could cash it in for icecream. If they misbehaved they lost a point. They held onto all 3 points all day, so we went to Mickey D’s for a hot fudge sundae.

Well, somehow it’s still going strong… two months later! It’s amazing what these boys will do for a point and how upset they get when they lose one.

It’s not very pretty, but here is our point board:

                                                                                                                                                                                                            

We will change out the prizes every now and again, but so far these have been great. They have cashed in for everything on here except a movie night. They have a lot of points stored up right now, but they want to use 5 points and get an icecream after dinner. The sleep over is watching a movie together and then sleeping on a pallet in the Living Room or sleeping together in the bunk beds. Here is the sleepover aftermath:

They get 1 point each day for being a good citizen of the house and if they do something above and beyond or something on their chore chart they can earn extra points. Naughty behavior results in points lost.

Here’s the Chore Chart:

So far so good. I’m enjoying Dan’s little invention and so are the kiddos. And I’m actually getting some help with housework. What a concept! J

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