Thanksgiving Crafts

Fantastic Fall Fun

Weylin got home last night and we couldn't be happier!! We've all missed him so much. He is getting lots of love and attention today from small siblings who all want his time.
It's gorgeous out so they all went out and Weylin and Peyton built a fort out of sticks. They are all in there happily playing now.
It feels good to have our family complete again, things never seem quite right when he's gone.

Learning Geography by Osmosis

Endangered Species Project

Peyton had to make a poster of an endangered animal for Cub Scouts. He got up this morning and set out to do it "all by himself".

He picked out all the pictures and chose his information. Cut and glued and even sounded out all the words himself.

Then when he was finished he even cleaned up his mess... those of you with little boys know what an accomplishment that is ;).

Choosing Curriculum might just kill me

Seriously. There are just too many choices and not enough information. I have bought SO MANY things in hopes of the “right fit” for my kids and our family.
It is such a great disappointment when I spend hour upon hour researching and pick what I believe will work best and it gets here and it doesn’t work for us.
It has me wondering if at some point you have to just stop with “good enough” instead of constantly striving for “just right”.
How do you know when it’s time to be happy with good enough and quit searching?
The whole Language arts spectrum is my nemesis. I’m perfectly happy with the “good enough” we have going everywhere else. And I’m fairly happy with my elementary kids programs but when it comes to my 7th grader well….. I could cry big fat tears of frustration over his LA stuff. I’ve gone from boring to too easy to inadequate to too hard. WHAT IS THE ANSWER?? Whew… sorry to scream, I feel better now .
I suppose I’ll just keep trucking along until I stumble upon the perfect program… or at least one that’s “good enough”.

shhhh... but I think the chart is working!

The Naughty Spot.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. We have reached a point where I simply cannot teach unless I contain the beast we lovingly call naughtybelle. She likes to do everything she can to bother us during school.. or if we thwart her efforts there she will wander the house looking for naughty things to do... think she likes to be in the spotlight?

So comes the naughty spot out of pure necessity to remain sane. I've never had to discipline an 18 month old before... I could always distract and deter. Not her she will not be distracted from her plight. So I've had to start putting her in here for 60 seconds when she won't stop shoving everyone's things off the school table, or using the stool to steal things, or...well you get the idea. It's not long but it's very effective... I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I've won... but I know better. ;)

It's a darn good thing she's so cute because she's sure given me a run for my money just when I thought I was starting to figure this parenting thing out!

The sun's power

We are studying astronomy this year in science. Last weeks chapter was on the sun. For one of the experiments you are supposed to take a chocolate bar outside and melt it with a magnifying glass with the sun.
Well Peyton thought that was a little boring… so I taught him to light leaves on fire… as a side note, I think I need more supervision if I think teaching Peyton to light fires is a good idea, but at the moment it seemed like it was.
That they thought was great fun. We sat outside for a good while burning holes in leaves. Much to Peyton’s dismay (and my relief) he was unable to start any true fires.

Halloween

We didn’t do a lot for Halloween this year. I just frankly wasn’t that into it.
We did paint pumpkins though. After last years pumpkin seed fiasco I decided carving just wasn’t an option. ( For those who don’t know Weylin, Peyton and I got a little overzealous and were throwing the guts/seeds at each other. In true Peyton fashion he took it one step farther and threw the whole bowl of guts.. all over the mini blinds, walls, chairs, table.. everywhere. It took a long time to clean lol)

Anyways, this year we painted. The kids had fun though. Avery was the most careful with hers, she took twice as long as anyone else to do hers.



Peyton got carried away and ended up with a blob and had to wash his and start over, he ended up with polka dots.


Amelia drew a whole little scene on her pumpkin complete with a sky and grass.


Audrey made hers a nice happy pumpkin.


Anna went with the blob mentality ;).

We also went to quite a few parties. We had one for the homeschool group that was a lot of fun. Amelia tied with another girl for first place in a contest to see who could go the longest without laughing while people tried to make you laugh... she has nerves of steel apparently. Then the girls got to wear their costumes to dance which Avery thinks they should always do now.
The last party was the ward party where we had chili and did trunk or treat.
Halloween night we fed the missionaries and had Brea and her kids over to go trick or treating. I think they all had fun in spite of my lack of enthusiasm this year. And I am thankful to say the candy is just about gone.... thank goodness.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

A desperate attempt to simplify my life

Why is it things meant to simplify my life always are so complicated to set up? I spent an embarrassingly large chunk of my day today setting up this new chore/job system for the kids.

I searched online for pictures to represent each personal hygiene/ chore/ school subject I need the kids to accomplish. Then I printed them all out and cut them out. I attached each picture to a color coded card.

Orange for morning jobs… get dressed, brush teeth ect., Blue for night jobs, Green for Daily chores, Red for weekly chores, and yellow for school subjects that need done.

Each child has a colored section on the rainbow pocket chart. The day starts with their morning items on their top row, then I switch it to school, then night items.

The second row is for chores. Daily chores stay up well… daily and I’ll add the weekly chores as they need done.

Once an item has been completed the card is turned around so the back is facing out and I know that is done.

I made records for each child I will print out weekly and will keep track of what they get accomplished every day for allowance purposes and accountability.

I’m praying this works because I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of can’t get it all done. Having the kids more responsible for themselves would change my life right now.

In other news I thought Amelia's mash potato sculpture deserved some recognition as well. It's a monkey if you can't tell. ;)