Never a Dull Moment...: A day in the life, Random Style

Do your kids do crafts? Mine get obsessed with something, they do it non-stop for a few hours/days/weeks, and then it's over for a few months. Recently, Regan has been into making pom-poms (or as she calls them, puff balls). Landon, Regan and Turner have been busy making bracelets with the Rainbow Loom. It keeps them busy on those days when they have some spare time. Lately though, the weather here has been dreamy and they've been playing outside as much as possible. The crafts may have to be put on hold for a few months.

We are very eclectic readers. My kids really, really like fantasy. I think my favorite genre is probably historical fiction. I try to get my kids to read a good variety, and I may even grab some random poetry that catches my eye occasionally. Especially if the title has to do with underwear. Turner loves this. Think that it will translate into loving "real" poetry down the road? Maybe...

These are the two books I'm reading aloud to Regan and Turner right now. Frightful's Mountain is the third book in the My Side of the Mountain series. We are so loving it. Touching Spirit Bear was assigned to Turner by his teacher. She will be doing a book study with him once he finishes it. It is a good book with a lot of deep subjects and a lot of emotion. Turner is really enjoying it.

This is what Turner did for fun after school today. He found this old hundred number chart when I moved the furniture yesterday, and he decided to mark it. Green squares around prime numbers, blue around squares and red dots in the composite number squares. Yep. He loves his numbers.

This is Turner's practice chart. He plays the piano and the cello. He usually just practices just to get stickers on the chart, and just to pass off his songs. He doesn't need any other reward. But occasionally I up the ante a bit. This week I offered him a reward if he practices every single song every single day for seven days in a row. He even practiced over the weekend. He's really progressing. He even started a new piano song today. I will be recording his older piano song and posting it on Friday. Hopefully. Next step is teaching him to sing while he plays. If you are an expert at that, please give me tips. I am kind of out of my league here.

And here is Regan's practice chart. Hers is much shorter, but in reality, she has a lot more to practice. One of her squares is for review songs. The little booklet on the right has all of the review songs that she practiced today. She has a page for each day. So, in a perfect world (which I do not live in!), she will play every one of her Suzuki songs, books 1 through 4, each week. She has actually done it this week. She and Turner are both trying to earn their prize!

Here is our Family Home Evening Chart. It needs to be update, desperately. I am currently accepting applications of people volunteering to make me a new one. Ha. I just fill in for Hayden.

This is our task and chore chart. Each of the kids is color coded, so it doesn't even have their names on it. They know their color. They have the same daily "tasks" and a couple of daily chores, and then one different chore that they have each day of the week. Our chore chart system changes occasionally. I have been overwhelmed lately, and this is the best I could do. It's working great though, and the kids are staying on top of things. They just cross it off daily with a dry erase marker. They aren't allowed to have any screen time until all of their tasks and chores are complete. But they are sneaky, so it doesn't always work out like it's supposed to.

This is the behavior chart. It's patterned after the chart they use in several of my kids' classrooms at school. They have a clothes pin with their name on it and they move up and down the chart, according to the choices they make.

This is the best thing that ever happened to me. I hung hooks on the inside of my pantry door and everyone has their plastic water mug to hang on their hook. It keeps my counters a lot cleaner. Love. It.