Scatterbrained!

I have to admit, trying to run a business, watching Littles, wedding planning, blogging, it is a whole lot to handle!

 

Despite everything else going on in our lives though, I do not intend to put this blog (or my others) on the back burner. At least not yet. As it stands right now I have Littles from almost sun up to past sun down. My body tends to become exhausted from this.

 

 

We have had quite a few new things go on around here since my last post. We had roommates prior to two weeks ago so our house was rather crowded. Once they moved out though, I had my spare room back. This means that we now have a playroom. A playroom that ISN'T my front room.

 

Up until now we had toy shelves along our hallway and SO many toys in the front room. There was A LOT of clutter! I am so happy to have one room (aside from Gage's room of course) Dedicated to the mess and clutter now. A place where I can just shut the door on the mess when I don't want to look at it.

 

I've also set up our homeschooling station in this room. Gage's desk as well as all of our resources are in here.

 

This last weekend after having finished up our playroom we went to some yard sales in search of wedding decorations. I hit the jackpot though when I came across a sale by a woman who had just closed down her preschool. I paid $18 and scored some great new additions to our room. The three colored chairs in the picture below cost me $2 each. The table in the middle was actually a water wheel attachment for a water structure as you can see though, I turned it into a little reading station. It cost me $5. I am quite proud of that to be honest! I also got a bunch of bucket/tubs for storing toys in at a quarter a piece.

 



 

Now onto the reason people really read this blog!

 

Last week was quite a long week it seemed. One night I set up our bowling pins in the front room, made a 'foul line' from a strip of duct tape and let the boys go to it. I kept score using our overhead projector. The boys each got two rolls and once they were done they had to go over and count how many pins they had knocked down. Fun + learning!

 

Another really great part about the roommates having moved out is that I have the garage back. This means that we can use our light box again! This time I used the light box with the boys to talk about how things feel. At their ages we are past the sensory stage but I don't think it hurts to do activities in which they have to describe what they feel, see, smell etc. right?

 We used glass beads in one bin. The boys described these as hard and cold.

 In another bin I put different colored water beads. The boys described these as wet, cold and squishy!

 In this bin I put some of those reusable ice cubes. They were warm and kind of hard.

 Marbles, round and hard.

 After they had tired of playing with the bins we pulled out the shapes and they let their imaginations go to work.

 Science. Salt, ice, and a metal coffee can.

 Condensation. Describing how the can felt after 10, 20, and 30 minutes. The boys were fascinated by the 'ice' on the bottom of the can and how cold it got!.

 We also played around with coffee filters. First the boys used water colors to paint the coffee filters and then we made them into butterflies using pipe cleaners.

 After that we took markers and colored on them and I let the boys use a spray bottle to see what would happen to the colors when sprayed with water.

 The colors would run and mix together.

 One day last week was REALLY windy which made me wish we had a stash of kites laying around. We don't. So instead I pulled out some paper lunch sacks and the boys set to decorating them using markers, chalk, crayons, and stickers. After they finished coloring them I attached streamers and a piece of string.

 Wouldn't you know it, once we had finished up the kites and got outside, the wind had died down. The boys weren't deterred though, they ran up and down the sidewalk with their "kites" trailing behind them to get them to fly.

On occasion a nice big gust would come up and the boys would giggle so delighted to watch their bags dance around in it!

 

We did so many activities last week. I didn't even list all of them!

Which one is your favorite?