Summer 2016

I can't believe summertime is over!   I love my 3 boys and we have fun together.  It's different around here without the oldest, we miss him! 

As pre-k was ending I thought of a few things we should do every day and made this magnet board for us.  I thought that it would be fun.  I thought it would be a good way for our kindergartner to keep track of the days as I think he'd enjoyed that in pre-k.  I thought that the boys would make sure we did these things every day.  I thought that we'd do them at the beginning of every day and be done with them in an hour.  I was a bit silly to think all those things.  It wasn't a total bust, but they certainly didn't care if we completed everything.  At the beginning I made sure we did it all anyway, but by the end of the summer I didn't care either.  I suppose I underestimated how easy it is for them to just play all day.

Anyway, for reading our Kindergartner read Bob Books and did flash cards.  We read the Beginning Readers set 3 times.  I meant for us to read it twice and then go on to the next set, but then I asked him to pick one to read while I recorded him and he wanted to do them all so we had to read them all again.  Hopefully I'll share some of those recordings here someday.

Sometimes our Preschooler would do "reading" too, which meant letter flash cards - we're makings sure he recognizes all the lowercase letters.

I tried taking a few pictures during yoga, but I didn't want to be distracting and they think I need to be directly between them the entire time so it's hard for me to sneak back for a shot, haha.  It's lots of fun though!  They're impressive little yogis.
The bottom left picture is jumping jacks.
The bottom right picture makes me laugh every time.  In that pose they're "catching a ball" and in that picture our preschooler is turning in circles and singing "I caught it, I caught it, I caught it."



Teaching our oldest a little of beginner piano has been so much fun!  I've loved it!  We haven't really differentiated lesson vs practice as I just work with him a little every day.  These pictures aren't amazing quality but I love them because it was really sweet that he wanted to hug me for them, I love that he lets me teach him piano and that he loves our lessons!  (Even though he doesn't admit it.)
Every now and then our preschooler wants a turn on the piano after big brother, and tries to play what he'd heard being practiced.


Also this summer, they started "jobs".  At first I only made a chart for our oldest and our second didn't seem to notice or care until the end of the month = pay day!  So I made a chart for him too.  He has half the number of jobs, so can only earn half as much.  He also has to clear his place after meals and help pick up toys at clean up time, but he doesn't get extra money for those.  Filling his chart with stickers is surprisingly motivating.