1st Day of School

Here they are - all ready for 4th grade and Kindergarten:

We start school ridiculously early in Indiana. Our first day was August 12th so we have completed a week and a half at this point. So far, so good!

Adding Machine and Recorder

I think that in earlier posts I promised pictures/videos of Samuel using his adding machine and playing the recorder. Here are both things:

Books on CD

I don't know what you get to listen to on your car rides, but for the past few years, my kids have been stuck on the same music CDs that we listen to over and over (and over and over...) Then they get sick of a particular song and want to skip it, then they start arguing over which one of them gets to pick the music, etc... It is very frustrating.

Enter books on CD - we listened to them anytime we drove anywhere this summer and, with the exception of the person narrating the book, the car was silent. The kids really really liked listening to books this way. Lots of times when we would get home from somewhere and be pulling into the garage and a chapter wouldn't be finished yet, they would beg to keep listening just a little bit more. The only arguing I had to listen to was whose turn it was to swap the finished CD for the next one. As a bonus, we borrowed all of these from the library, so they didn't cost us a penny!

Here are some of the titles we listened to this summer:

We listened to the entire collection of the Wayside School books - Wayside School, Wayside School is Falling Down, and Sideways Stories from Wayside School. This collection was the #1 favorite of both kids. The whole collection was something like 9 hours long, so it got us through quite a bit of driving time this summer. Each chapter is about a different kid in a class at school that was built 30 stories high with 1 room on each floor. Very silly and fun.

The One and Only Ivan was a book I hadn't heard of before, but it is based off the true story of a gorilla who lived in a shopping mall and the people who freed him and took him to live at the zoo. This was really good, much more serious than Wayside School, but the kids liked it almost as much. We were really rooting for Ivan and little Ruby while we listened and were quite pleased with how the story ended.

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books were a favorite of mine when I was little, and I found they stand the test of time because the kids really enjoyed hearing about how Mrs. Piggle Wiggle cured kids of things like never wanting to go to bed, being the pickiest eater ever, talking back, etc...

The one we finished the most recently was My Father's Dragon, which is about a little boy rescuing a dragon from an island and the adventures they have along the way. Also a big hit. In fact, everything we listened to this summer was a hit. I will definitely be checking some more books on CD out of the library soon.

Summer Bucket List

Summer has drawn to a close around here (1st day of school pictures will be coming soon!) so I am putting away things like bathing suits, squirt guns, and this item below - our summer bucket list.

A few years ago when I still went to MOPS meetings, this was an idea that was introduced at one of the meetings. Write down lots of ideas of things to do over the summer. Each idea goes onto 1 clothespin. Then you put all of the clothespins together in a bucket. As your kids are whining and saying "we're so bored! what can we do?" over the summer, pick a clothespin out and do that activity. Then clip it to the top of the bucket when you are done. At the end of the summer, you have a nice way to remember all of the fun things you have done. We've done this for a few summers now and it really seems to help with making sure we get everything done that we want to do.

At the beginning of the summer, I sit down with the kids and we brainstorm things to go on the clothespins. If there was something we did last summer that we want to repeat, we just use that clothespin again. Each year we seem to add clothespins to our bucket as we think of new things to do. Here are the things we did this summer:

• play with playdough
• get $5 to spend at the Dollar Store
• go to the bank and deposit the $ from the allowance "save" jar that we have been saving all year
• make oobleck
• play in the sprinkler
• go to a movie
• kid interviews
• have a picnic
• 3D printing at the library
• build an indoor fort
• make a craft at Michael's
• play a board game
• water gun fight
• pick wildflowers
• go to the beach
• go to South Bend
• have Dairy Queen for dinner
• visit a splash pad
• make our own popsicles
• paint a picture
• go to garage sales
• make homemade pizza
• playdate with a friend
• sun art paper
• jigsaw puzzles
• water bottle craft
• visit the Little Free Library near our house
• read a book under a tree
• visit a new playground
• lollipop factory
• nature walk
• write a letter to cousins
• wash the car/bikes
• make s'mores
• Chuck E. Cheese
• concoctions
• water balloons
• have a lemonade stand
• mop the kitchen floor
• visit Fox Island
• Yes Day

I realize some of those sound more fun than others. (Honestly, though, the kids love to mop the kitchen floor. Probably because it involves getting water everywhere.) I try to have a variety of activities - some inside, some outside, some free, some that cost $, etc... We have other clothespins we never got to this summer (like "sleep in a tent in the backyard". Yeah, I'm okay with not getting to that one) so we will save those for next year. I really like having this bucket list. It helps us plan out our summer days so that everyone gets to do the things they want, and we all have fun.