Cardboard boxes and duct tape

This week started out pretty good. We had a typical Monday with an adventure walk (hunting ghosts and mud monsters this time), game time, story time, and of course, art time.

We made a cardboard box house for art time. We broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes that we had, picked a wall in our house, and started building a cardboard house by it. We taped the boxes together for walls and taped them to the wall and then used another box for the roof. Since we used diaper boxes, we did them with the picture side in so the kids could use their crayons after it was set up and decorate the outside walls. They seemed to have a good time building it, and it was a nice change from just coloring pictures. Of course, they had as much or more fun destroying it after it was all built and have since used the boxes as stair sleds.

One nice thing lately is that the kids seem to be getting the hang of this routine and will do their morning chores before I even need to ask them to do them. Sometimes it will still take them a while, and sometimes there's still some grumbling about it, but they're getting used to and anticipating the things they need to do.

I only wish I had started this earlier in the summer, since school starts for the 2 oldest next week. That will mean an adjustment in the daily schedule, but might make it easier in some ways, since I won't have to try to cater things to both the older and the younger kids.