Some long awaited music

Friday turned out to be a pretty good day as far as the scheduling thing went.

We did chores, then had a learning time before it was time to take D to the bus. After the bus, I needed some stuff from another store, so we stopped by there, then did lunch and some free time. After free time, we started some music time. It seems like it's been a while since we've done an actual music time. For music time, we finally got out the paper plate things we had made and did some different beats for those, then we practiced some of the songs that the older kids will be singing in church in a couple of weeks. We only had about a half hour until the bus was coming after we finished music time, so I let W and H color for a bit.

Unfortunately, I got sick around that time and threw up after we got back from the bus, so the rest of the day wasn't happening. I think we did still read a couple of books though. But then we had a weekend full of sick kids after that, even for W's birthday on Sunday.

And today I kept B home from school because he threw up in the night last night, so I'm thinking a good portion of today will probably be a bit shot. Hopefully we'll still get some of the stuff in though.

We be jammin'

So there's one thing about my scheduling that I've wanted to make sure I could do, and that's to be a little bit flexible. If I wanted to have us do something a little different, I didn't want to be so obsessive about the schedule that I wouldn't let us do something a little spontaneous. So far I think I've succeeded with that.

It really did seem different today having both B and D away at school. It's a little bittersweet. I have to admit that I really did like the quiet, especially when both H and A were taking naps at the same time, so W was the only one awake. Talk about a change. But at the same time, I know that it's not going to be very long before my house is always quiet because they've grown up and moved on, probably before I'm ready for it. And I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll worry about whether or not I've done enough to prepare them for what lies in store, if I've taught them enough or let them experience enough. That's part of the reason I decided to do this schedule. I wanted to be able to look back and know that at least I tried and did my best.

The morning went pretty fast between the time we dropped B off at the bus stop and it was time to take D to the bus. I had been hoping to be able to do our adventure walk down to the park again for a bit, but breakfast and chores and those things ended up taking up most of the time. We did get to do a bit of our adventure walk while we were taking D to the bus stop though. It's really not far at all to take him to the bus stop, but we walked a little further and played a bit.

After we dropped D off, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I only had 3 kids with me and go to the store. It's amazing how much easier it is to take 3 kids to the store than to take 5. Most of the time I wait until my husband is home from work and either send him with a list or leave him with the kids while I go. The former seems to be what happens more often lately, which is actually pretty nice, since neither of us like to go shopping. So my husband is pretty nice to be willing to do it for me, even after a long and hard day at work.

H and A slept through our afternoon bit of learning time, but that meant that W got to take more time having fun with it. Quite often for our learning time, we'll either do flash cards with letters or numbers on them or we'll go visit www.starfall.com and he'll do the letter blocks or other activities there. He was even singing one of their songs while he was taking a bath before bed tonight, so that was fun.

While H and A were asleep, I took the opportunity to do a one-on-one activity with W. We made strawberry jam together. Not really a big thing, but he seemed to have a good time putting strawberries in the blender and helping me pour the ingredients into their bowls. He also did a pretty good job of stirring when it needed to be stirred. He was pretty excited to be able to tell D that we made some jam, since we were almost out of some and it's D's favorite.

After B and D got home from school, we did our story time and then they had some free play before dinner and baths. It's amazing how much fun it can be sometimes to have my kids sitting around me while I'm reading a book to them, especially when they really get into the story and react at different parts. Simple joys.

So with all that I did, I also did a few loads of laundry, fixed my vacuum cleaner, and unclogged the kids' bathroom toilet by taking the toilet off and using the toilet auger to be able to get the 5 big blocks out of there that H had managed to flush down it. The latter there would have been a lot more impressive if I hadn't managed to crack the tank in the process (it's a long story, but we'll just say I was tightening a bolt and thought I had a lot more time before I had to start to worry about that than I actually did).

I love being a mom.

Not yet

Today was D's first real day of school, so adjustments will be starting. But today wasn't a normal day, since we left the house for a couple of hours to go visiting teaching after we dropped D off at the bus stop and watched it drive away.

We made taking D to the bus today as part of our adventure walk, so we did get that in. We also had a good learning time and a good story time. But the day was broken up by the 3 trips to the bus stop. It will be interesting to figure out the adjustments when we have a regular day, which should be tomorrow.

First day of school

So with the first day of school being today, we did have to do things a little differently from normal, although it really didn't throw things off too much. The first adjustment was pretty early though. Instead of getting up, eating breakfast, getting dressed, then doing chores, we got up, got dressed, walked B to the bus stop, then came home and ate breakfast and then did chores.

We did our adventure walk to the park today. D said he killed 300 werewolves on the way there. W just killed a few zombies. They're silly boys.

We did our learning time after the adventure walk, then took some time to make some sugar cookies before lunch. I had been promising the kids that we'd make cookies for a few days now, so we finally took the time to do it.

After free time it was time to take D over to the school for his kindergarten orientation. When we got back from that, we made frosting for our cookies, frosted them, then walked back over to the bus stop to pick up B after school.

The nice thing with when we typically do reading/story time is that it comes during the time the older kids would be doing their homework. And their homework usually consists of reading for 20 minutes. So they just do what they would have done anyway.

Wednesday will be a bigger adjustment, having D leave for school in the middle of the day, so we'll see how it goes after then.

Last day before school

It seems so strange that school is already starting on Tuesday, so I have to adjust the schedule a bit. But that's okay.

You may be wondering why there's no post for Friday. Yeah, Friday didn't work out so well. We actually spent a bit more time than usual cleaning since we had family staying overnight that night. And D got up and ate breakfast, then fell back asleep on the couch until noon. I figured if he was actually sleeping, he probably needed it, so I let him sleep. We did manage to get in a story time at least, so that was something.

Since today was the last day before school starts, I decided that we'd have another outing day and try to make it a pretty fun last day of summer break for them. We decided to go to the local fish and game nature center. There are some nice paths to walk and ponds and gardens. The kids really like the ponds, especially the viewing windows where they can see the fish in the water from the side and watch the fish swimming past them. And there are some pretty big fish in there, so it's fun to see. I do think their favorite part was when we walked by the river and they got to see a snake. Yes, D tried stepping on its tail to make it have to stay there so he could really see it, but it took off pretty fast. Those things can really move. W was a bit upset because he didn't get to see it and wanted us to go find it.

Our outing took more time than I thought it would, so by the time we got home and had some free play, it was time to go over to the school for their meet the teacher night. The day went pretty fast and it will be interesting to see how we end up working things out when school is in session.

Coloring themselves

It took a bit to get started this morning. It was another of those mornings where they just really didn't want to do their chores, so they'd get distracted cleaning up their toys by starting to play with them, so it took probably 2 hours for them to actually get everything cleaned up.

On today's adventure walk, they decided that we were hunting for thieves who would use robotic bees to look for things to steal. They would find little notes and information along the way, especially at any houses in our neighborhood that are up for sell, that would give tips on how to trap the thieves. And of course, they all had to take turns telling me what the notes said. Kids have really good imaginations sometimes.

I got an email today that talked about how a three year-old, almost four year-old (the age W is right now) can begin to understand that those lines and markings in books and papers actually form words and numbers. I'm thinking they're being conservative on their estimations, since when we do learning time, W is pretty good at knowing almost all his letters and can recognize numbers up to 100 already, although sometimes he needs some help remembering that 91 is ninety-one, not nine-one. And I really kind of assume that my kids are about average intellectually, so it's not some amazing thing that he can do that. B did teach himself how to read before he started Kindergarten though. But D still doesn't know quite all of the letters and he starts Kindergarten next week. So kids all develop and learn at different rates.

For art time today, I took some construction plan paper (I don't know if there's a formal term for it...they're just big sheets of paper that are about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide) and had each of the kids lie on them while I traced the outlines of their bodies and then let them color them. They all kept wanting me to come see how they colored theirs, and they all did things differently. Although if they saw something someone else was doing that they thought was pretty cool, they'd do that too. After D put 8 pairs of eyes on himself, the rest of them decided that maybe theirs needed eyes too. It was pretty funny. H keeps taking his picture and lying down by it. He thinks it's pretty cool to have a picture as big as he is. Since B and D are both a bit too long for the paper, they both bent their legs and came up with pictures that look like they're jumping. I was going to just let their legs be cut off, but they wanted to have their whole bodies on there, and that's what we came up with.

So another slow start, but an ultimately successful day.

Zoo day!

It's sad for me to realize that today was the last Wednesday Outing Day before my kids are back in school. This summer has gone by so quickly, especially these last few weeks. I've loved having all my kids around and am going to miss them while they're away at school. But at the same time, it's nice that they'll be back in school. There are times when they've been teasing their siblings or something along those lines that have made me wish they could have been at school then. It's just nice that more often than not, I've been glad to have them around.

So anyway, as you can tell from the title, we went to the zoo for our outing day. We go often enough to the zoo that we bought a zoo pass. Even with half of our kids being young enough to get in free, it still ends up saving us money to buy the zoo pass. And having it, we're more likely to go spend a day at the zoo and getting out to do something than if we didn't have it. My kids love going to the zoo, even though they've seen all the animals before. And since H is only 2, he's really fun to take. He gets so excited to see each kind of animal and tells all the people around him what he's seeing.

After we finished seeing all the animals at the zoo, we had a picnic on the big lawn area they have across the parking lot. Just simple sandwiches, chips, and string cheese, but the kids all said that was actually their favorite part of our outing. They got to play hide and seek tag around the trees and just had a good time. Yes, you read that right. Hide and seek tag. The seeker would have to tag the people after they were found to determine who was the next seeker. It was fun to watch them play.

After a little bit of free play time when we got home, we had a game time and then a longer story time. I always think it's a good thing when my kids want us to read more, so I'm willing to keep reading and not cut it short. I know I love reading and hope they'll develop that same love as they get older.