Half Day Off

I don't think I ever really woke up today.  I am not sure if it was the beautiful day calling outside or just general tiredness but I wasn't able to really get in the swing of things all day.  We did accomplish some work this morning.  Ds12 did about six workboxes.  He is really struggling with math right now which is very out of character for him.  He is somewhat of an autistic savant in math.  He can do complicated problems in his head that most adults would struggle to figure out as fast on a calculator.  I use Saxon math with him which he has done very well with.  Right now however he is at a point where he is doing a lot of geometry and it is frustrating him because it is not as much computation.  I try to give him extra workboxes that deal with more hands on geometry concepts but it is still very hard for him. 

Here he is working with some cubes and task cards to figure out some volume problems.  I noticed after I took the  picture that he is biting his bottom lip because he is concentrating so hard.  He is not used to working so hard at math.  He did get to do some magnet activities also this morning which he loves so at least his morning was not completly difficult.  Here he is with his magnets looking much more relaxed.

Here is the kit he was playing with. It has an activity booklet inside with lots of fun projects.  We have a couple of magnet kits in our home and both of our boys enjoy them.

Ds11 and I sat down to work through his boxes this morning and I am really impressed that he is actually sitting down and staying there with me. As long as we start with playdough it seems he is willing to try at his other tasks.  It was kind of funny this morning though as I thought I had this great activity for him to work on his small motor and concentration.  We have this porcupine game with quills.  Here is a picture of it.

I wanted him to take out the quills and put them one by one in the creamer bottle.  My thoughts on this were the quills are fairly long and spaced apart so he couldn't grab them all at once which he likes to do and also the opening to the creamer container is small so he would have to do one at a time and watch his fingers while he was doing it.  However about two quills into the activity he picked up the porcupine and all the quills fell out.  Oops!  I didn't anticipate that so now I will have to glue the porcupine to the bottom of the box.  He is always keeping me on my toes!

Yesterday I recieved an email from Compassion International announcing their new website for kids.  It is www.questforcompassion.org/learn . Ds12 was excited about this as he has a big heart for missons so after lunch he went on and completed the section on El Salvador.  I don't know if he will ever reach the point with his autism but I think he would really do well to be involved in missons somehow when he grows up. 

After the beautiful day calling through the windows to us all morning we went out and played for awhile this afternoon. 

Look at all that sunshine.  Who could say no to that?  I would like to show you a picture of my other son outside also but my camera was having an attitude.  It is working fine now but it locked up and wouldn't even let me turn it off outside.  Very confusing!

This evening me laziness continued on and I just couldn't get into a cooking mood.  So my wonderful husband went and got us KFC.  My husband and sons watched a show on NFL network after that while I took a nice long shower.  Ds12 is really enjoying having NFL network.  We haven't had cable television for about seven years and we just got SkyAngel a couple of weeks ago.  Initially I was concerned that the television would become the center of attention around here but it really has been working out okay so far.  We told ds12 he could pick out about four hours a week to watch and he has been very good about selecting what is important to him mainly football and christian music.  My husband and I have done very well also and I don't feel that it is on more than about an hour a day.  DS11 has become quite taken with a show on Discovery Kids which comes on right around lunch.  I am not sure what the name of the show is but it has a bear that raps songs about science.  He loves music!

Tonight my husband brought in from outside the treadmill that ds12 is getting from his grandparents for his birthday.  His room is not very big.  Did I mention we live in military housing?  Those of you who do will understand but for the rest of you I can only say it an orginizational challenge.  Anyways something in his room had to come out for his treadmill to go in.  We took his keyboard out since he never touches it.  I put it on the table because frankly I am not sure where else to put it now.  Ds11 was in heaven about it all however.  He has always had a special connection to music.  He can't talk but when he was only about three he could hum a song that he had heard on the television.  He gravites towards anything with music and so when he saw that keyboard he sat right down.  He can't have one in his room because he is too rough with things for that but maybe we will have to try and find a place in the living room where we can keep an eye on him while he plays with it.  He just loves it.

It was really sweet to watch. 

Well, I should be going to bed now.  Y'all have a good night! 

Simple Woman Daybook

For today (April 29, 2009)

Outside my window: Glorious sunshine and lots of green

I am thinking: my boys are growing up way too fast!

From the learning rooms:  lots of trees and playdough

I am thankful for: strong coffee and lots of books

From the kitchen: Honey-Mustard Pork Scallopini, rice, and peas

I am wearing: jeans, museum tee shirt, and oversized "frumpy" sweater

I am reading: Tray Tasking by Victoria Folds (looking for ideas for workboxes for youngest son)

I am hoping: to do some baking this weekend

I am creating:  tree sorting center for eldest son

I am praying:  for our country

Around the house: I am looking at my messy kitchen and thinking maybe this is better left unanswered

One of my favorite things: taking walks with my family

A few plans for the rest of the week:  get outside

Here is a picture I am sharing with you:

Brotherly Love!

Trees Please!

We are studying about trees this week.  The reason we are doing trees this week is that last week we focused on ecology all week because of Earth Day and therefore we thought we would move on to Arbor Day which was actually last week also but we are doing this week.  Confused? Me too!

Anyhow, I thought I would share a little bit about what we have done so far.  Yesterday I pulled out a toy we have had for quite some time but we rarely use.  That's one of the reasons I think I like workboxes.  They inspire me to dig through all the resources I would otherwise forget about.  I pulled out our long lost little apple tree yesterday though and my son really enjoyed putting it together (as he worked on his fine motor skills) and using his plastic animals to tell great stories.  Here are some pictures:

Yesterday we also did part of the tree section out of Contenders for the Faith and learned how to tell the difference between decidous and coniferous trees.  Then in the last box of the day I put some baggies to collect leaves and a camera to take pictures of the  trees we collected them from.  We then went on a walk and collected our tree samples.  So today I put the leaves, pictures, and the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Trees in a box so that he could identify the trees and make a poster to display his results.  Here are some pictures:

Tomorrow we will doing tree bark rubbings and learning about counting tree rings.  We are enjoying it.  I always was a bit of a tree hugger!

Monday's Musings

This morning was amazing!  Ds11 came and sat down with me at the table all on his own to work.  He sat with me for over an hour without even attempting to walk away.  He had perfect focus.  It was so great!  He  just loves playdough right now so we worked with that for quite a while.  He was bit on his right hand by a spider back in November and it has taken a very long time to completely heal.  Ever since then he has had a hard time with his hands. He is getting a lot better though so we are working a lot on anything that will increase his hand strength and get his fine motor coordination back to where it was before the bite.  I have seen major improvements lately and am extremely optimistic.  I do know he is now favoring his left hand though when he previously favored his right.  I am interested to see if he switches back when we get his right hand strong again. 

We did a half day of school today because after lunch we took our puppy girl to the vet for some shots and basic doggy stuff.  We took her to Banfield Pet Hospital which is inside of PetSmart.  Ds12 and I took her into her appointment while my husband walked ds11 around in his special needs stroller.  It went very well and our little Lucy is healthy and happy.  I was proud of ds12 as he was a lot of help keeping her calm during her shots and he also asked the vet some great questions about what she was doing with Lucy.  He was very mature about it all.  After the vet we walked through PetSmart and we got Miss Lucy another toy.  She is a bit spoiled!   Lucy was very interested in PetSmart.  I think she thought she had arrived in doggy heaven.  Her new toy is adorable.  It is a little tire with a rope going through it.  Unfortunately when we played in the house with it the tire left black scuff marks all over the wood floors.  It will now be an outside toy.  She does like it a bunch though.

Other than that I guess it has been an uneventful night.  I am waiting for ds11 to fall asleep as usual.  I am going to write a letter to our compassion child in India when I am done typing this blog.  We really need to get a family photo so we can send her that also.  I will probably set up boxes for tomorrow and take a look at some websites on trees we can explore this week.  I guess that is all for now.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

Chicken Pot Pie

Tonight I made chicken pot pie for dinner and I am feeling rather warm and fuzzy about it all.  I think because I have never made it before and it was a lot of work and it actually turned out very well is why I am really impressed about it all.  I started doing weekly menu planning a while ago and have been really enjoying making a lot of things I haven't made before.  It is a good challenge for me to see what I am able to do in the kitchen.  My pot pie came out of one of my favorite cookbooks.  It is called the Big Book of Casseroles.  I am a lover of comfort foods and so I tend to seek out those kind of recipes.  This week my hubby did most of the menu planning.  I gave him a cookbook and let him write down what he wanted so it should be lots of fun to try some more new things.  Now if I could just find time to squeeze in more baking!

Monday Workboxes

The following are ds12's workboxes for Monday:

1.  devotions (Keys for Kids)

2. Prayer time with mom using Operation World.  We will be praying for Egypt.  Also Bible lesson from Bob Jones Bible Grade 6

3. 30 minutes of Rosetta Stone Latin

4.Go to Press grammar game from Learning Resources

5. Saxon Math 7/6 lesson on parellograms

6. 30 minutes of quiet time listening to the audio book Kingdom's Edge

7. section on trees from Contenders for the Faith

8. read from Castle by David Macaulay and do lapbook section on different parts of a castle

9. copywork Matthew 28: 16-17

10. using 10 preposition picture cards from LDA he will write a sentence with a prepostional phrase from each card and then diagram his sentences

11. lesson from Spectrum reading grade 6

12. Go outside and collect leaves from five trees and take pictures of the same trees.  We are going to use these later to identify the names of the trees.

The following are ds11's workboxes.  He just started workboxes last week and is severely autistic so he only does about four to six boxes a day.

1. playdough

2.  tracing lines of worksheet in document protector with dry erase marker

3. putting quills in porcupine game/ toy

4. rice box with color sorting bears

5. snack

 

A Heavy Heart

Well, here I am again up way too late waiting for ds11 to fall asleep.  Today went by very fast as weekend days always do.  I am in a bit of a down mood tonight after watching Michael Farris on Foxnews with Huckabee.  I am very concerned about  the UN Convention on Rights of a Child treaty.  I know God is in control and he is watching over our family but I am alarmed at what the impact of this treaty would be on ours and  so many other families.  It seems to strip away most of the rights parents have to raise their children in the way they seem fit.  It makes me sick to think that the nation my husband and so many other men and women work so hard to defend has come to this point. 

 I pray, Lord that you will look over our families and perserve our right to raise the children you have entrusted us with in the ways of your word.  My heart is heavy and my spirit troubled, Lord.  Please help our country to make decisions that will honor you.  

If you missed the program tonight or if you are interested in the CRC treaty here are some links:

  http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?fa=News.View&News_id=83e514a1-da30-4fd9-8455-e2e9775341e6

http://www.parentalrights.org/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2220/pub_detail.asp

https://www.hslda.org/docs/news/HSLDA_Understanding_UNCRC_Issue_Paper.pdf

 

Catching Up

We have been so busy this week that I haven't had any time to blog so I am going to try to catch everybody up tonight.  

Since Earth Day was this week we spent some time trying to focus on a biblical view of stewardship of the earth.  I took the section on ecology out of our Contenders for the Faith book and retyped it out into worksheet form so that it was easier for ds12 to read and learn from.  We have only recently bought the Contenders book but I already see such enormous potential in it.  We read a couple of other books on recycling also.  The one book that really impressed me was Young Discoverers Garbage and Recycling by Sally Morgan and Rosie Farlow.  It was factual, interesting to read, wonderfully illustrated, and has a ton of  activities to try at home.  This week we also used the recycling center activity that I had posted about earlier and I am happy to say my son had a very good time "sorting the garbage".  We were able to make two projects this week out of recycled materials.  The first was this pinwheel.

My son enjoys holding this in front of the fan in his room and making it spin fast. 

The second project we did was a recycled can robot and I thought he turned out very cute.

He was a lot more work than I had intended but we made it through and I am super proud of my son on this one because it required a lot of fine motor skill to screw in all the little screws.  I know that was very tasking for him but he still gave it his all. 

The other neat thing we did for Earth Day was a game I printed out from somewhere and I really wish I could share where but I don't remember.  It was fun though even though I lost every time!   Here is a picture of it.

We continue to work on our Middle Ages lapbook.  We are reading about castles and studying all the functions of the different parts of a castle and all the work that went into building them.  I have to be honest and say I am finding it a lot more intersting than Joan of Arc last week. 

Ds11 has been doing well with working at the table with me this week.  We have been using a lot of sensory activities as I am trying to keep him with me and he gravitates towards anything sensory.  We worked with sorting colored bears dug out of our rice box.  He hasn't used a rice box in quite a while and it was interesting to note just how fast his tactile defensiveness returns.  He would only use the tips of his fingers at first but after a while he was a lot more comfortable with it.   Here is a picture of him trying to figure it out.

He and I also worked with playdough for quite some time and he seemed to enjoy that a lot also.  I am going to try to make some chocolate playdough tomorrow because both of them seem to enjoy homemade dough especially if it has a good scent.  Ds12 also did some fine motor work with Playdough this week.  I found out that there are these great little projects you can make with just regular cans of playdough on their website.  Here is the link:  http://www.hasbro.com/playdoh/en_US/FreshIdeas.cfm

If you click on the projects they give you step by step instructions with pictures so I printed the pictures and instructions for the penguin out and made them into individual cards and laminated them.  I put the cards and the needed playdough in a workbox and he had a great time.  He gets very overwhelmed if he just sees the finished product and is expected to replicate it but he did a great job when it was broken down into steps.  I think we will be trying a bunch of these.  Here is his penguin.

The weather here has been beautiful pretty much all week so we have spent a bunch of time outside.  Spring in North Carolina is wonderful.  The tempertures are in the upper 70s to mid 80s and the humidity is a lot lower than in the summer.  We spent a bunch of time on the trampoline and have been able to go for family walks almost every night this week.  I LOVE to go for walks!   Here are some pictures of my favorite people (and puppy) outside this week.

On thursday we watched the Dove Awards together.  This was exciting for us as we are really into christian music and we just got SkyAngel this week so we were able to watch it for the first time.  I was really touched by Steven Curtis Chapman singing Cinderella. After all  their family has been through this year it has been so touching to see him, Marybeth, and their two sons.  They are such an amazing family with such a strong faith. 

One of the best things to happen this week was that we finally purchased a chest freezer.  I have been wanting one for a while as the refridgerator we have has a tiny freezer and we are constantly struggling to fit everything in it and also I feel we can save some money by being able to buy a bunch of meat when it is on sale.  I have been watching for a used one but everytime I see one it is already sold.  The other day I received an email from Sears saying they were having a sale and we decided to go with a new one.  My husband went and picked it up on Thursday.  He also went out on Friday and bought a bunch of ice cream bars and called it his treasure chest.  Sometimes he is too cute.  I enjoyed being able to go grocery shopping this week without having to think about what would fit in the freezer.  I think we are going to find it very useful.

Tomorrow it supposed to be in the mid 80s so we are going to put out the swimming pool for our boys.  We are probably going to have to figure out how to keep puppy girl out as she doesn't like to miss out on the fun.  I also would like to get some baking done esp. now that I can freeze some cookies too.  I also have to work on some school stuff.  We are going to be doing the tree section out of Contenders for the Faith because Friday was Arbor Day and I thought it would be fitting.  I have already typed out the lesson but I have some other activities planned out that I will need to prepare.  I am having a much easier time making things for school now that I am getting the hang of Word2007.  

Well, I am going to get going to bed now.  I think there was more I wanted to type but I am tired and so I will save the rest for tommorrow. 

Have a blessed day!

 

Weekends are Just too Short

Another weekend is gone by.  They go way too quickly!  It seems I am forever caught in the mental battle of all the things I want to accomplish on the weekend that I didn't get done during the week and spending time with my family.  If I press too hard to accomplish my tasks I feel like I have deprived my family of my time.  However, if I don't accomplish the things I need to get done I spend the rest of the week two steps behind.  Either way I feel like I lose.  I need to spend some time analyzing how to better structure my time.  I also need to spend more time praying about it and trusting that God will provide the time to do those things that are truly important.  I think sometimes I get wrapped up in my priorities and forget about His.  Need to work on that too!

Other than moving by  way too quickly I think our weekend was fairly happy.  On Saturday morning I did my menu planning for the week.  I tried to involve my husband in this as I like to cook meals that are enjoyable for him.  We sat together at the dining room table with my menu planner, an array of cookbooks, and some cooking magazines.  He was however completely engrossed in pictures and recipes for chocolate cake and other goodies.  He really never contributed to the meal planning but it was a lot of fun anyway.  Saturday afternoon I went grocery shopping.  I took a long time to shop and enjoyed being alone out of the house for awhile.  I have come to two realizations about shopping without my children.  The first one is that my cart gets packed much neater as I shop.  The second thing that I have noticed is that I also buy more and consequently spend more.  I think this is due in part to the better packed shopping cart so I actually have more room and also I have more time to look at things I don't normally buy. 

After I got home and put away the groceries we played outside for quite awhile.  We inflated our Little Tikes inflatable bounce for ds11 which he enjoyed a whole bunch.  Ds12 took our dog on the trampoline and had a fun time.  She is the easiest going dog as long as she is getting attention I think she would go about anywhere.  We had such beautiful weather all weekend so it was nice to be out.

This morning my wonderful hubby made omelets and bacon for breakfast which was delicious as always.  My husband cooks two things very well.  They are the best pumpkin pie in the world and his very  very tasty omelets. 

After lunch today we went to Kmart to get some more recycling bins.  We needed some because ours is always overflowing but also because this week we are studying about ecology and I thought as part of that we could learn to sort our recyclables.  When we got home we played outside.  Ds12 played with the neighbor kids and I worked with ds11 on riding the scooter he got for Christmas.  He has a scooter board in the house (the kind you sit on and scoot around) and he uses it like a skateboard.  He has the most amazing balance!  He is starting to catch on to  his scooter outside.  I think he is going to love it when he gets the hang of it. After that we went for a nice family walk.  Our puppy is crazy about squirrels lately so my husband had to walk her part  of the way because ds12 isn't strong enough to hold her when she decides to pursue a squirrel and he has gotten knocked over a couple of times.

As for tonight I have been getting our workboxes for tomorrow ready.  So here is what will be in our workboxes tomorrow.

ds12's boxes

1. devotions from Keys for Kids

2.Bible (Bob Jones) Unit 6 lesson 3  and prayer (we are praying from Operation World and tomorrow is Cuba)

3. 20 minutes of Rosetta Stone Latin

4.  Cereal box nutrition label comparison activity

5. Saxon Math 65 lesson 70 reducing fractions before multiplying

6.  30 minutes of  quiet time listening to Jonathan Park audio

7. read ecology section from Contenders for the Faith

8. Latina Christiana flash cards with mom and play Latin sayings hangman

9.  Finish Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley and lapbook about it

10.  copywork Luke 24: 3-4

11. Spectrum reading grade 6 pages 112- 113

12. Recycling sorting center

ds11 is starting with 6 boxes

1. tracing lines using a sheet inside of a sheet protector and tracing with dry erase

2.  playdough

3.  putting poker chips into a slit in a frosting container

4.  more line tracing

5.  pegs into foam pegboard

6.  Snack (chexmix)

We need to start slow and with a lot of success and encouragement.  I am also going to do some sensory activities with him and dried rice. 

It should be a good day tomorrow. Ds12 is really looking forward to studying about recycling.  We are even going to make a robot out of an aluminum can.  I found the kit on Amazon.  Here is the link if anyone is interested.  http://www.amazon.com/Tin-Can-Robot-Science-Kit/dp/B0014WO96Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1240200417&sr=8-1

He looks like he will be pretty cute when he is done.  Here is a picture.  I will post a picture of ours when we complete it.

I need to go fold laundry now and get some sleep.  I hope you have a blessed week! TTFN!

Back on Track

Today was a nice day.  First we had Easter weekend, Monday was our field trip, and yesterday was just way off but today we are back to normal.  Okay so we don't really do "normal" here but at least as close as we get.  Our morning went pretty smoothly.  Ds12 got an A+ on his Bible test even though he hasn't reviewed since last Thursday.  My husband was able to join us briefly this morning also for a game of Not in My Atlas which was a lot of fun.  It is a game from Rand McNally Flashcards I purchased last year from Kmart.

They look like this and cost about 3 dollars.  They are lots of fun.

This afternoon we worked on reading a book about Joan of Arc which we will finish tommorrow and then lapbook about it.  We also learned about nutrition and calculated the amount of calories we need in a day.  We had to weigh ourselves to do this.  My oldest is 12 years old and 79 pounds while my youngest is 11 years old and 105 pounds and at least 2 inches taller than his brother.  Our oldest was born premature because I had eclampsia.  He was 3 lbs then and just seems to be destined to be little.  Our youngest is severely autistic and only eats a very limited variety of food and still seems to grow like a weed.  Most of the time people think our youngest is the older one and vice versa.

Yesterday the Contenders for the Faith book I had ordered came.  Both my husband and I looked through it and are very impressed with it.  I look forward to incorporating it into our workboxes.  I am going to start next week when we do Earth Day and do the ecology section in the book.  I think it will help give us a biblical prospective on it.  Then after that I think we will do the trees section for Arbor Day.  Maybe after that we will do the tool section just because my husband seemed pretty interested in that.  Maybe it will lead into some good father and son time.

This evening we ordered pizza for dinner.  We don't eat fast food anymore so when we order pizza about once a month it is pretty exciting.  We have a very low delight level here.  My darling husband even ordered veggie pizza on a wheat crust for me which goes against everything he believes a pizza should be.  What a guy!

After pizza we watched some Little House on the Prairie.  We have the first five seasons on DVD.  We really love Little House.  Ds11 sat with us while we watched and after a little while even ds12 came out and watched too.  It was nice family time. 

Now it is late and I am the only one still up.  After being on an off schedule the last couple of months with our youngest my sleep is messed up and even when he falls asleep I am still wide awake.  How sad is that!   I guess I will finish folding the laundry and finish the vocabulary word list for upcoming Earth/ Arbor Day units and see if I can fall asleep. 

Have a great night!

Puppy Girl

Just wanted to show off a couple of cute pictures my husband took the other day of our little Lucy.

She is just too cute!  We have had her for about a month now.  She is really spoiled too!  We love her to pieces.

Nice Long Weekend

Tomorrow is Tuesday and back to school for us.  We had a lovely four day weekend.  Today we went to visit a therapeutic horseback riding farm with our special needs homeschool group.  My husband had the day off so we were able to go as a family.  This was nice for me because he could watch one child and I could watch the other.  It can be an exhausting task to try and keep tabs on two autistic children in public at the same time.  Both of our boys seemed to have enjoyed themselves.  Ds12 has recently started to overcome an incredible fear of dogs and just about every other animal so when we got out of the car and the first thing I saw was about 4 dogs running around I was a little nervous.  He did great with them though and was particularly fond of one black dog with three legs.  I am not quite sure why but he has talked about that dog for the rest of the day.  He also did well with the horses even though he has no interest in actually riding one at this point.  He was able to brush a pony and attempted to use a hoof pick with the assistance of the very nice lady that was helping him.  Ds11 did very well also.  There were quite a few people there so I think he was a bit overwhelmed by that but he didn't get upset.  He didn't ride or interact with the horses much but he didn't seem scared either so that was an encouraging sign.  I think he would really enjoy riding therapy if we could get him on the horse.  He is a very sensory orientated child and I think he would love the rhythm of horseback riding.  I did speak to the lady there and she did say that they have never had a child that didn't eventually end up riding and the longest it has ever taken a child to get on the horse was six weeks.  I am hoping we can find the time to give it a try with him.  We also had an Easter egg hunt there.  It is funny because ds11 was with my husband and I and we pointed to the eggs he should pick up and put in his basket.  He understands this process because when he makes a mess we point and say pick it up.  Therefore he is looking at us like I didn't mess up these eggs so why are you making me pick them up.  He did pick them up but I think he was pretty confused about it all.  Here are the pictures of our field trip:

 

Shortly after we got home my friend called and I was able to talk to her for awhile which was great.  She, her husband, and their little girl were our next door neighbors but her husband deployed back in September and she decided to go stay with family in Texas while he was gone but he will be coming home next month so they will be coming here for his homecoming which is exciting.  We got to be pretty close when my husband was deployed last year.  We would go for walks together almost every day and she would bring her little girl who just turned two over to play.  My twelve year old just loves little kids and had such a great time trying to entertain her.  We have kept in touch while she has been in Texas and I hope I have been half the encouragement to her during their deployment as she was to me during ours.  I am so excited about seeing them again and I am really hoping things work out for them to move back here.  Currently her husband has orders to go somewhere else but she would really like to come back here.  I guess we will see what God has in store for their lives. 

As for the rest of the day I went to the grocery store with ds12 and then made dinner.  We had steak and home fries.  Not too gourmet but it was good.  Ds11 was super tired after such an exciting day so he was asleep by 10:30.  Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!  I am going to go to bed myself after this.  I thought about staying up and working on some ideas for school for Earth Day but I think I am going to seize the opportunity to get a good night sleep.  I did want to share one last thing though.  This is a center activity I created the other day for Earth Day.  It involves sorting different pictures of recyclables into categories. I am getting a lot better at Microsoft Word so I thought I would show it off.

 

The pictures of the objects are in the pockets already and I am wishing I had taken a separate picture of them but there are about 5 pictures per pocket.  I just wanted to show it off.

Have a great night!