Messy Homestead

I have been saving toilet paper tubes for a while now, thinking that I am going to use them for some brilliant craft. Well, today I finally did! Judah loved them! He loved the whole process of making them (which to be honest, took a while). First we painted them, then we glued on the eyes, then we cut them, then we played with them! Octopus out of toilet paper tube We kept stacking them and saying "ah, there's an octopus on my head!" The Octopus round-up! While playing, I mentioned that "octo" means eight and that's why we call it an octopus, because it has eight legs. Simple introduction to language skills and critical thinking. So fun and easy!

I love the Summer Reading Program at our local library!  You get a prize when you sign up, and then you get prizes when you read 10 hours for the summer. You get a little sheet that helps you to track your hours and how much you read. This is our second summer doing it and it is so much fun! Especially now that Judah is finally starting to make a connection that how much he reads is linked to something. Last year had a hard time with figuring out how to document our reading, because we definitely don't always read for 15-minute chunks. So this summer I decided to use little rocks that you can find at the dollar store and we count each of those as five minutes. We each get a jar, and after we read for five minutes or however many minutes, we get to stick that number of rocks into the dark! It's nice because I get rocks for reading on my own, and for reading to the boys! From left to right: my jar (biggest because I read the most!), Judah's jar, David's jar, supply ...

I can't take any credit for this idea. Judah (age 3) was sitting at our island with some water and a crazy straw. I heard him saying "there's a J for Judah!" So I came over and saw that he was scribbling and I decided to write his name for him - which he loves to see! What a fun idea!