Tuesday: bored

I was a bit bored today.

The students of the lab I'm teaching this summer didn't finish their work early, as I was hoping.  (I hope every year.  Sometimes one or two finish something early, but never enough for me to nicely space everything out.)  So I'll have a lot of grading to do tomorrow when I could have been doing some today.  Oh well.

The kitchen got cleaned and the laundry was already done.  I worked on cleaning the guest room, which has gone from a disaster to a controlled mess.  I could have started a few other cleaning projects, but 1)I'm never really sure how long I'll have until a child needs me and 2) grading tomorrow so I didn't want to get into something and 3) I didn't want to.

Isaac's class had a "eat a snack and listen to a story".  I let Joshua join in while I went for a quick bike ride in the cold.  I'm not sure Joshua enjoyed it because I didn't change the video format and Ben didn't realize it was in a grid format.  Oh well.

Monday: no pictures

Well, the phone isn't showing me today's pictures, so ...I don't remember what happened today.

Um, I told Joshua to decorate a box to put food in for Community Action House and he decorated the inside, which was unexpected.

I got groceries.

Joshua's lego challenge (from me) was a dinosaur or something that was only blue.  He came up with a story about an octopus making a huge wave and the villagers going in their boat to fight it.

Friday: Lego games

For Joshua's Lego challenge today, I told him to make Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders.  He made a combo game.  Isaac really wanted one too, so I told him Outfoxed or Blokus. 

Joshua made a combo Candy Land/Chutes and Ladders game.  It was playing along about like those games go, and I asked him how one is supposed to win.  It turns out that instead of choosing one (or two or three or four) of the color pieces you could choose zero pieces which would trigger a special piece being put into your hand and that would bring you to the end.

Isaac made a pretty close rendition of Outfoxed, but added a volcano.  The volcano might go off every round or it might not, depending on how Isaac was feeling.  If lava hit you you zoomed around the board like a crazy rock and ended up in a new place.  As add-ons go, it wasn't too bad and could be used strategically.

Thursday:

For "Mom's choice" today we finally got out the robot that had been languishing, partly put together.  It turns out that Joshua had gotten stuck on a hard step.  (It was hard.  The instructions were not clear and it was a technic join, which he doesn't like.)

Anyway, we got about half way through it before school was done.  He kept going on his own and finished.  He was super excited about it and I'm glad we got it back out!  I wish I had realized it was such a small stumbling block, because we could have restarted it a while ago.

Wednesday: Joshua

Let's see, today Joshua made an alien ship.

For art we've been tracing assorted objects, then he'll color them, cut them out, and send them.  Today was Grey Bear.  It got put on the wall by my bed.

Yesterday was Horizon.  I was really hoping to trace him in the classic 'cat walking pose' but he would have none of it.  So he ended up in a lounging pose.

The day before that was a hug.  It got sent to Scarlet and Autumn.

Monday: Psalm 23, chalk smilies

We've been working on Psalm 23 during school.  Joshua is a little farther behind, but Isaac was able to do the whole thing today.


During our walk I gave the boys chalk and told them to draw smilies at the end of all the driveways.  It worked really well.

Sunday: life skills

Today's life skill was pushing a stroller.  It was also "let's not play the line game again."  Joshua was really too short to make it work well, but he tried really hard.

I've also started something new with my freezer meals.  I'm labeling them on the side instead of the top.  While not a radical change, it makes it much easier to tell what I have in the freezer!

Oh!  Last night they stayed up until 2am.  Around 1am Joshua lost it a little bit, but their plan was to watch a show in bed.  I heard them talking a little bit around 2am, so he must not have fallen asleep.   Both boys did well today even though they were short on sleep.