Today is…Monday
7:20am: Scripture Study. (sing, pray, read, sing, pray)
8-9am: Cleaning Time. (Mommy works on her chores. Giant works on his jobs. Ettin helps.)
This morning the house was a bit nippy. My boys wanted to wear shorts and tee-shirts:
And hoodies. And long socks.
Whatever 😉
Giant needed his job list. So he helped himself to my external brain. AKA my binder.
And he did a great job reading what was on his list and figuring out what he hadn’t done.
I find this list is a great re-director for cleaning time. If boys are acting crazy or whining at me while I’m busy cleaning, I ask Giant if he has done everything on his list (praising stuff he has done, encouraging him to work on the other stuff). So far it hasn’t become onerous, so I like it.
Here is Ettin sweeping.
As a certified Montessori preschool teacher, I know how to teach children to sweep properly. Its one of the first skills kids learn so they can be independent explorers of their world and still be able to clean up afterwards. I know how to turn sweeping into an orderly learning activity with several different steps the child should be able to master.
Thus, in my house, my goal is to sweep faster than Ettin can push my pile into the wall with his broom. Â Or under the bench. Or through his brother. Sometimes I step on his broom bristles just so I can get my pile together for the 6th time.
No, this is not perfect practice. This is my life.
9am: Gathering Time. (We greet each other, clap for good work, pray, study a gospel picture, and read the morning message)
We learn about Jesus and the fishermen, and talk about how the fishermen had faith to fish again even though they’d been working all day and hadn’t caught anything. Then we talked about how we can be fishers of men, helping to find people to learn the gospel so they can be happy and live with Heavenly Father again.
Surprisingly, Ettin joined us for a bit instead of playing with trains.
Not surprisingly, Giant chewed his fingernails.
Then we had our message. This is what our message looked like earlier this morning:
Isn’t it sweet? Daddy wrote it. And he even wrote something about caterpillars. Because that’s what we were learning about last week.
This week we are looking at circus stuff.
As the control freak in me started to twitch, I told Daddy how sweet it was of him to write the message. He smiled, and said he just wanted to see what I would do. And that he’d knew I would change it.
The control freak was relieved:
I wrote in the message I had planned for the day, and life continued:
9:30am: Independent Play. (Boys play without mommy)
Look! Look! They are doing it! Playing without mommy!
Taking advantage of Independent Play going well and the cool morning weather, I start to make some bread.
Which means that Giant decides he needs to invent a new plug for the bathroom sink. I won’t show you the picture. Â Just imagine what a wad of tissue paper looks like stuffed down a sink drain.
Okay, it was toilet paper. “Tissue paper” doesn’t sound quite so yucky. We get it out and talk about how putting paper down drains can stop the water from draining permanently.
I wash my hands and return to bread making.
Then Ettin decides he needs to be my honey taster. Thus my perfect moment of independent play is interrupted (Yes, Ettin is eating honey out of a cup in my sink. And yes, that is a basket of laundry on the floor. I have kids. Laundry is an ever constant in my life.):
10:30am: Snack/Lesson Time. (Have snack and a lesson, and then work on a project together)
Okay. We had the coolest snack today!
It wasn’t even some variant on fruit or toast!!
Could you believe, POPCORN?!
Because its what people eat at the circus, of course!
In my totally safe set up (bread rising on one stove burner, butter melting on the most child accessible burner, Â popcorn popper on a third, bowl of popcorn on a fourth, and popcorn container in the middle) we get the popcorn popping:
While my boys eat fallen seeds off the floor, and hail starts to fall from the sky, the popper starts to make some funny noises. The smell of plastic and hazy smoke soon join the festivities (I debated covering my garden, but the hail only lasted for a couple of minutes):
Hmmm. We finish with making the popcorn. And then throw out our cheap  popper.
Giant and I write labels for our bags:
We take some to share with daddy (who was home sick). We watched a youtube video about the circus, and sang the Animal Fair song a couple of times. The boys slowly finished their snack in various positions around the dining room (was it the popcorn? or more likely my distracted brain trying to make bread and teach at the same time? They really don’t eat lying down on the floor. Well, not too often anyway):
Then we move on to our project. Paper bag Clowns!
Giant carefully cut out a pie for his clown, while Ettin strategically glued paper onto the puppet. I have such an amazing 1.5 year old. He will sit for hours working on fine motor skills work.
Ha!
He glued stuff for about a minute. Then he played with the three breakable things I have in the house:
And came back to hang on my neck for a bit:
11am: Independent Play.
We spent longer on the popcorn and puppet making than planned. So, just before lunch we put on a puppet show for daddy. Giant and I kneel behind a bench (hmm, there is a bit of height difference between my son and me. And Yes, I am usually wearing some sort of apron (its a handy spot for a camera 😉  ):
Giant’s puppet throws pie:
The other clowns eat it and become happy:
Unquestionably Academy Award material.
The end.