MOH - Week 1 Day 3

Day 3 had you tidy your bedroom and clean out the freezer. Well, our bedroom wasn't too bad but the boys' bedroom was what you would expect 7 days in to a school vacation - pretty much ready for health inspectors to shut it down so I helped them clean their room instead.  They *can* clean their own room but once it hits a certain level it's pretty hard for them to get going. 

I did clean out the freezer, it wasn't too bad and I did find a bunch of food that I didn't realize I still had in there. Simon was excited because I found a popsicle down in the frozen vegetable drawer.

I have decided to make a modification to the "get rid of 7 things a day" plan. The trouble is, once I start cleaning out something, like kids' clothes or books, I don't stop at 7. So I am now doing 35 items a week.  That being said, I did manage to get rid of some old coloring books (boys declared themselves officially too old for coloring books) and we sold a couple of old Rubbermaid shelves on Craigslist.

Today's assignment is to clean under the beds. I haven't moved our bed since we bought it August 2012 so that should be pretty gross. I'll take pictures.

Money Saving Mom's 40 Days -- Days 1 & 2

I have decided to try to do the Money Saving Mom's 40 Days to a More Organized Home. Since it's only day 3 and I am having a little trouble with keeping going, I decided to blog about it also!

Day 1 had you come up with a morning routine. I pretty much already had this down but added in the load of laundry. Laundry is a considerable task around our house and I hate getting so far behind that I have 6 loads to do on Saturday morning.  My plan was to get 1 load in the washer and dryer each morning and fold it after work to just keep the giant piles down.  So here is my routine:

1. Get up, shower.
2. Have coffee, read work email.
3. Start a load of laundry.
4. Make lunches.
5. Eat breakfast with the kids.
6. Finish up any homework, practice spelling words and math facts.
7. Put load of laundry into the dryer.
8. Get dressed for work.
9. Walk the kids to school.
10. Go to work.

I did tidy the living room and vacuum it, for my 15 minute power clean of the living areas. I also got together a big bag of the kids' outgrown clothes to take to the consignment shop. WAY more than 7 items.

Day 2 had you make a list of goals 5-7 for this week.

1. Catch up on my Weight Watchers etools stuff.
2. Prep 2 weeks of lectures of math 213.
3. Prep 111 internet class for first day.
4. Chapter 1 of  Math 105 curriculum development.
5. Do 3 piano lessons with the boys and practice yourself.
6. Paint the downstairs bathroom door.
7. Take the camper cushions to the upholsterer.

Yesterday I worked about an hour each on 213 and 105.  We have done a piano lesson and will do another this morning and I made an appointment with the upholsterer for Thursday morning so I am making good progress.  I went through the kids' books and picked out about 15 that were really beginning readers or too young for the boys. I also took a bag to Goodwill that I had packed up last week and donated our old outside light fixtures to Restore. I had actually power cleaned the refrigerator just last week so a quick tidy and that was done.  We actually keep our kitchen counter tops cleaned off pretty much all the time. But there is a small one next to the refrigerator that piles up with papers. I did go through all those.

In a completely unrelated side note, the boys are I are reading The Borrowers together. It started off REALLY slowly and I wasn't sure we were even going to like it. However, I am glad to say we stuck with it and it is starting to pick up.  Ike is reading Henry and Beezus and Simon is reading Danny and the Dinosaur.  I think neither of the boys is really challenged by either book. They can both go several pages before they come across a word they don't know, but it's spring break so oh well.

2013 Book List

I decided to make a list of books that I want to read this year. Here is my start:

My Books:

1. Divergence by Veronica Roth
2. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
3. Getting Things Done by David Allen
4. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Graham-Smith
5. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
6. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
7. Night by Elie Wiesel
8. Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) by Orson Scott Card 
9. The Things They Carried  by Tim O'Brien
10. Game of Thrones Book 1, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

While I was perusing books, I thoughtt of a few kids books we definitely want to read so here are those:

Kids Books (Read Aloud):

1. On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (We started this yesterday.)
2. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
3. The Bears of Blue River by Charles Major
4. The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
5. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
6. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Justen

October Reading (And Listening!)

In October we rediscovered the audio book. It all started with Ike wanting to read The Hobbit. I didn't want to read it aloud to both of them because I was sure Simon wouldn't be interested in it but I didn't want to quash Ike's enthusiasm for reading. So, I got him the audiobook from the library and he loved it. This inspired Simon to request audio books as well.  I figure out how to expand the display in my search results for the card catalog to show which books had an audio version as well. So far the kids have listened to:
1. Froggy Gets Dressed (Big hit, and especially good on audio book because Froggy bugs.)
2. The Gradener
3. Maurice Sendak Collection
4. Frog and Toad Audio Collection
5. The Big Red Hen

I got a bunch more from the library yesterday as well.  Simon has been really in to the ones where he can turn the pages and follow along.  

As far as what I actually read to the kids this month, we started with Ramon and Her Father -- awesome as always. Then we read the endless Boba Fett - The Fight to Survive.  This was Ike's pick and so very boring for me.  But Ike picked it out himself at his school library and it was his choice, so I read the whole thing. Both the kids loved it and it really didn't have anything objectionable.  The worst part is that Ike found out it was just the first book in the series.

Ike read the Magic Treehouse Book Revolutionary War on Wednesday.  Its encouraging to read these books because last year they were a pretty good struggle and he can fly through them now.  He read a bunch of storybooks as well. We are currently reading Meet the Dark Side.  It is one of those DK Star Wars chapter books. I am fairly sick of Star Wars but its a challenging book for Ike's reading level and he is excited to keep reading it so I am on board.

Simon has been reading the Bob Kindergarten Sight Words books and he is doing awesome.

August & September

All of August and most of September was spent on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  Ike LOVED it and Simon loved parts of it. There was a lot of plot in there for a kindergartener to follow. We decided we'll wait until at least next summer before we start book 5. 

Our next book to finish off September was Pippi Goes Aboard.  Simon picked this one. He said he wanted to read another story "about the girl who drew on the floor at school." It took me a little while to figure out he was referring to when Pippi tried to draw her horse in the first Pippi Longstocking book.

I remember really loving the Pippi books as a little girl and I still enjoy them, though not as much as I did. I remember really admiring Pippi, her strength and her independence.
 
I haven't had Simon reading too much since school started. He has "popcorn" words he practices and little books that come home from school. We basically just go over those. He seems to be getting plenty of study time between morning private kindergarten and afternoon public kindergarten.  Since school started he has learned almost the entire alphabet in sign language. Its actually pretty cute to watch him do it.

Ike has been reading the A to Z Mysteries. He is currently about halfway through the second one. He is always resistant when I say it is time to do his reading, but once he gets going he seems to really like the books. I continue to put "easy" reads in his room at night for him to read independently.  He really likes these grapic novels about "Stone Rabbit."

It is now officially my time to pick and I am deciding between Little House and Ramona -- really I can't go wrong with either of those!

July Extreme Reading Month!

Okay - so maybe it wasn't "extreme" reading, but it was WAAAY more reading than we were able to do in June.   We also read really fantastic books this month.  We finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and then read The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. I actually really liked that book and it turned out to be one of my favorites that we've read by him.  Then we moved on to Holes by Louis Sachar.  This might have been the boys favorite book we have read so far. They were really in to it. It has some complicated plot lines that all converge in the end and I thought it might be a little bit too complicated for Simon to follow but I was wrong.  He understood all of it and so did Ike.  We watched the movie afterward and we talked about the differences we noticed between the movie and the book.  Finally we finished the month with Little House in the Big Woods. I had actually read this to them a couple years ago but neither one could remember it.

So what's on the reading agenda for August? All 760 pages of ...

If we finish this book this month, it will be a miracle.

June Fail

I think I read less to my kids in the month of June than I EVER have any month before.
We got started on Harry Potter 3 and read some of our old favorite picture books at bedtime but literacy-wise is was not a great month.  Between finals week, my sister visiting, and an 4 day camping trip to the Redwood National Forest, reading to the kids kind of got left behind.  Today is actually July 8 and I have read more to the kids in the past 8 days than the entire month of June.

We did read one great picture book that we all enjoyed -- Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes.

Cute book with a nice message.

Ike's school finished on Monday of my finals week so he had to commute with me 3 days. We did listen to the audio book Little Britches, the Home Ranch by Ralph Moody. It is probably my favorite of the 3 Little Britches I have read. but they are all fantastic.  Ike was really in to it. I am going to borrow the first book in the series for him to listen to as well.