August is really a month of change and from beginning to end are two very opposite experiences. Aside from all the other things we did here are some of our everyday moments of fun and learning.
At the beginning of the month Nathan still had his life long playmate at his side. By the end of the month she was experiencing school for the first time and Nathan was experiencing some alone time for the first time in his life. He enjoyed a farm story puzzle many mornings at his request and he fit in the number circles into the right places in the puzzle as we went through the story.
Having Nathan “alone” without his constant companion I was able to spend long periods of one on one time with him, in between household chores. I was able to assess and realize what he knows on his own. He can problem solve and figure so many things out on his own. He is able to sort things by size, shape and color. He can count to 11 on his own at least but thinks counting to 10 in German is silly. He can look at objects of five or less and know how many there are without counting the objects out. He can count his fingers to show me and tell me how old he is and he understands one to one correspondence.
Nathan can both nest and stack and he self corrects as he goes as he sorts by understanding the relationship of size.
Most letters of the alphabet he recognizes both capital and lower case letters. He gets very excited when he finds letters that are in his own name. N is for Nathan is a big deal too.
Spooky lay pining each morning daily for the first couple of weeks of school. His favorite pet person was disappearing suddenly each day all day long. He and Kaitlyn share a special bond and he was waiting for her trying to understand why she was disappearing all day now too.
After school was a great time for Nathan to try to snag someone for some playtime out in the backyard and a great time for school children to get some much needed outdoor time. Most afternoons were too homework filled to grab a playmate, but one day Nathan and Tristan really went to town in the sandbox coming up with a really cool sand creature complete with a volcano in his center.
Then there was bath time!!! Sometimes the tub needed a good rinse after a sandy child’s shower, for sure! Our dry erase keeps the bathroom schedule running smoothly in the evenings. Baths and showers and “open bathroom” are marked out on the dry erase according to who needs a bath, who gets home when, who has what chores daily, who needs to go to bed first and who can’t take a bath until after they eat. For example, I don’t assign my dinner prep. helper a bath at 5 p.m. or my kitchen cleanup person a 6 p.m. bath time. Nathan always takes a bath after he eats on his bath nights. The bathroom schedule pretty much runs non stop each day switching every 15, 25 or 30 minutes from 4:30 or 5 p.m. until around 10 p.m. so I take family outings in the evenings with serious consideration first. And if we do all go out then we all take lightening showers/teeth brushing time and tag the next person to finish ASAP. The schedule does take a break most days so we can all eat together and for Family Night on Mondays. And I build in a few five minute breaks in case we’re running behind as well as some “Open bathroom” time for the first people to run through a second time before they go to bed. I find this necessary to keep things moving so Rick and I can get to bed at a semi-decent hour. Getting through a single bathroom first started getting hairy when our 3rd child toilet trained. Now with 7 of us all using a single bathroom I find this is the only way we function efficiently reducing late bedtimes and arguing. I can thank a friend I used to Visit Teach for the dry erase idea she talked about years ago. It works pretty well.
Nathan declared himself a Cub Scout in training and wore Tristan’s old neckerchief, slide and cap since Tristan is now sporting his new Webelos gear.
Off to the pack meeting with the youngest scout!
Nathan LOVES playing games; especially ABSeas where we fish for the letters and match upper and lower case letters to our boards hoping to catch a shark for an extra turn. The cats found this game irresistible as well to the point where it was hard to play with them in the same room.
Nathan always wants the blue fishing pole. The cats don’t care what color the string or fish is attached to.
We decided to get some play time in for the cats with their own toys.
Each cat has his favorite toy. They loved the attention and activity.
Rick gave his pampered pet some extra time and attention too.
LOVE! Rick comments how much he loves having kitties in his life now. Good thing!
Content! Spooky loves to go out in the backyard on pleasant days and that’s pretty much where he stays. He keeps a careful eye along the back fence since he has good luck catching chipmunks back there. So far we’ve gotten all the chipmunks away from him and they are still capable of running… a little stunned but alive. Our back neighbor keeps all kinds of junk along the back fence and I’m hoping that chipmunks are all he’s got living back there. That junk drives me crazy.
Lindsay, wanting to make a treat for lunch boxes on her lunch prep week, became my new cookie master! These chocolate chip cookies were out of this world good! She followed all of my personal cookie rules that I’ve passed on to her and then… she pulled them out of the oven early. Combined, it makes the perfect cookie! As she was packing them for school she found one with a chocolate chip smiley face! Cute.
Nathan played chef nearly every time I went to make bread and he discovered the game “Mouse Trap”. Though we didn’t play the game, we just built it and had fun repeatedly catching the mice after putting the whole trap back together over and over again for a fun cause and effect lesson.
Candy Land… a good game for learning colors, counting, turn taking and sportsmanship. Nathan loves it!
And as the drought wore on, my August lawn began to look more like that of late September… another reminder that summer freedom is no longer with us.
