Snapshot of our morning...

This is how our home looked this morning...

On Wednesday mornings, I don't have scheduled school work, as I believe the boys benefit from having a bit of a break at least one morning each week...helps keep us all sane. ;) The story behind these pictures begins yesterday, though. Yesterday (which, btw, was our "official" start of the school year...feeling a little blue that I didn't do something cool to commemorate it, though) I introduced two new things to our school routine:

1. Calendars. Once upon a time I did a morning calendar with the boys...the type you see in classrooms everywhere where a kid gets to add the number in the correct day spot. Then I got tired of doing that and just stopped. This year, though, I'm having them each keep their own 8x8 calendar. At the start of the month, we'll sit down and write out what they have going on that month. When the year is over, I'll have a quick calendar page that can be added to each boy's school album that not only shows what went on but also captures his handwriting progress. Coolio. As an added bonus (and really my true motivation), I'm hoping it will help stop the constant line of questions about what today is and when such-and-such is and how many more days until the thingamajig. ;) And maybe, just maybe, it will be the start of some good time management skills. ;)

In any case, the middle picture up there is Micah working on filling in his calendar with Options, karate and soccer. Isn't he cute? :)

2. Reading program. Remember when I was telling you about the awesome summer reading program our local library does? Well, I actually followed through on that thought and started our own monthly reading program. Yay, me! So, yesterday, I presented each boy with his monthly tally sheet that has a bunch of little "clocks" to be filled in as they read and a list of possible "prizes" for different amounts of reading. The prizes are things that I'd honestly probably get the boys in a given month anyhow (shhh...don't tell them) and that extra little motivation seems to be making a world of difference.

(We're talking things like an ice cream cone or dessert at a local place that they love or going to lunch just with me or Nathan or, of course, a small Lego set...had to make sure they really would want something, right? LOL. And, yes, they immediately latched onto that particular prize and began asking what constitutes "small" and whether they could use the cash value of that and add their own money to get a bigger set and whether if they read twice as much as that level they would get a set twice as big. Nothing wrong with their bargaining skills, lol.)

In any case, we're looking at this first month as a trial run to work out kinks and have explained as much to the boys. So far, though, I think it's going well. Definitely better than my attempts last year at having them read the same amounts and keep sort of a reading journal with books read and such. Apparently just having a list of things read and knowing you'd read a certain amount isn't enough motivation for my very science and math oriented boys, lol.

So, with visions of prizes dancing in their heads, they've been reading since we got home from the library yesterday. :) (I'm sure it will taper off but am just so delighted to see them excited about it.) Asher and Noah appear to be in some sort of race to see who can read the most (hence the pictures above). I find it awesome (and very true to form) that Asher gravitates toward the stories and chapter books and likes to read with the character voices and emotion. Noah, meanwhile (and also incredibly true to form), is much more likely to be reading non-fiction...the one above is the Physics book in the line we really enjoy...he finished the Chemistry one last night. ;) (Also, notice that Asher tends to prefer to do any of his schoolwork and such sitting up while Noah has almost always preferred to lie on his stomach. Odd.) Micah, though not pictured reading, has also been reading, though he refused all of my offers at the library of the nice easy readers like Bob Books...claiming they were just too easy and he didn't want to bother with those. :)

Anyhow. That's what our home looked like this morning. Happy sigh. :)