Summer Reading Kit

I love playing summer reading games with my children.  I think it is so much to track our reading - especially since we do so much!  And it's a great way to spend a rainy summer day!  We usually participate in the summer reading game at our local library.  But this year we also signed up for one through Journey Forth:

http://www.bjupress.com/books/summer-reading/

It's from BJU Press, some of you might be familiar with their homeschool products.  It's worth checking into, since they are offering a Kindle Fire as a Grand Prize for the game.  Plus, they have a wonderful list of great books to read, divided by age groups.

I poked around online (I love pinterest for this) and found some great resources for tracking your summer reading.  I pinned my favorite here.  I was only able to get the printable to open in my picture viewer and since I'm not all that computer savvy, I decided to make a few adjustments and make my own version.  I love how it turned out!  And today is the day we are going to get started on it!  (It really helps that it's a rainy day, too.)

Here is the Summer Reading Kits my kids are receiving today. 

I placed their logs inside library pockets (the same ones I used for our Tricky Tic Tac Toe game).

The logs are made to look like the old fashioned library cards!

Teacher Gifts for the End of the Year

Sometimes I really love buying gifts.  You know when you go shopping for a gift, but you're just not quite sure what you want to get.  And then suddenly, you're walking down the isle and a clever gift idea jumps out at you!  You stop and contemplate (and check the price), only to discover that you've really stumbled on to something pretty good.  That's what happened to me today!!!

I was out with my kiddos this afternoon look for teacher gifts.  (I know you're laughing right now and saying, "but I thought you were their teacher?"  The gifts were not for myself!)  My two oldest have been involved in some outside classes (ballet and drama) all year long, and I thought a small teacher gift was a nice way to end a very nice experience for both of them. 

The Big Room Switch-A-Roo

With baby number four quickly on her way, we needed to make some adjustments.  Our bedrooms all seemed to be busting at the seems, so I knew it was time to give up the spacious bonus room as our schoolroom and turn that into a bedroom.  After much contemplating, I decided this to be he boys' room.  My sweet Curly Girlie begged and begged to share a room with her baby sister (she was the one to pray nonstop that we would have a little girl), and this seemed to be our best option.  So we are putting the girls into the room where the boys were.  Leaving the smallest bedroom as a space for our school stuff.  

So the Big Room Switch-A-Roo was underway. 

As you can see, despite all my hemming and hawing, chewing of fingernails and late night contemplating this switch, everyone else was having a blast as we tore down and rebuilt the bedrooms.  Leave it to a 4 year old boy to make a slide out of the bed that daddy was taking apart.  I love his exuberance even if the angle didn't provide much sliding success.  He did make me laugh, which was a great success at the time!

I figured it would be really nice to have all of our schooling materials together, even if we didn't stay in there for school, due to lack of space.  I can't tell you how wrong I was - about the lack of space that is!  This small room turned out the be a perfect little schoolroom for us!  Here's a quick glace around our room.  The door is to the left of this first picture.  And I lined the shots up to give you a full tour around the room, ending at the door again.