Occupying Ethan

What does Ethan do while we do school? A lot of time he'll listen to whatever book we are reading. Or I'll try to get him to trace or cut paper. Those things only really happen about 30% of the time though. Shockingly when Belle is having a spelling test that she has to write on paper, he'll sit very well with his own paper and wait for me to call out a letter for him to write. I'll alternate calling a word for Belle and then calling a letter for Ethan. He does really well actually and gets most letters right. Mostly I just try to go with what he's into and right now he's into writing letters and drawing pictures, or running around and destroying everything.

Deep in thought trying to conquer the "W". Every time he'd try to write it, it would end up as an "M".

But, what do you do when your 3 yr old wants to participate in school/or play with sissy when she really needs to focus on her work alone? You get him his own Macbook. Lucky for the kids, I upgraded recently. It wasn't able to handle the load of all my files anymore and it was just showing it's overall wear. So the kids got it, it's perfect to run their games.

Ethan will play on zoodles.com (which is awesome because it is absolutely kid proof), starfall.com, and readingeggs.com (which is still a little advanced for him). He's doing all educational stuff on there so I sort of count it as preschool. Today he was playing a game where he had to find different shapes in a picture. And another he had to use some logic to try and get a ball into a pond by moving sticks around so it fell in the right way. Win Win! Now the only problem is Belle wanting to play on the computer when I need her to be doing her work. Lucky for her, she has her own readingeggs.com and zoodles account. She just discovered that she can send video email on her own through zoodles.  So Mimi may be getting daily video ramblings courtesy of Belle.

100th day of school!!

Ok, so technically I have no idea if it's the 100th day of school. I haven't been keeping track because I don't have to until Belle is 7 (or 6 if the new law passes). But I've been reading about some fun 100th day of school projects and thought we'd have our own.

A couple friends from my June 06 baby board did these tshirts for their kiddos to wear to school. It's 100 googly eyes on a tshirt and then made into a monster. Easy enough and pretty cute! We headed to Hobby Lobby and the kids picked our their tshirt colors.

When it came time to make the shirts Belle counted out 10 rows of 10 for me. She started helping me glue the eyes but then got bored. When it came time for me to do Ethan's, he helped me count maybe two rows of 10 and then was done. However when it came time to glue the eye, he probably would've done them all if I had let him. I then let the kids pick their monsters features. Belle chose fluffy fur and heart antennas. Ethan got spikey fur and circle antennas.

We started our 100th day at the dentist because the kids had cleaning appointments. Belle loves the dentist, but Ethan was not so sure. They were able to count his teeth and polish them, but once the spit vacuum came out he was done.

With their sparkly teeth we then headed to the Children's museum to check out the new Mr Potato Head exhibit. Of course that exhibit was packed, so we headed out as soon as I could get the kids going in that direction. We enjoyed the rest of the museum for a few hours before coming home.

While I started dinner the kids attempted to glue 100 cheerios to a piece of paper. Belle got maybe 50 before she gave up. Ethan gave up about the same time. It atleast bought me a few minutes peace from them.

Cheer

Belle's cheer class practicing their routine for the recital. The class is made up of girls 5-8 yrs old.