Library Day

My friend Cheryl cleans out her closets/garage/attic every once in a while and passes along all kinds of treasures for my kids. She has been chief supplier of board games, floor puzzles and hardcover children's literature. This book, "Dog's Colorful Day," was passed on to me over a year ago and for some reason we never really got to it. I found it a few months back and both kids love it! JB in particular, the themes of colors and counting are a little simple for Miss M anymore.

Today feels like the first day back to reality, after all the holiday hoopla! Prince Charming had yesterday off and it was wonderful to have him home for a day that had no real purpose. We cleaned the house and had some family fun in the evening. However, for the last few days we have been noticing that our kids are just out of sorts. Their schedule is totally off from the combination of mommy getting sick, Christmas, the week between that mommy declared "I'm not doing anything week", and then New Years. Thier behavior has been poor, they're extra cranky, they won't eat and they keep thinking there should be something incredible to do every minute of the day! WRONG!!!

So today we are working at getting back to the basics. We started our routine this morning with our regular two shows (yes, we've been watching more TV than could possibly be healthy for about two weeks now), breakfast at the table (yes, we've been eating in front of the TV for a bit now too) then play time while mommy gets some work done. It went well, although we had a couple of time-outs and other assorted consequences as I slowly tackled some of the backslidden behavior!

I decided we would need a little activity for when they get up from nap, we're not going anywhere and that will make them mad. So...I got "Dog's Colorful Day" out and I traced, on white paper, a big picture of dog. We're going to read the story and add the spots to his coat as they come (the story is about his day of getting messy, each mess leaving him with a different colored spot). We got markers in our stockings at Christmas and this will be the perfect activity to break them out for!! I figure when the spots are done JB can work on counting them, he could us a little practice from about 7-10. That's a little too easy for Miss M so I'm hoping she can retell the messes in the correct sequence. I think she'll be great at it since she'll have made herself a visual clue with the markers!

I checked out amazon and found that "Dog" has quite a few other adventures, we might have to check them out of the library next week. It's a simple story but it's fun and the pictures are really great, again simple but sweet.

Happy reading!