Savvy on bars - 8.65

Savvy's Vault - 8.85 (There were two, but I'm lazy and only uploaded one).  This may or may not have been the better one.

Scarecrows

With Halloween coming up, I thought we'd make some scarecrows.  My middle child is quite the comedian...

I'll let you guess which one is hers:(  She said it had to go to the bathroom.  

Bow

The girls have a gymnastics meet coming up, so I made a bow.  I totally need to practice more, but it will do. On a side note, I can take a LOT of hot glue gun burns and still keep ticking. 

Q-tip painting

My kids totally like to paint.  Leaves are a-changing around here, so with Fall upon us, we took to the q-tips.

I bought ice cube trays for each of them to put their paint in.  Clean-up is easy-peesy!

Agendas

Ok...so homeschooling is like breaking in new shoes.  When they're up on a shelf and surrounded by other pretty shoes looking so shiny and comfy, you think nothing could be better, right?  You get them home and try them out, walking around the house and thinking about all of the outfits you can wear them with.  You put them back in the box and make sure they are well taken care of.  After a couple of days you notice that they are a little tighter than you thought, but you buck up because they're you're new shoes, yes?  After three days you notice the blister welling up on your foot, and you pull your big-girl panties up because you invested a lot in those shoes.  Finally, after four days, you are crying because of the pain and throwing them against the closet door because-well
dang it all!  Like I said, homeschooling is a lot like breaking in new shoes. 

Our first week, we were doing really well.  We were up early, chores were done, ya-da...ya-da.  After two weeks, my 7 yo starts avoiding work to play.  After three weeks, she's saying math is yucky and can she just get on the computer?  After a month, she's crying, I'm crying - even the fish is crying (because we are too stressed to remember to feed it).  This is all because I am screaming at her to finish any one assignment that doesn't involve me sitting right next to her and using my endless supply of accents and funny voices.  So...I started making agendas.  Every day the girls get a list of everything they have to do (by subject).  They have boxes that they have to check off as they go.  If my 7 yo finishes it, she gets a sticker on her chart which will later be redeemed for a leotard for her doll. Yes, they make those.  Totally worth it though because I'm not losing my &*(^, and little miss likes the possibility of getting something extrinsic out of it.  Now, you may be asking, "What does the 10 yo get?"  The answer is nothing.  It's probably wrong, but I make it up to her with eggplant parmesan once a month.  She's totally cool with that.

Apple painting!

We just moved to the midwest this summer, and boy do they know how to grow some apples!  Being that it's the beginning of the year, and being that apples are growing everywhere, and being that mommy is short on planning but long on procrastinating, I decided we'd apple paint!  We read about Johnny Appleseed (for the littles), and my 10 yo grumbled with the report she had to write.  However, it all paid off in her eyes when she got to apple paint.  We cut some apples in half, got out our red, yellow, and orange paint, and went to town.  You know those clothespins that no one uses anymore so you can get like a bazallion for a buck at any store? Well, I LOVE them.  We stuck one in each apple and the kids went crazy.