Yesterday I printed chore charts for Jacob and Skylar.  I made them at DLTK’s Growing Together, which has an easy way to print custom chore charts. You just choose a picture for the top, then fill in what you want the title, columns, and rows to say. I made one for daily chores and one for weekly chores for each of them, placed them in clear sheet protectors, and hung them on the side of the pantry. The kids can just check off each chore with a dry erase marker (you could also laminate and use the dry erase marker). Then they can just wipe them clean and start over. I will mention that the pictures are big, so there is only room to list 3 or 4 chores on the page with the picture. It will continue it onto another page if you need more rows than that.

On the daily charts, I made a column for each day of the week, and a row for each chore. On the weekly charts, I just put Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4 as the column headings. The chores on the charts are not necessarily everything they ever have to do, but they are the jobs that we want the kids to routinely be responsible for and remember to do on their own. We’ll see how it works!

Wow, it is already December! We had a very nice Thanksgiving, and hope all of you did, too! We took two weeks off from school work, and were away from home for about 1 1/2 weeks of that time. The break was filled with visiting family and friends, hunting, eating, and otherwise relaxing and having fun. Tomorrow we will get back to our school routine for a while, then it will be time for winter break!

Just before we left, we did celebrate JonDavid’s birthday. He turned 2! We just had a family party, and I made him a football cake out of cupcakes.

He had another birthday cake the next week at his grandparents’ house. His Aunt Suzy made him a bear cake. Can’t complain about 2 birthday parties!

JonDavid is truly a blessing to us. He is somber at times, but he also makes us laugh a lot! He is talking more and more, and has quite a personality! We love you, JonDavid!

My parents and grandparents gave Skylar some money for her birthday and told her to go shopping for some new clothes. Soon after her birthday we made the shopping trip! She already loves to shop, so we had fun and got some cute clothes at Target and Kohl’s. She bought 2 complete outfits and one pair of jeans. She carried her purse with her money in it and paid for everything herself. Here she is with her new stuff:

PBS has a new show called “Dinosaur Train” that was on this morning. Anytime there is a new show, I pay close attention to see if it is appropriate for the kids to watch or not. The show this morning gave us things to talk about, but we will not be watching it again.

From the PBS website: “Dinosaur Train embraces and celebrates the fascination that preschoolers have with both dinosaurs and trains. The series encourages basic scientific thinking and skills as the audience learns about life science, natural history and paleontology. Each of the 40 half-hour episodes features Buddy, an adorable preschool age Tyrannosaurus Rex, and his adoptive Pteranodon family as they board the Dinosaur Train and embark on whimsical voyages through prehistoric jungles, swamps, volcanoes and oceans. The episodes include two 11-minute animated stories, along with brief live action segments hosted by renowned paleontologist Dr. Scott Sampson, that unearth basic concepts in life science, natural history and paleontology.”

The “basic concepts” include the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods and “cool facts” that clearly teach the theory of general evolution and an ancient earth. If you believe the Biblical account of creation as I do, this show is not what you want your children to be watching. It is designed for 3 -6 year-olds; the scientific community that holds to the theory of general evolution would love to get all of our kids filled with their ideas at a young age. Parents, we have to pay attention to what our kids see and hear and teach them the truth!

If your kids like dinosaurs, as mine do, find ways for them to learn about dinosaurs in the context of what the Bible teaches. Don’t be fooled into believing that all scientists believe in general evolution. There are plenty of well educated scientists who believe in creation and a young earth. The book Dinosaurs By Design by Duane T. Gish, Ph.D, is an excellent resource for kids who want to learn about dinosaurs from a creation science point of view. I also recommend the Apologetics Press Dinosaur Coloring Book, which contains a lot of good information about dinosaurs. We have both of these books, and my children and I have learned a lot from them.

I have seen several news reports of fatal house fires lately. Often the reports include that there were not working smoke alarms in the house. It is so important to make sure you have smoke alarms installed in your home and that they are working at all times!

If you have children, it is also important to talk to them about what to do if there is a fire in your house. Our local fire departments do a great job of educating kids about fire safety. During the summer reading program, members of the Ceredo Fire Department came to the library. They talked to the kids about what to do if there is a fire and having an escape plan and a meeting place. They also brought their equipment, and one of the fire fighters put it on for the kids to see. Then they encouraged the children to come up and shake hands with him. The idea is to let them see what a firefighter looks like with the hat, mask, air tank, etc., so that they will not be afraid of firefighters if they are ever in a fire. The firefighters stress to the kids not to hide. They said that kids will often hide under a bed or in a bathtub because they are afraid.

The CFD also brought Patches and Pumper. Patches is a robotic/remote control Dalmatian that drives Pumper, a remote control fire truck (which actually squirts water at the kids). Patches talks via a firefighter using a headset and standing just out of the view of the children. They adore Patches and Pumper!

Jacob shaking hands with a firefighter

Skylar shaking hands with a firefighter

Patches and Pumper

Jacob, JonDavid, Skylar, and other friends at the library get a closer look at Patches and Pumper

Our sweet Skylar celebrated her 4th birthday earlier this week! Here is a picture of Skylar and me with her Dora the Explorer birthday cake:

My son has been asking for beer lately. Please do not stop reading now; you need to get the whole story. My husband and I do not drink beer, and there is none in our house. However, we do have root beer. When JonDavid talks, he tends to say the last part of words. For example, giraffe is “raf” and elephant is “phant.” And root beer is “beer.” I generally don’t try to work on my kids’ speech skills at the age of 20 months, but maybe we should make an exception this time!

Yesterday I posted a picture of Jacob and Skylar on a seesaw in the backyard. As promised, here is how the seesaw came to be.

Jacob played a game called “Balance Act” from the show Sid the Science Kid on the PBS Kids website. Although somewhat annoying to me, Sid the Science Kid actually teaches some good science lessons geared for young children. In the lower corner of the game, there is a picture of Sid’s mom and it says “tell me more.” When you click on that, it explains what a lever is, what the fulcrum is, and gives some examples, including a seesaw.

After playing this game and reading the info, he went outside. I looked out the window into the backyard, and saw Jacob’s seesaw. He had used some bricks and a long board to build his own seesaw! Pretty industrious, I thought. All three of the kids have played on it, and had fun. Daddy brought a cement block over for them to use as the fulcrum, too, which made it a little higher.

I looked out yesterday, and Jacob had stacked bricks on one end, and pieces of wood on the other end. He said that he had done that to see which was heavier. He told me that he thought the bricks would be heavier, and now he knew they were because the end with the bricks went down to the ground. He is using the scientific method before he even knows what it is!

Jacob found a page in a book that told how to make a drum, and he wanted to try it. I had a container of oats that was almost empty, so I poured the oats into something else and gave him the container to use. Skylar wanted to make one, too, of course. Since I only had one oats container available, I gave her an empty yogurt tub. They decorated construction paper using crayons and stickers, then we taped the paper around the containers. I then cut two holes near the top of each container, across from each other. We cut a piece of ribbon, and put one end through each hole and tied it inside the container. We put the lids back on, and found pencils to use for drumsticks (chopsticks would work really well, but, well, we eat Chinese food with forks).

They played the drums for a bit, but Jacob wanted to have a whole band and realized that a band has more than just drums in it. So, we turned on some music and they played their drums along with the music. It was quite a performance !

No, I have not deserted my blog! We’ve had a trip for a gospel meeting that my husband preached, a gospel meeting here, a visit from my mom, and other more pressing matters that have kept us on the go for the past two weeks. Hopefully I can get back to more routine posting again!

I wanted to share this short video of JonDavid singing: