Projects

We started back to school this week and in our curriculum we were studying the earth's layers, among other things.  I saw this little project and thought it would be fun.  I headed out to the dollar store to buy some modeling clay.  Then we got busy building our "earths".  : )

We made the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust, one layered on top of the other.  Then we cut our earth in half.  It's supposed to show each layer, nice, neat and awesome.  Well...our layers were a little, um, not so awesome.  But the kids got the message...and it was fun! : )  If you're doing the Classical Conversations curriculum, this blog has some great ideas and links for activities for week 13 and I believe she had some things for week 14 as well.  I love it when I can find great resources like this!

Another project I did yesterday was a little snack organization.  We've been having a problem with our son going into the fridge to pull out things when he's hungry....without asking and often making a mess.  Honestly, it's about to drive me nuts.  Both of my older kids come to me between meal times and say, "Mom, I'm SO hungry," or "Mom, I'm STARVING."  In a whiney voice.  This Momma was at her limit!  Especially after the boy got a giant pitcher of lemonade out of the fridge...without asking...and spilled it all over the floor.  One trip to the dollar store and hopefully I've remedied this issue.  I got two long plastic organizing trays and two packs of 4 snack bowls with lids.  I labeled each tray.

The bowls fit pretty well inside the trays.  I put three different snacks inside the bowls and told the kids: "These are your snacks for the day.  If you eat them all at the beginning of the day, that's it.  No more."  I'm going to try and vary the snacks and I even have room to include a juice box or capri sun or even a cup of water--whatever works at the time.  I always save those packs of ranch or ketchup if we have any left when we go out to eat.  That gives a good portion size so the kids won't overdo it.  I plan to include healthy stuff and some kind of cracker or something...depending on what we have.  I hope this works!  : )  This morning the first thing I did was fix snack cups..and it took about 5 minutes.  5 minutes for a little stress taken off my shoulders?  I'll take it! : )