Down-Day Mondays (and other fun): Part II

What a day! We accomplished so much today with daddy home. We hit a wide variety of chores, conquering the "crazy drawer" that was overflowing with all the treasures that kids' meals have to offer these days and managing to clean the entire playroom and mop the floors for the first time in about a month. The dog hair and slobber is endless in our house and it makes me (sort of) glad that we're done with the crawling phase.

I found an interesting lesson online about Christopher Columbus that tells the story from a native perspective. I read it to the kids as they cleaned up toys. It was a challenging lesson, forcing us to think about how our actions can affect other people adversely when we're not careful. It's always stimulating when we're forced to look at history from another perspective. We tend to think ours is the only one. History can be so engaging.

On another note, we spent a good lot of hours playing with Legos and Knex. I enjoy watching my boys use their imaginations in such creative ways. They're always coming up with a new weapon, vessel, or piece of armor. This time they used some of the idea books we had laying around. It took some time to round up all the pieces they needed, but we made due.


While the boys built and imagined, Morgan sat and cut out rings from her Kumon book. Her motor skills are quite astounding. I am constantly amazed at how well she writes, cuts, pastes, and draws, never mind her memory skills!

I managed to fit in a music lesson today as well. We've been using the Recorder Excellence method books from Neil A. Kjos Music Co., and the kids enjoy them as much as I do. My sister worked on this project at Kjos for about 2 years and gifted it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago. It's been a great way to teach the basics of music in a way that doesn't demand hours of practice time. Definitely a great resource for home educators to get their hands on!

Before dinner we finished a painting project of underwater creatures. The kids loved it. I think this is the only art project we've ever done where my oldest (who is very mommylike in his type A-ness) didn't get ridiculously frustrated.

I love doing art with the kids, but it seemingly always leads to a hefty conversation about letting art be free from perfection. Not an easy concept for us type A-ers!


David helped Daddy make our yummy dinner. He's always such a great help in the kitchen. I just can't believe how old he's getting. He just turned 9 a few days ago and it struck me as odd that he'd be hitting double digits next year. Scary.

The day ended with a small bit of science (we had to check on our seed bags and record their progress ─ more on that another day) and a long game of Armor of God. Another late night, but well worth the time spent laughing and enjoying some much needed hours with just family.