This and That

Whoa, Nellie! Chloe Jo starts school on Wednesday! WEDNESDAY! How can that be possible?

I started new Bible class material for my 2 year old's on Sunday morning. I am loving it! The kids seem to be enjoying it and learning and I am very excited to be using the material. One of my friends is the creator of the material and you can find it here. It is not completed for the whole Bible yet, but there are 2 quarters done.

Now, I just need to decide what to do with my 4's and 5's when we start Wednesday evening Bible class again. We do a summer series during June, July and August so we all meet in the auditorium. It is a nice rest from teaching. I think I am going to join forces with another teacher, but I am wanting to start the New Testament and she can continue on the Old. We shall see if she likes that idea.

Last week, we took a Zoo trip with the cousins. That was one of the things Chloe Jo said she wanted to do this summer so we had to get it in before school starts back. The morning we went, it was drizzling so there weren't many people out. We practically had the zoo to ourselves for a few hours. The animals were very active and they were giving us a show! One of the monkeys played with the kids for a little bit, kissed the glass and then turned around and kicked it when he was done. It was hilarious!

Chloe Jo, Brenson and Brianna

Lovely children.

 I told Bren and Bri to pick the statues nose. Instead, they picked their own. Bahaha!

 The meerkats were so funny! We watched them for several minutes. One of the nice things about having the zoo to ourselves was that we didn't have to keep a hold of the children's hands the whole time. They were able to walk around and explore on their own since there were no crowds to get lost in.

Also, many of the zookeepers were out and they stopped to talk to us about the animals and answer any questions we had. It really was a fantastic zoo trip for us!

I couldn't just pick one penguin picture. These two little guys played with the kids and kept getting their attention when they weren't looking at them!

No zoo trip would be complete without a ride on the train!

A couple evenings ago, I made tortillas for taco night. I love to try new recipes and I had been wanting to try this for a while.

Yum. They turned out pretty good for a first attempt. I do have to say, though, making tortillas is an art form. The first few of mine weren't that great. I had to adjust the heat several times and I had to take them off the griddle at exactly the right moment when they were done, but not crispy. An art form, I tell ya.

We decided to start giving Chloe Jo and allowance. She likes to ask for things and tell us that we "need to get" so, in order to curb that, we decided to let her earn her own money to get what she would like. At first, I based it on whether she was good that week or not. Being good includes doing chores, not whining about it, and doing what she is asked to do. We gave her just a few new chores to go with her new allowance. We decided to have her make her own bed, take all the little trashes to the big trashcan in the kitchen and sort her own laundry. The first couple of weeks, didn't turn out so go because I was trying to enforce no whining. If she whined, she lost out on that weeks allowance. This didn't work for us for several reasons. One being that she doesn't yet have a good concept of what a week is so it seemed like forever between allowances to her. Second, if she whined on Monday, it could take two weeks for her to get another allowance. So, we changed it up. I found this free printable and decided to give that a try.

I know the word "behavior" makes it sound like we are having behavior problems with her, but that isn't it at all. It just says that because that is what the printable has on it. Anyway, this has worked much better for us. I try to give 1 to 3 punches every day. This way, she can see her progression towards the allowance and it is achievable every week or so. I have loved this and plan to continue doing the allowance this way for the forseeable future.

Next week I am going to do a post on some of the recent items I have added to my shop.

Happy Friday, friends!