Saturday, June 12, 2010

Jar of Doodles and Ideas

Oh My...
Summer is here...

and as I type 
I am pretending not to hear the
whining voices happily contented voices 
of my grouchy spawns lovely children
assaulting me from down stairs floating up the stairs

Not sure if there is a perfect age gap between siblings, but the gap between ours is almost 5 years!
Not sure if it helps or hinders that I have one of each gender...
I know that it works for us and that it was God's plan for our family...

it's nice for when you need the oldest to help...

so hard when the youngest wants to do something that the oldest can do but that they just aren't old enough to do yet...

It can also be difficult finding activities to entertain and educate them both at the same time....

side note: after many discussions with both my husband and our daughters 3rd grade teacher we made the decision to "home school" her for the summer...insert the sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth here!

so now I must educate first and then entertain...and the irony that the boy child would LOVE to have a summer of "home school" while the girl child would prefer a summer of "boredom" over anything she might deem educational...

how do I now incorporate this new element into our summer, without totally making it blow up in my face and while also keeping both children entertained???

one idea that I have waited to post because I wanted to see how it would be received by both the girl and boy child...

the girl has just finished 3rd grade and is of course going onto 4th...so she can read and one of her assignments this summer is a daily journal...
the boy child is getting ready for kindergarten so he can not "read" yet...don't tell him because he thinks he can...but he loves to draw...so one of his assignments this summer is a doodle journal...

introducing the "journal & doodle jars"

also made a 3rd jar for the girl child's bff...
Taylor, Wilson & Madison

these will hopefully help push their creative juices when it comes to drawing and writing...
both are filled with prompts, they will pull out a prompt that they then get to journal about or use to draw...if they want they can put the prompt back into the jar, tape it to the page, or throw it away...depending on how they felt about it...

take some scrapbook paper that is only pattered on one side

print off prompts on the back that your child will like & that will stretch their creativity


Cut them into strips

fold them and tuck them into the jar

and then decorate the jar

"W" is for the boy child's name 

talking about their jars

reading some prompts...apparently Taylor wasn't too pleased with this one!

4 comments:

Kelly Jackson said...

Great idea Kiera!

iteachangels said...

LOVE this idea! Hmmm....you could sell these for SURE!

Sandy T said...

What a great idea, Kiera! You are so creative.

Tabitha said...

Great idea, Kiera! Although summer workbooks have their place, something like this is so much more engaging and fun. Can I steal your idea to suggest to parents of my second graders?