Rainbows

Alternate title: Long Live Jammie Monday!

So, we decided to keep Anna-Kate home on Mondays. Even though she was skipping school, I still wanted there to be an element of discipline, you know, sit and follow directions, but I wanted it to be fun/special time with Mommy (in our pj's, of course!). Enter, "special projects". I shamelessly borrowed ideas from my friend, Taylor, and we set out for a day of learning about rainbows.

For breakfast we had rainbows, err, bagels cut in half with both sides like a rainbow.



During that time we talked about what rainbows meant (a promise from God) and read about Noah. What was quite helpful is that my mom got it in her head to do an experiment with the kids over the weekend, mixing colors. I had planned to do this myself, but she saved me the mess effort. We then talked about how all colors come from red, yellow and blue and the colors in between them makes up the rainbow and I told her about the silly old man, Roy G. Biv (you know, to help her remember the order of the colors) and we learned a song about the order of the colors. Both kids were highly entertained by these exercises and Anna-Kate thinks that "indigo" is the funniest word ever.

Then, it was time to begin our first project. I made "craft boxes" for each kid (cute old-school lunchboxes from the Target $1 bin last week) and put kid scissors, crayons, stickers, glue and markers--for Anna-Kate--in them. It is so the little things with kids! Anyway, I had strips of construction paper with various shapes on them that Anna-Kate cut out while I tried to teach Ryan how to cut. This was his maiden voyage in the cutting paper department. It went as well as can be expected. :) He lost interest after about 3.5 minutes. Anna-Kate did great! After all of the shapes were cut she got to glue them in the correct space, then write the words, in the appropriate color. I thought she would completely baulk at this, but she ate it up and loved it!











We took a break to run around and play a while and then did our second rainbow project. We colored the stripes of the rainbow, in the right order, and glued cotton balls on the clouds. (Sidenote, I recognize that I am cool simply by allowing there to be glue involved. I only took a few deep breaths as I let her put it on the paper. Impressed? Probably more likely...rolling your eyes. :) ).



The last part of our special project was lunch. They had their sandwich, and then got to eat (in order): red strawberries, orange carrots, yellow bananas, green grapes, blue yogurt, indigo (purple) skittles, and violet fruit snacks. Lest you think I stuff my kids, it was just a few of each. :) They thought this was the greatest thing ever! So fun and amazing how quickly they scarfed down each color to get to the next!







It really was a fun day. In fact, this morning when I took her to school she started crying as we approached carpool drop off and said, "I don't want to go to school today. I want to stay home and do special projects with you again!". This was kind of an experiment to see if homeschooling could be a possibility for us. In the past, Anna-Kate has responded much better to others teaching her (swimming etc) and from Chris as far as homework goes. I have been very hesitant to think too seriously about it because of that, but am encouraged and ready to pray about it with a truly open heart now. We shall see.