Natalie's 3rd grade class competed in a film competition against all the classes in our Beaverton School District. They made the attached movie and won 1st place for the best Elementary Music Video.
We are all so excited that her class won!
The adults and kids can play and neither gets bored.
Anyone else played it? Any other good recommendations for fun family games?
We finally finished the planters for our garden. Now we just need to set them in the ground and fill them with good planting soil.
The kids already have stuff picked out to plant...Broccoli, corn, pears, apples, and bananas. Lisa and I hope for tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, carrots, and lettuce. Maybe we'll just tell the kids the seed is a from a banana ...but something weird happened so it came out as a tomato.
The Rock Score:
Natalie: 5 buckets
Brendan: 1 bucket
The kids raced outside this morning in the pouring rain and each filled a bucket. When the rain stopped, Natalie went back out with a vengeance and was still working when I came home. She even had another bucket that was almost full, but she was too tired and hungry to finish it.
Some interesting observations...
1) Brendan started fast and furious but petered out quickly. I don't think he really understands the value of a dollar yet. He doesn't really have a toy that he is drooling over (or should I say he just wants every toy?), so he really isn't yet motivated by a few extra green papers in his wallet.
2) Natalie was thinking about all the money she was earning the entire time. When I came home from work and asked her about what she was going to buy, she said a CD player, a Hanna Montana CD, and stuff for my room. So she must realize that with money you can buy cool stuff and that to get money all it takes is a little work. One of the neatest things to see was that Lisa didn't have to bug Natalie to do the work....she just went out and did it.
3) The kids quickly learned that if you used the rake, you could fill the bucket much faster. They apparently also learned that if extra leaves and dirt were put into the bucket, the bucket filled up even faster. We weren't sticklers on the amount of dirt and leaves in the bucket, but the kids found a flaw in the payment process and took advantage of it. Good for them! But next time I'm going to set a stricter rule.
Just so you know, we don't pay the kids for every job they do. They have a very long list of regular chores that have to be done or they can't do certain activities. We only pay for money jobs that are above and beyond the normal call of duty...or Lisa and I just don't want to do them.
Either way, I'm very proud of Natalie. She did a great job and worked very hard. Now if I can just find the right incentive for Brendan... Any suggestions about what works with boys?
BTW: Dr. Pope was my Econ 110 Professor...I loved that guy.
Much to our chagrin, the previous owners of our house filled the flower beds up with lava rocks. Of course the rocks are grenades, lawn mower missiles, and flower killers so they had to go. Unfortunately, quite a few still hide in the bushes and in the mud.
Anyone remember Econ 110? I loved it because I think all people are motivated by self interest--even irrational 5 and 7 year olds. So I ran an experiment (don't tell the social workers) using my ki..., I mean guinea pigs.
On Monday, I offered $2.50 per bucket of rocks that the kids found. It worked pretty well. Brendan was the first to fill a bucket and then Natalie persisted and filled two buckets. Of course, we heaped the praises on them and gave them the money as soon as possible.
Now I know for a fact that there are still quite a few rocks out there...so I offered them this.
It is supposed to rain tomorrow but Thursday and Friday we have other plans... I guess we'll see how much Natalie wants that Hanna Montana CD and how much Brendan wants another transformer.
I'll post their earnings tomorrow.
We followed everyone's advice and picked up the trampoline. Ezra is totally bummed that his nice, new, green grass is covered. Of course it was a family project to put the whole thing together. This is just a quick video of us putting it together.
The rules are strict:
1) Your parents have to agree before you jump
2) Only 2 people of similar age at a time
3) No toys or flips on the tramp
4) No fighting, pushing, or wrestling (at least no wrestling without dad)
There are a whole bunch more. What rules do you use?
So now that spring is just around the corner (and the backyard is finally finished), we are debating what we should put in our backyard for the kids to play on. The two big options are a Play Fort or a Trampoline. We can see different advantages to both, but we wonder which the kids would play on/with the most.
Does anyone have one or both and how do your kids do with either? Even if you don't have either, what would you do?
After a few very late nights and a very long Saturday, the deck is finally in! We used to have a Jacuzzi built into our deck, but it was too much of a temptation for a certain 4 year old so we gave it away. We were left with a huge hole in the deck which finally got filled in!
Note how well Natalie is holding the nail for spacing between boards.
I can't tell you how many boxes of screws I went through to build this thing. Even worse, I must have taken 30 trips to Home Depot. I've never built a deck before!
So we've brought in 18 square yards of dirt to the backyard (or should I say we've been lazy and hired someone to do it?). The rain is starting up, but there is still hope we can get the grass in soon. Can you see us playing soccer back there?
Don't ask me why we did it, but within 2 months of moving into our house, we tore up the backyard. Now we need to bring in about 30 yards of dirt with a wheelbarrow to fill it up to the level of the wall.
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