BUSY DAYS

The last two days I've been helping my kids set up their own blogs. Austin has yet to post anything on his blog but Amanda is having a blast typing away as fast as she can. As you can see if you check out her blog she is a list maker.
Yesterday was as busy as Monday was quiet. We had a total of 13 daycare kids between the ages of seven months and 12 years. Not all at once though. Some were before or after school kids. Most of the time was fun. Lots of stories, songs, and games. Memory match is the definite favorite of the preschoolers right now and we played five rounds of it yesterday. At least I have several sets of cards in different themes. Yesterday it was Diego. And Old McDonald had some very interesting aniamals on his farm-including a teddy bear and a seahorse. What sound does a seahorse make anyway?
Today was busy as well with a total of 11 kids. My assistant, Marie, took the day off because her daughter was in the hospital having her baby. So I was on my own. Well, not really on my own because Austin and Amanda help so much.
Amanda took in on herself today to clean my room and Michael's room (without me asking her to). That was a major lift for me. And this was after she had already completed all her other morning chores.
This afternoon while the little kids took naps Austin and Amanda and I did our "schoolwork". I hesitate to even label it that because it is so much fun for us and very much interest led. Their interests, not always mine, although for the most part I am thorougly enjoying it as well. Amanda worked on taking a personality test that she found in the book she is reading now-"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens". Austin and I read together from a science book about air pressure. I read a chapter from "Anne of Avonlea" to them and also several chapters from Exodus. Then Amanda wanted to post on her blog so while she was doing that I read to Austin. He loves science and especially animals so we printed some information about foxes and about dolphins from the internet and I read some of those to him. Amanda was listening in and commenting while she was typing. One of the articles had a pie graph and a bar graph in it and we discussed how to read the graphs. We also played some math war with multiplication cards. Overall a very good afternoon.
It is very quiet here now. All the daycare kids have left and Doug took the older kids to church so it's just Michael and I. And since he is just learning how to dress and undress himself he is very busy sitting in the floor trying to pull his shirt off. Learning, learning everywhere!