Busy Bees

Rose loves going to her little preschool group. But I think Ginger loves the days when preschool is at our house even more then Rose does. I invited one of Rose's little friends to come to it since I never had everyone show up all year, also Ginger had her friend who comes to play with us too. I ended up with the full class plus three extra, but it was totally fun! They are such great kids!
This is from a preschool field trip we took to a local Mexican restaurant to see how they make tortillas. It was pretty much the best field trip ever, not really for the learning part. That was a little short, but for the fact that they comped all the kid's meals plus everyone took home a goody bag of stuff. I brought three kids, so that was pretty awesome to eat lunch with all of my friends and their kids on the cheap.

Rose loves this boy in the group. His name is Landon and she talks about him all the time. I think they mesh really well because Landon has two older sisters and Rose has two older brothers.

I've been having Rose do "homework" in the afternoon while the boys work on theirs. Looking back I think a large reason why I never struggled with getting the boys to do their schoolwork was because they were always doing "homework" with Ken even though they weren't in school. Rose loves doing it with them and she has gotten much better at writing her name. Which is kind of a really big deal for her because 6 months ago she was terrified of making an ugly mark on her paper.
The girls have also taken over quite a few chores from their brothers lately. They are pretty happy with their new responsibilities. I have always had them do chores pretty much before they were 2, but this is C-H-O-R-E-S where I don't have to help, supervise, etc. I can leave the room and expect them to know how to do their chore and be physically able to accomplish it. You don't have to imagine how happy this makes me. I'll tell you it is FANTASTIC!!!
Granted when I leave the room they take 3 times as long and I have to remind, but I'm just so happy to have reached this benchmark I really couldn't care less!

The girls are responsible for setting the table (up above). They love that because whoever does most of the settings gets to choose where the rest of the kids have to sit. And they are always fighting over who get to sit next to me--I'm just saying:-)

Rose and Ginger can unload the dishes all by themselves (except knives of course) which they yell like crazy for me to take care of even though I am only two feet away. They just push the chairs where they need to go and climb onto the counters. If you know anything about me I'm really not a safety freak so it's not unusual for them to walk on the counters. They also gather up all the laundry and bring it to the Wash Room. Which is a totally good thing since they change their clothes like 5 times a day!
The girls clear the tables and bring me dirty dishes. Good thing too, since we happen to clean up Ken and the boy's breakfast dishes nearly every single morning. Clearly, I should have trained the boys in this when they were younger:-)


Let's see what else have they taken over...they do the trash too but Daddy has to help them.

And they do this too...
It's awesome that the girls have regular chores now, but my house is still totally trashed every single day! Ahh, you win some and you lose some:-)
I should mention that after they accomplish their chores for the day that the girls get to choose a Silly Bandz or sometimes stickers. They really love that! So do I! I am really not a chore chart type of mom.