Mornings at the Harmon house

Mornings are kind of quiet around our house. As quiet as it can be with 4 kids in the house, anyway. On the weekdays, I usually let the kids sleep until they wake up on their own. Wednesday is the only day of the week we have a schedule to keep. Landon has speech at 10:00, so we have to leave the house by 9:30. Other than that, we're pretty laid back in the mornings.

Our number one rule for school mornings is "No TV or computer until schoolwork is finished." When the kids get up, they (are supposed to) make their beds, get dressed, and eat breakfast. My plan is that I will have everything I need to prepare for the school day ready by the time they all finish breakfast and get the kitchen cleaned up. Some days it takes me a little longer than I plan to prepare and they have some free time. This is where our second rule comes in-"If you can't find something to do on your own, mom will find you something to clean."

They have gotten pretty good at finding things to do. Sometimes they play their DS's, but it doesn't take long before they're bored with that. Other days it's legos, play dough, Mr. Potato Heads, drawing, reading, magic tricks, or board games. Rarely, if the grass isn't wet with dew, they go outside and play on the trampoline or ride bikes.

Today things took a little longer than I would have liked. I decided to make a couple of games that I saw on pinterest and it took more time than I expected. When I finally had everything ready, this is how I found them.

Cheyenne was coloring her box from Build-A-Bear (actually, it was Build-A-Dino inside T-Rex at Downtown Disney),
Sierra was reading a library book we're returning tomorrow,
and Dakota was giving Landon a chess lesson.
While they were busy with all of that, here's what I was doing.

First, I made a couple of games using Easter eggs (better late than never, right?).
The first one was for sight word practice.

After they play a few times, I'm going to make it a little harder by just giving them the list of words without the boxes. Later on, I'll take the list away and have them unscramble to words from memory.

The second egg game is for practicing word families.

Today, I just had them practice turning the top of the egg and reading the words. Next time, I will have them write the words they make on the paper. I put it in a sheet protector so they can use a dry erase marker and reuse the paper many times. This will be a really easy activity for me to change up so we can use it over and over again.

I also made another sight word activity for them today.
I found this pattern block page at PreKinders . There are a lot of different designs to choose from. Next week, I'm going to take the labels off the blocks and have the kids draw word cards instead. Then, they'll have to figure out which piece they need for the word they draw.

Finally, I made a lego tower with the memory verse on it so they could build the verse.
I usually do this with the bigger Duplo blocks, but I think I like the small ones better. I like this activity because they have to build it backwards and really think about which word they're looking for. It's been really great for helping Landon work on fine motor skills as well.

Tomorrow is Wednesday. We have to be up and out the door early (for us), so I should probably get busy setting up everything we'll need for tomorrow. I'll be glad I did when school time comes around.