Another year older means...more chores!

So, can you tell I am having a free day? Troy is working, kids and I are going somewhere later this afternoon, and I have spent two weeks getting ready for school so today is laundry day, light lesson planning, and fun! It is beautiful weather outside and the kids were enjoying it until...the mosquito bites had covered all their bare skin! That's even with bug spray on them already! I don't know what it is but we have a million of them in our yard and they are there all times of the day. Ugh, it's so frustrating to have a nice yard and nice weather and not be able to enjoy it.

I've updated the kids list of chores or as we try to call them "acts of service" or "AOS" for short. We aren't big on the word "chore", it just sounds so Eeyore-ish so we came up with AOS instead since what we are doing is serving each other by doing our part. A lot of things remained the same as last year but since the kids are older their responsibilities have increased. I made a checklist for me to use each day to mark off that they have done their AOS but I haven't gotten used to using it yet. Maybe once we are in the school routine I will do better. The purpose of it is to show in graph form how they are doing with getting things done. We may do a reward or a consequence depending on how their graph looks.

For some reason these didn't load exactly right. The top of the first one is on the second page and the top of the second one is missing along with Siara's name. Oh well, you get the picture and maybe some ideas! We made a big deal about the fact that Keaton's no longer says "nap" time. Since he is in kindergarten it says "rest" time! Now, it is still my intention that he will go to sleep, and I think that most days he probably will just because he's 5 and still needs that rest, but he will be allowed to look at a book quietly first. Something I can't help but think is that kindergarten was so big and special for the other two because they went off to school for the first time and Keaton will not be doing that now. So, I have tried to think of as many ways as I can to make him feel older and special as he begins his kindergarten journey at home!