Slow Day

Today was supposed to be Science day, but Jack was really excited to play Monopoly again. This time, we cleared off the table so we wouldn't have to put it up when Lily woke up. We played until he got bored of it, which was about a round and a half (going around the board one and a half times). I was pretty impressed with how well he handled the rules, the money, paying and receiving rent, etc. But since it involved quite a bit of counting up to 12, and recognizing the numbers 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 500, I decided it counted for math day, which is tomorrow. So we switched math and science days :D Tomorrow we'll make boats with play-doh, and see how well they float, and see what happens when we drop just a ball of play-doh into the water. (It'll sink! Why will it sink when it's just a ball but not when it's in the shape of a boat? Water displacement! Got the idea off the back of a cereal box, folks, can't claim credit myself.)

I was so not motivated to pick up all the toys today. I really need to have Jack do it, anyway, but it's so unfair that Jack should have to pick up all the toys when Lily makes more mess than he does; I could help him, but that's almost more work than just doing it myself. (In Jack's defense, he's actually pretty good at picking up when I do ask him to; it's just that that's a recent development and my mindset hasn't caught up yet.) So I sit here, blogging, while the floor is littered with books and toys. Tim wanted to put the books up higher where Lily couldn't reach them, but if she can't reach them and pull them down, Jack doesn't notice them as much and doesn't ask me to read to him. When they're strewn all over the floor, he picks them up, looks through them, and asks me to read to him. Lily flips through them, too, with intense concentration, and will occasionally hand me one imperiously, but she doesn't sit through the whole book being read to her, yet. Jack has sat through 74 books since we moved here; we're keeping a log of the number of books he's had read to him as part of the summer reading program at the library. A couple of them were pretty long, too, for picture books.

I need some ideas for Thursday (history day) and Friday (art day). History day can be really easy, just read him one of the library books we have about some true story or other. (He learned about WWII and Sacagawea recently, to name a couple.) And I'm thinking for art day, I could get him to color with crayons. He's not a big crayon guy, though. I'd like him to be, though, to facilitate writing development. Any ideas on how I could get him excited to color with crayons and/or write?