Keeping the kids busy.....

The kids are out for the summer now, and will be spending the summer with me. They're normally in daycare where they get to do all kinds of fun stuff....but not this year... This year they get keep me company. So, I'll be looking for lots of free things to do.... I'm sure we'll visit the library, and the park, and the beach.....but I also want to make sure their being kept busy here at home. When they're busy.....they don't argue as much. I don't wanta here "He's sitting on my side of the couch!" or "She's looking at me!" all summer....so I've been finding things for them to do.

Today they painted a castle. I ran into a blog the other night, that I just couldn't stop reading. Meg from http://www.megduerksen.typepad.com/ is a Mom, that blogs about a little bit of everything. She's got the best colors...and some amazing pictures....And some really Good ideas on how to keep the kids busy. At their house they have Craft Thursdays.....and here recently, her kids painted pictures of castles using watercolors..... ((I loved that rainbow castle!)) .....so today, I decided to get my kids to do the same.

My youngest jumped right in.... and was at the bar painting before the other two were done sketching.... He's always excited to paint!

Where as the 2 older ones over thunk it. ((Yes, Thunk is a word in my vocab!.....and now that I've spell checked everything, I see that spell checker says it's a word, too...lol)) Not sure if it's the age.....but they're really critical of themselves. I tried to tell them it wasn't going to be graded or anything......and that I just wanted them to have fun with it. They set out to paint a masterpiece, but somewhere along the lines I thing they gave up and just painted a picture to please me.

This is Cora's Princess Castle!

And Cameron's Castle...

....And Drew's Castle. Now..... All three of my kids can draw when they want to. They just weren't all in the mood for it today. Drew started to sketch out this intricate castle, with moss covered walls and notes on the side to remind himself of how he wanted to paint it. And then ended up with this:

LOL....Slacker!!

Please don't think I'm telling my kids that it's not good enough, because that's not at all what I'm saying! I just don't think they were in the mood for details today. I will say though, that it kept them quiet for about 2 hours:)

I hope to do more things with them like this over the summer......... And then you'll see what I mean! I'm going to bring the artist out in each one of them yet!

Be Back soon with some jugs........