Monday.

D. painted some shells to keep busy when her brother was doing his spelling lesson this morning.
T. painted some shells after he finished his morning subjects. I need to thank my MIL who brought us back a HUGE bag of shells from her winter trip to Florida. I have a year supply of shells to keep the children busy.
T. made some pencil toppers to dress up his new school supplies and to give him something to fidget with when he is thinking and doing his school work. If he doesn't have something to fidget with he often falls off the chairs when doing school work. If he can fidget with his fingers he has an easier time keep his rump in place. LOL! Crazy YUP! BUT it works for us!

I was such a good mama today! I gave my children some new toys! LOOK! LOL!
YUP! Pop bottles cut up! I gave 2 pieces to D. and the rest to T.

D. now has a new funnel AND a new way of making sand castles! Not every child has such fancy sand and water toys. LOL! BTW The next soda bottle I get I plan on poking holes in the bottom of and making it a sand sifter/ water sprinkler. My children are very easy to please!T. used his new toys in his new invention. I will start at the beginning to explain his new invention. T. asked to build a roller coaster today with cardboard tubes. We don't have enough wrapping paper, paper towel, and tp cores to do that (well to make on the size he wanted anyway). Instead he decided to downs size his invention and use paper and my favorite school supply MASKING TAPE! I know everyone who knows me KNOWS that I think masking tape is at the top of my must have on the school supply list! I don't know if I will ever run out of uses for masking tape. My son is following in my footsteps. Rob brought home a new roll of tape for T. tonight and he jumped up and down and squealed with excitement. He was more excited over this roll of tape than he is on his birthday in front of a stack of gifts. LOL! He LOVES tape! Anyway, this is what he came up with.

Picture below shows the first few tubes taped to the wall.
This next one shows a ramp that lets the marble go a bit uphill if it is rolling fast then it goes down the second slope. I had to show T. how this could work. He tried many times to find a way to get a second ramp going down to work. He first put tape at the end to block the tube off and the marble would stick and not work for him or he would make a big drop down to let the ball drop near the ground. He got a bit frustrated not being able to think of a way to get it to move the other way without a big drop (he wanted to keep lots of wall space open to keep the run going.Funnel was added to watch the ball swirl around.
Then another funnel and the ramp goes back to the left again. The green is the tubes made from the soda bottle centers.


Then a clear tube (clear soda bottle) and a cup (bottle bottom) at the end to catch the marbles.D. thinks this is HER new toy!!! LOL! She screams and cries I need beans! She thought marbles are beans. We told her they are marbles and now she screams and yells marbles. T. and her had so much fun playing with this tonight! I know D. will break it tomorrow and T. will build it a new way. I hope to get a video of how cute the 2 of them are with this! They can be so nice with each other.

I know this is NOT a true invention (but I will not tell T. that). It is just a marble run. Now I want you to know he has a NICE marble run set made out of wood but that is not what he wanted today. It is true we have lots of homemade toys made with paper and tape but he does have real toys also (giggle). He wanted to make his own invention himself today. Well, I did have to make the clear tubes from the center of the soda bottles at the bottom (I didn't think they would stay stuck shut with masking tape. I used duck tape to make them into tubes for him. This project he worked on off and on all day. He would have spent more time on it if he didn't have to do school but I told him he had to do his school work! We did agree that he could add 1 tube after every 5 math problems. It seemed to speed up his math. Before I agreed to that he kind of sat in front of the math book looking at the tubes just thinking about what he wanted to do. I know this is NOT the perfect way to teach a child but he did get his work done and I didn't have to deal with the daydreaming he was doing before I agreed to this. I think of it as a win win situation not a naughty child and bad teacher one like some might see it. I do hope to someday have my children sitting well at desks or a table and working hard on stuff with no noise or bouncing around but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. For now I will keep doing what works for us.


Below is a video of his creation earlier in the day. I tried to take a video of it tonight but it was so dark it didn't show up well. This does not show all of his tubes he has going right now. It is my voice at the end. I often call T. buddy.


T.'s Marble run.