Challenge Day 6- My Little Scientists

My petri dishes and test tubes came in the mail, along with my window crayons. I was SO excited. I knew I HAD to do a rocking Light Table invitation. This is what it ended up being:

(Colored water, petri dishes, dropper and syringe, q-tips and cotton balls and colored corn)

Jeremiah found the invitation first. Bell was lounging on the couch with a belly full of cereal. He looks at the table, then at me and goes "Huh? WHAT?! What am I supposed to do with this?" I replied with "Whatever you want!" He did a little leap of joy and got right to exploring it all.

So serious!

Bell soon realized there was fun being had that she was left out of and scampered off to find her brother. She ran over to the table and said "WHAT. IS. THIS?! Hooray!" lol They make me laugh. She got right in there with Jeremiah. They were being very serious and very meticulous. I think they were plotting to take over the world.

I thought I had another picture of the table semi "lived in", but I must have deleted it. :( All I have now is one of the aftermath.

I'm not sure why it's hard for me to watch them play with things NOT in the way I think they should. Or the way I would. They wanted nothing to do with the petri dishes, for the most part. They instead, spent the entire time dumping the corn and cotton balls INTO the cups of colored water (several more cups were later added to keep the party going). We had cups filled of sludge by the end of it. But, they loved it. They also ended up using about half of a bag of cotton balls. LOL They were Bella's favorite part. Bella eventually bored and Jeremiah decided to hoard all the corn.

This was what he concocted

I thought I saw painted/colored corn on the Play At Home Mom blog, that I love so very much, but by the end of this, most of the paint was coming off of the corn. Granted I used washable paint. But, in my defense, I wasn't expecting them to mix the water and corn. Silly me. Do not underestimate your children's imaginations! So, now I have all normal colored corn again and I need to find a new way to color it... if that's even possible.

After this came lunch and then nap. Well, the older two were offered a nap and the baby woke up. The days of all 3 napping at the same time are long gone. However, Bella will stay in her room and play quietly for about an hour.

Since the window crayons showed up shortly after nap time, Jeremiah was chomping at the bit to get to use them. So, I told him to go at it.

OK, these were SERIOUSLY fun.

Eventually Jeremiah got cranky and he took a nap. Around the same time Mia went down. But oh wait! Bell was ready to come out of her room. LOL We let her have a go at the window crayons. She loved them too. I forgot to snap a picture. Mia decided she wasn't tired after all, so we took the girls outside to play, since the weather was like, in the 60's. We didn't realize however that there were Gale force winds. The wind was knocking Bella over and pushing Mia's walker all over the place. It was absolutely hilarious! We had intended to stay out and play for a while and have Jey come join us when he woke up, but Bella really did not like it. We ended up staying outside for all of about 10 minutes. We came inside and started straightening up and getting ready to cook dinner. 

SO WINDY!

 Overall the day was wonderful. There were the normal, every day meltdowns. But I realized that we had not really gotten on to the kids in well.. Gee... about 6 days. I don't think we've had but one timeout. HOORAY! I HATE timeout. I don't think they're particularly effective nor do they address the issue, but sometimes, I'm at a lack of how to handle the situation. The kids don't seem to be fighting as much and are interacting more.

Who would have thought!?! ME, playing with the kids would make them behave better... It makes PERFECT sense, but I never thought about it. WHY don't people tell you these things? This past week has been fantastic and I cannot WAIT to keep playing with my beautiful family!

That being said, I'm expecting an epic melt down day, any time now. Because this seems too good to be true!

God is good and I'm so incredibly grateful to have the amazing family that I do <3