August Day 5 - Vacuum Cleaner

Vacuum day was pretty fun.  We started the day with the question of the day.  Who vacuums in your home?  This is one question where the answer is always Mom.  Jeff hates to vacuum.  But it's only fair, since I hate to cook.  We actually had quite a few little sequins scattered around the floor from day 3 so I really needed to vacuum.  I showed Lachlan and Peter the sequins on the floor and turned on the vacuum to get to work.  I have a bag-less vacuum so everything get's sucked up into the clear container.  Before I dumped it I opened it up and looked through it a bit to show them some of the sequins that had been vacuumed up. 

Next we made our own vacuums.  The boys really enjoyed making them, but Lachlan really wanted to figure out how to make it work like a vacuum.  Since the handle is like a straw he placed his vacuum over something and sucked.  It was a piece of dirt or something so when it flew up into his mouth he wasn't too thrilled.  Next I decided I would get out cheerios for him to suck up with his vacuum.  I thought these might go over a little bit better when they got to his mouth. 

Next we vacuumed shapes by tossing all the foam shapes on the floor.  Peter was most interested in this activity.  I gave him a cloth bag and told him to vacuum or pick up all the small circles, and then the big ones, then the little rectangles and then big.  He did this over and over again, sometimes just picking them up as he pleased and sometimes following instructions. 

Next we played the Memory Match game.  The cards came in the bag that day.  I cut them up and laid them out on the ground.  Peter would turn over 2 and if they didn't match I would flip them back.  This is the part I had to be on top of.  They would just keep flipping them all over until all the pictures were showing, which is of course not the point of the game.  The cards had inventions on them to tie in with the theme of course.  After a few games with Peter, Lachlan decided he wanted to play as well.  We laid on the floor for 30 minutes or more playing this game.  I kept the cards and put them in my diaper bag to play when we are out and about sometime and need something to do.  Finally, I was a little tired of laying on the floor, so I downloaded a couple new memory games on the iPad and they played for another 30 minutes or so. 

The last activity we did that day was the Counting to 10.  I gave Lachlan a blank piece of paper and set it up in front of the number line at the little table with a pen.  I told him to write the number 10.  First he counted to 10 on the number line to remind himself which one was the number 10.  Then he carefully wrote the 0 first and then the 1 in front of it.  He did it really well and with out frustration.  Next I told him to make the paper dirty by putting 10 finger prints on the paper.  I got out the stamp pad and had him pick a finger.  He made ten and then just kept going, oh well. 

All in all this was a really nice day, with a lot of activity that the boys enjoyed and many hours with the TV turned off and their minds being challenged.  That is an awesome day for me.