Creative with Cans...

Well, the boys have been out of school for 2 weeks now. I wanted to go back a little before school got out - the boys usually take a little something for their teacher on the last day of school and I guess its because of having a new little one at our house that I totally spaced it and 2 days before the last day of school I remembered and so we whipped this up - we were trying to use things that we had around the house but wanted to make it cute and let them know that we appreaciated them as teachers!! I know I have mentioned this before but they truly had wonderful teachers this year. So, we decided to get creative with cans - green bean cans to be exact. It's a pencil holder (if you couldn't tell :) ) and we filled it with some peanut M&M's and attached a poem that reads:

Sweets for the Sweet!

MISS CALL,

Green is for the inspiration you gave to me each day,

Blue is for your patience in showing me the way,

Orange is for your warmth and your caring style,

Yellow is for the way you could always make me smile,

Red is for my life that you touched this year,

You’re a very special teacher, that is very clear!

Thank you so much,

(They signed their name.)

Some days are better than others at getting the boys to do their jobs. A couple of days into summer break I decided that their jobs needed a little spicing up - so we got creative with cans again - mandarin orange cans. They have had job charts for about 1 1/2 years now so I thought we would try this approach - painted sticks in a can with the job written on one end and once they have completed the job they get to flip it and it will be a solid color. As you can see, Bryson's favorite color is red and Dillon's favorite color is blue.

The pictures below are of them while they were making the job cans and painting their sticks. I don't know what got into them but they were giggling and being as silly as a bunch of school girls! :) It was funny though. All through lunch I was telling them that we had a project to do. Bryson asked if it was going to be fun and I said that I thought it would be - who wouldn't want to glue paper on a can and paint sticks their favorite color? Well, turns out that as I got done explaining what we were making and why we were making it and that we were adding a few more jobs to the mix but raising the allowance just a bit, Dillon says, very dramatically I might add, "Ohhhhh.... I knew this wasn't going to be fun." Too funny! They ended up having fun. So - the first week was last week and they did all their jobs and they got paid - I had to go to the $ store and so they thought they would bring their money. They thought they had hit the jackpot!! Seriously - we were in there for over an hour. It was almost like Christmas morning for them. This was the first time they had been in the $ store with their own money and the concept of everything being a $ finally hit home and they were so excited!! So, on the way home Dillon says, "Oh... you mean I have to wait a whole other week to get paid so I can go to the $ store again?" Yep - welcome to the real world. They got some magic trick kits (which they totally loved and played with for the rest of the day and night), some big giant bug thingys, and a water whistle squirt gun. I should of taken pictures of their newly purchased treasures but I forgot. So far the excitement with the $ store is working - we'll see if it lasts the whole summer.