Weekend Craftiness - UPcycling T-Shirts to Yarn

I've been having WAY too much fun on Pinterest lately and have saved so many wonderful ideas that I decided to share some ideas with my kids and get crafty with them. 

So, we dug through our goodwill bag and pulled out all the old t-shirts and starting turning them into rags.   It was fun to see them intense on the work and working together.  

Best of all, we were able to sit around the table and work together on a common goal.  We're working on some projects using recyled materials for their 4-H activities this year.

The final result!

Now to dig through Pinterest and their crochet patterns.

THINK before you speak

In trying to actually give my kids some good visual reminders of the lessons that I am trying to teach them, I put together a couple of signs.  It also gave me a good opportunity to try out a new digital scrapbooking software.  (Stay tuned for a giveaway, too!)

Here are my final attempts, what do you think?  Guess which one I used?? ;)

Forget Not...

Sometimes when you hear a speaker it just speaks to your soul. 

The talk tonight given by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf at the General Relief Society Meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of those.

Being the visual person that I am, I had to put together a little reminder of his five main points, and I wanted to share it with you.  You can find some highlights of his talk here. 

I highly recommend it.

Chore Wars

The generation-old battle between parent and child and the completion of chores continues on in my household.  My kids are fairly good at getting things done, but they often rush through it just to get it done, skip steps, etc. 

A couple things I've learned about my kids:

• They are easily distracted (like raccoons and shiny objects)
• They do better when they only see what they need to do, and are able to check off when things are done
• They like knowing ahead of time what is expected of them
• They do better when they can touch, feel, physically check something off, etc

We used to have a weekly chore list, and they'd check it off each day.  Some of the chores alternated between the two of them, and we found that they'd often get confused who was doing what on which day. 

I came up with the idea of a small, individual checklist.  I bought 1/2 sized clipboards at Wal-Mart.  I made chore lists for each day, then put them back to back on a piece of construction paper and laminated them w/ the self-lamination sheets you can get at the store.  They have chores for Mon-Sat.  They use a dry-erase marker to check of when they're done, then they will get a parent signature to verify that it is done to expectation.

At the end of the week, they will turn in their clipboards and we will calculate their allowance based on the percentage of the work that they completed.  For example, if they did 80% of their work, and their allowance is $5, they will get $4.   We still haven't figured out the amounts, I'm trying to determine what would work best.

Here are some great links and resources for chores as well:

Age appropriate Chore List: http://www.familyroi.org/Family_ROI_Age_Appropriate_Chores.pdf
Online, interactive chore chart: http://www.chorewars.com/