rankings

i have decided to put a number system to our favorite activities...for future referral. (don't i sound organized! or OCD!?!) you know, level of difficulty, clean up, amount of time it earned me in "my time minutes"... for instance, the snail garden was a 7 for fun, 8 for the amount of "my time" it earned me and a A+ for clean-up (they did most of it, and then the gardeners came! score!). But the fall out factor (the long term consequence of it all!) was kinda bad...like a 2...the boys decided to run through the girls' sweet little cuddly garden and smashed all the snails! (picture lots of screaming by little girls and lots of laughing by "mean brothers"!)

face painting... it's an 8 in the fun category! clean-up: B+...the kids did most of it! fall out factor: 2...they were super whiny about having to wash it off before bedtime...this negated the free time the activity had earned me!

paper shredding/playing...this was initially a great idea! they did a job i didn't want to have to do (shredding old paperwork) and then turned it into at least an hour of fun(9).

clean up: at least a C-!!(i had to help WAY too much! and it stuck in their hair like you wouldn't believe!)

but there was very little fall out!!! still...i think i will leave this activity to when they are in someone else's "classroom"!!