How to keep them out of the lesson room

Nice title but no answer. I can tell F over and over again that the lesson room is not a playroom. Still I find over and over again little dolls in the desks and drawing on the boards. My expo markers dried out once again for the misplaced lids. Not to mention the overall mess that then builds in the room overnight. Yesterday we had to clean before I could teach.

Then there is the schedule I put on the wall at the beginning of the year. Yesterday F made sure I followed the schedule. That darn thing halted my creativity. 

G has made great strides in her math. I decided that she was beginning to get bored so I skipped a few review lessons and introduced no concept yesterday. She was excited to learn something new now that her math confidence is increasing.  I just have to give her time to process the information. I find that if she does not answer me right away I ask it again and she gets frustrated. I must give her time...but her time frame is so much slower than mine. 

There new baby brother, O is now one month old and mother is still battling her open wound from the infection. Overall, she can now tend to most matters in her home except of course the most physically demanding. We still must be careful that she does not cause the wound to open more so the girls are getting a great lesson in laundry.

I plan to do lessons next week on Tuesday though Friday. We have so much to get done since we lost so many days to a difficult labor and pregnancy, not to mention the pneumonia that F had.  So I was thinking to ease the week we would create a New Years celebration in the classroom. I have all sorts of ideas in my head that will help bring in the year while also teaching about earth's rotation and time overall. With the start of winter I believe I can even include the tilt of the earth to teach about the season. It will be fun.  I plan to use baby O as the sun and have them rotate themselves slowly around him while turning to face him for the day and away from him for the night. Then use our globe to show it as as well.  We will see if it works of if baby O gets stepped on.