First Days of Simplifying

Our first few days of the Modern Wilder Winter has gone well. I have hid the toys and changed up what they have available in the living room. The whole idea is to encourage reading and learning. Bordon leads to more exploration outside of scripted and over stimulating toys. I cant believe how well I did. In the boys room they have one small bucket full of blocks, 5 dinosaurs and about 8 animals, books, 8 cars and I cut their dress-up by about 3/4's. I even look all but two stuffed animals from their beds. The older son is taking it quite well. He has come down each morning dressed as a pioneer in the spirit of the change. My three year old though keeps asking for the legos and asking why I took his toys. But once he starts playing and exploring he forgets about it. Plus the kids can pick up their own mess now.

One the First we finished the last chapter of Life of Ferd Butterflies. We also read a lot from Little house in the big woods. We wrote down the jobs they did on each day of the week. We don't need to churn butter so this is our schedule that we came up with.

Monday-Laundry ( we shall see if I can get it done in one day, even with Milo's help)
Tuesday-Ironing and cloth diaper cleaning
Wednesday-Mending and sewing projects
Thursday-"Churning" We will be cleaning the bottom floor of the house
Friday-Clean top floor of house
Saturday-Clean up the outside of the house and the car.
Sunday-Rest

We also read about how they treated the Sabbath.
These are the activities we decided would be ok and not ok on Sunday.

OK
Cuddle
Sit Quietly
Play with Paper dolls
Play Quietly
Read Scriptures
Look at books
Quietly play with dolls
We added (listen to scripture books on tape and writing letters)










NOT OK
Making new things
Screaming
Yelling
Shouting
running


On the 2nd the boys helped a lot with cleaning, painted with water colors and we backed pumpkin custard (pumpkin pie with no crust) from scratch. We read some out of a book called the Pioneer Sampler. It talks about the different jobs in the family. One thing Milo and I took note of was that the 4 year old would start to do family chores when she was 5. I am trying to take this idea to heart and let Quincy alone a little more when it comes to work. He still must do his morning duties but it is up to him if he wants to help with the morning team work. We also learned about churning butter. We tried to make our own butter but we learned that the cream being at room temp. was very important. After the boys took their turn shaking the cream I shook it all of the way to whip cream. Not complaining. It went great with our pumpkin custard and maple syrup. I already have purchased more cream so we can try it again this coming week.