My four boys are my heart and soul: Big Boys

My boys have always been very destructive. I thought at first that it was just how kids were but I think mine are a bit more than the usual. Those email's we get with kids getting into trouble (ie. a carton of eggs/shells all over the floor or the naked boy covered with panty liners) are what I deal with on a usual basis. I don't seem to know how to teach my boys not to destroy things and have had to just take those types of things away. There's always something else they find but I learn what not to give them on a regular basis.

For this reason the kids rooms are very bare. We tried to decorate Joey/Joshy's room last summer/fall with posters and glow in the dark stickers etc. It lasted all of a few days before they tore it all down and destroyed it. I was crushed as was daddy.

But now I NEED to get Joey's room made up so that he can do what he needs to to learn. He needs to have access to markers and crayons, paper and glue and I need to trust that he can use them 99% of the time (at least) properly. I have workbooks and flash cards that I want him to use to learn his letters and spelling. He can't use them or learn from them if they're locked up in my closet.

So I had a talk with Joey and advised him we're going to make him a big boy room again (twin bed instead of toddler bed too) and a place for doing school work. He LOVES doing homework, he needs a place to do it. I told him what I expect of him and his punishment if he destroys it or anything with it. He gets the room stripped once again back to a baby room and I won't make him a room again. I think he understands.

Yesterday we took down his toddler bed and put up the twin. We moved Jackson out and into Joshy's room. Moved a chest of drawers into Joshy's room and rearrainged the furniture in both rooms. We added to Joey's room the Disney Car's wooden table and chairs that he/Joshy got for Christmas, a plastic drawers organizer and his art easel. I have a large magnetic white board that will be hung and so far (plan to get more) I have a boarder like they put up in classrooms with the alphabet to hang as well.

I filled up the drawers with "WASHABLE" markers, water color paint (with smock) and crayons, a glue stick and scissors and construction paper. Flashcards, magnetic plastic letters and workbooks. Again, reminding him of the punishment if he doesn't use this stuff correctly. I even told him, you want to make a picture with your markers you ask "mommy I want to use my markers, what can I draw on?" In case he's not quite sure.

They all are napping right now, when they wake we're going to pick up some shelves to put up on the walls and magnet strips so I can hang his art and good papers.

I make a list on the library website of over 500 books we're going to work on reading (as many as possible this summer) and teaching him to read! I ordered 15 of them and as soon as they are in I will go pick them up. I printed up 3 webpages of that list (8 printed pages for each webpage) and put that into a binder so we can keep track of what books we read. Once I get it all done I'll take some pictures but for now lets see what I can find as to how it was set up before...

Well here an example of the destruction... Joey and Joshy found an old bag of flour that daddy was throwing away. They took it out of the trash and proceeded to do this... to the basement.