I don’t know about anyone else out there but school hasn’t even started yet and I’m already starting to shudder at the thought of all that schoolwork flooding in my door and onto the kitchen table and every other flat surface in the house.   I love to see the progress my 3 little geniuses are making in school but that coupled with the mail can quickly become a literal paper mountain.  We have trays set up for the kids to minimize the scatter during the week and it works like a charm.  “Scan-Man” takes us one step closer to spacial bliss

I have decided to start the “Scan-Man” up and get him rockin’ this year.  Each of us will have a folder on the computer for any papers we want to keep around but don’t necessarily need to have a physical copy handy.  Scanners are relatively inexpensive and you may want to pick up a paper shredder while you’re at it since you won’t need to FILE it anymore.  I get all fired up just typing that line   There will be plenty of sales coming up with school starting so keep your eye open for deals.  We’ll certainly post any we find!

Change is good!

Take a moment to think about how much paper storage you have in your house right now…. all of it… even in the attic!  This is 2009…make the change to storing it on the computer and free up some much needed space around the house.  Of course you will need to hang on to some precious items – don’t go scanning and shredding little Johnnie’s kindergarten art project. 

Can you feel the open space? 

TKMom

Space to moooove

Take a big piece of paper and put a giant red X on it. This X goes on the floor in the middle of the room and an unknown reward written on a small piece of paper goes underneath (don’t let them see this part). The reward should be something of particular interest to the mates involved in the adventure (this promotes auto-participation in the next adventure, of which there will surely be one). Everyone gets to pick a pirate name of course and they must speak in their best pirate voices throughout the entire adventure. If they have pirate dress-up clothes – by all means let them dress for the occasion!

All of the items around the ship(room) that are causing the ship’s deck to be a wreck are picked up and placed on the big red X. I mean everything from the clothes to stuffed animals to coloring books and so on gets piled on this X. Once the pile is complete – the mates look around the room and put away any remaining debris hanging around.

Now it’s time to get to the bottom of the pile and find out what is under that big red X! This is when you let the mates know there is treasure under that red X and they can’t see what it is until all the items in the pile are put in their proper place and the red X can be lifted. They will be scooting around the room like little deckhands in a hurry. If you have any pirate songs on CD play those too!

Side note: make sure the reward is something that can be redeemed fairly quickly after the task has been completed. Not trying to promote instant gratification but for this tip – the quicker the better on the reward end. Total prep time is about 4 minutes to get this rolling.

This little gem also works well with a cowboy theme -YEEHAAA MATES!

TKMate