I'm kind of excited. Since Ben is out earning the big bucks with all the yard work stuff this summer, Lydia has gotten the itch to "have a job." God bless her. She wants to mow lawns, too. But she's just about to turn 11, and just doesn't have the stamina for that kind of stuff yet. Darin and I did not want to discourage her, so we thought about what she could do here at the house that we could pay her weekly for. After all, *I* need the help! I don't want to send her off to some other family when I could use a helping hand. :-)

The three things that I can never keep up with are laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, and doing school with Henry, our 3 year old. He sees Ben, Lydia and Jack doing school and wants to do it, too, and asks me every day if we can do school together. I just don't have the extra minutes! I've done a few lapbooks with him, but find it hard to be consistent. So here comes Miss Lydia. We are going to pay her $15 per week to do some schoolwork with him. Should be less than an hour each day.
I do struggle a little bit with the need to do everything myself. I mean, I want to be the one to do schoolwork with Henry! But this will be good for Lydia. She's such a natural with the littles and I know she will do very well with Henry and earn every penny of her salary. And my time will come.

Of course I'm making all the plans for Lydia. With the older three, I used Readywriter for Handwriting Readiness. But ya know, that costs $$$, so I thought I would do a Google search to see if I could come up with some free printables instead. I found some printables as well as some good tips on Handwriting Readiness that should be a lot of fun for Henry and Lydia to work on together. Here are those links:
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/handwriting_readiness.htm

http://www.donnayoung.org/penmanship/redines.htm

http://www.otworks.com/otworks_page.asp?pageID=711
Activities suggestions for working on strength for fine motor skills

http://members.tripod.com/~imaware/fmotor.html
More fine motor activities