Queen for a day

I can't believe that I was nervous about how the afternoon would unfold as we returned from our after-lunch jaunt outside.  I was feeling unsettled that there was absolutely nothing scheduled for the afternoon.  While Nicholas had mentioned some things he wanted to do, I had visions of my girls running wild through the house with every possible costume we owned clinging to them in some fashion, tearing apart the basement my husband had worked so hard to clean up, then proceeding to leave mayhem in their wake in every other room they visited.  It would have looked something like this:

And then my Jaelyn, the Queen of the Day, led our afternoon activities.  Queen of the Day, you ask?  It arose from my attempt to bring in our Monday with some festive cheer.  I told them several stories inspired by Three Kings Day, and then I baked a cake with a dry bean hidden in it.  Whoever found the bean in their piece of cake was declared King or Queen of the Day!  The newly minted royalty was given the responsibility to call the shots - in an innocent, fun sort of way - for the rest of the day.  Today the bean was found by Miss Jaelyn.

First she led us through some painting.  She received some Glob Paint for Christmas and has been waiting patiently to try it out.  At her command, we mixed the lovely-smelling pigments with water and painted what came to us...stormy water with a compass, abstract toddler art, and a garden scene graced our walls once they were done.

Then Queen Jaelyn brought up our Create-A-Story game.  I love this game, but I haven't pushed it on my kids and it's only been out a couple of times.  It provides all the elements of a story - characters, setting, plot, descriptive words, resolution and a lesson learned - and it's the writer's job to put all these seemingly unrelated items together into a coherent story.  We played storyteller for well over an hour.  While Nicholas and I didn't get to actually write our stories, I'm looking forward to incorporating his story elements into an introduction to free-writing in the next day or two.  Jaelyn's story was about a team of scuba divers who travelled to the ocean floor only to find a city there.  It's inhabitants wanted the divers to take them to the surface, but the divers refused.  This angered the beautiful sea queen, who trapped them with blue slime.  Thankfully, there was a gorilla still aboard the scuba divers' boat who had a crystal ball and saw that his friends were in trouble and rescued them.  Later, our heroine (Jaelyn) and the gorilla travelled somewhere else and found a treasure chest.  They returned to land and gave it to the mayor, who rewarded them with a million dollars.  During the mayor's announcement, onlookers made fun of the gorilla, but Jaelyn decided not to listen to those people because the gorilla was her best friend.   Love it!

After that...well, I think the girls did run amok.  But most of the costumes stayed in their home and those that were brought out were back in their places before bedtime.  Thanks to the command of our Queen of the Day.