Siblings Sharing a Room

So in the couple weeks since I have posted anything, I've been busy with the start of the public school year for Gwyneth. She is repeating her Kindergarten year, and I will have MUCH to say about that in future posts.

But for this post, I wanted to start sharing some of the things we did over the summer. One big change we made in the house was to buy Ryker a twin mattress (moving him out of the tiny toddler bed) and move Gwyneth's twin mattress into his room. We decided to try this room-sharing so that we could use Gwyneth's room as a nursery after Baby #3 is ready to move out of our room eventually.

I also wanted to make the new shared sibling room a little more "big kid" style instead of baby or toddler style. So we got rid of all the baby and toddler toys and decorations on the shelf. I moved the rocking chair out and planned to put together a Reading Nook in the corner. One of the craft projects that the kids and I did this summer was an alphabet caterpillar. After we found a caterpillar in one our container plants outside, we talked a lot about caterpillars and butterflies. Unfortunately, when I looked up our brown and black caterpillar friend on the internet, it turned out that he was destined to become a boring brown moth, not a colorful butterfly. Oh well. It did give me the project idea for a construction paper alphabet caterpillar to tape to the wall for the Reading Nook.

Today I kept Gwyneth home from school because she has a runny nose and noisy cough. Luckily she was in good spirits and still had an appetite, so today was kind of a play day/unschooling day. We finally set up the Reading corner and the kids had a blast with their reading/play tent. There is a small corner shelf for books behind the tent that they can reach through the tent's back door.

Of course, after this first, sweet picture was taken, a major fight occurred inside the tent and I had to put in place a "one-kid-in-the-tent-at-a-time" rule... 

I am still finishing up the curtains for the big window in their room. Ryker's theme of robots in blue and gray and red is still present in room, so the curtains will match that theme, but I'm adding bits of Gwyneth's things around to help them both feel that it is truly a shared sibling room.