It’s a Zoo Out There

Or in there. Where? The playroom.

So we tamed the animals and put them in a real zoo.

Well, a zoo made of 1x2’s and dowels.*

Inspired by this $160 zoo that holds way more stuffed animals than I would ever allow our children to own. And ours cost about $20. That’s approximately $140 savings. And Mr Einstein and I got to work on a project together. Which we love doing. Okay, I’ll be honest, which we’re learning to love doing together.

How do you tame the zoo at your house? Do your kids love stuffed animals as much as mine do? Do you have a stuffed animal quota?

* sorry for the lame picture. This picture was showing the aftermath of General Conference in April. I’ll replace it with a better picture of the zoo when I get a chance.

I'm Going Camping

My siblings and I played a word game when we were young called "I'm going camping". The "moderator" would start out by saying "I'm going camping, and I'm bringing ...." and then say something that fit into a category they had chosen. For example, sometimes we went through the letters of the alphabet, sometimes it was big things, or red things, or food item, or things that start with one of your initials, etc. Then the other players would take turns saying, "I'm going camping and I am bringing ... (fill in the blank). Can I come?" If the think you guessed was in the moderator's category, you could come. If not, the answer was no. Kind of like a convoluted game of 20 questions.

On your turn, rather than "bringing something" you could offer up a guess of what the category was. If you guessed correctly, you became the next moderator. It was a great rainy day or in-the-car game.

My kids aren't quite old enough for that game (although V is getting pretty good at abstract thinking games - for example, "Who Am I?/What am I thinking of?" games are some of his favorite).

That doesn't stop us from "camping" on rainy days.

This morning we built a tent in the living room using all the extra sheets.



It took up almost the whole living room.


The three playmates in the "entrance" of the tent.


I left a convenient "mommy-spy" spot by the railing where I can monitor all the action inside the tent. A few seconds after I snapped this picture, these two little guys got into it... I ended up having to remove them from the tent. Ah, children....

Funny thing about awesome tents... They only played in it for about 10 minutes... Then they were off to the bunk bed with their "lassos" (work out bands they had taped loops in).

Gotta love preschoolers.

What do you do with your preschoolers on rainy days?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Play and Sort

I am a big fan of sorting.

And a little obsessive.

Of course, like any good obsessive mother, I have to make sure the kids are obsessive, too. And then, there is the fact that sorting is good for kids cognitive development. You don't need fancy games or worksheets or projects to teach kids about sorting. In fact, all you need to be slightly neurotic about the playroom being organized, and then you will have an opportunity every day to sort with your kids!



I made these toy bags for Christmas one year when V was getting too old for just baby toys and I felt like the toys were taking over the family room. There was an animal one, too (with an elephant on it!) but our animal collection quickly outgrew the size of the bag.



I also realized that the bags are only really good for toys that are better to play with in a set (train tracks, blocks, dishes) where these plastic drawers work better for "categories" of toys (robots/people/machines, building blocks, animals, etc). If the kids are looking for a lion, they just pull out the animal drawer and get a lion, instead of dumping out the whole bag.

And when it's time for clean up? Sorting practice!

I made signs from pictures I took of the kids' actual toys for the front of each drawer - to make it a little more personal, and to help them with sorting. I was thinking of printing them in color, but I think the black and white is less distracting. I am pretty happy with our system for now, but I want to build a toy shelf/cupboard that I can lock up (when the kids don't clean up their toys or when we don't want them out all over the place). However, I think I will keep a lot of our current system when I build the cupboard.

How do you organize toys? Do you have to convince yourself that having all those little toys everywhere is actually good for your kids? How do you get your kids to clean up their toys? Do you play games with them?

 - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tire Tunnels

Earlier this summer I had the kids with me at a tire and auto place having the brakes checked out on my husband’s car (turned out it needed a lot of work done… but that’s another story). Well, it was a little bit of a wait, and while we were sitting around with nothing to do, the kids discovered that they could climb through the tires in the shop.

I was just grateful to have them entertained for a while, and the store folks didn’t seem to mind.

Animal Workout

Did you know that you can get your workout in and play with your kids? We did this “workout” today. It’s a great way to talk about the ways different animals move, and we get a workout (and our kids get a workout!) at the same time!

I took these pictures with my phone, no flash, so they are a little blurry, but at least you can see that Little Einstein liked to move! I did every action with him, both to show him how they go, and of course to get my own workout. You can do each animal action for as long (or as short) as you want. I think we probably worked out for about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour. The great thing about this work out is that is it a lot like interval training, depending on which animals you move like, and for how long. You are working really hard for a few reps (say with your frog – jump squats) then you let your heart rate come down while you move around like a chicken, or stretch like a dog. Feel free to mix up the animal poses, add a few of your own, or simply let your kids make up their own animal moves. And hey – follow their lead! Chances are their move is a pretty good workout, too.

We started out stretching like a dog (downward dog, anyone? He wouldn’t put his hips up as high as he usually does when I took the pictures – which was after we had already been through all the animals once):

Then we moved on to some slower moving animals, like ducks, chickens, and roosters.

Remember to make the animal sounds. It makes the activity that much more fun!

After that we did a little bit of frog (jump squat!), crab, and horse:

 

Don’t forget to run around like eagle (or your choice of bird) – get those wings flapping for some lateral raises!

And last but certainly not least - “slither” like a snake. I could only do this one for a few seconds. Who knew it was so hard to move without arms and legs! We talked about how strong snakes must be. And of course, Little E wanted to “slither” down the stairs… I stopped him before he got too far. Didn’t want Baby trying to follow him!

In June, Little E and Baby E are going to do the Piglet Plunge in our local Dirty Dash after I run the 5K Dirty Dash. Last summer Little E and I ran the Dino Dash for Little Rock, AR’s Museum of Discovery. They had a 5K, and then afterward a little 1K for the kids. E has been asking me when he gets to run another race ever since.

It’s easy for kids to stay fit when they learn how much fun it is as a child!

How do you get a workout in with little kids around? Do you include them in your exercise? Do you have to encourage your kids to move around, or do they do it naturally?

I linked up at No Time for Flash Card's Link & Learn:

Cooking Day

A while ago I read this article that was featured in Simple Mom’s weekend links. I was really inspired by the article. When Little E was a baby, I used to let him do everything with me. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, you name it, he was “helping” – and loving it. I have a million excuses why I haven’t been letting my kids help in the past year or so – two is harder than one, life got crazy, we moved three times, etc – but none of them are very good reasons for stunting my children’s growth and development.

The article from the Kitchen Stewardship blog was kind of like a slap in the face for me and the motivator I needed to start letting my kids experience the real world through play. Remember when we were kids and work was play? I’d like to capitalize on that right now, while my kids are still young. I feel like I may have soured the opportunity though – it takes more than I thought it would to get Little E (who is only 3 1/2) to empty the dishwasher. And Baby E just likes to take stuff out and throw it on the floor. When Little E was a baby, he would actually help – most of the time. Baby E’s desire to throw stuff around a destroy things I explain with the fact that I haven’t let her so much as touch anything in the kitchen since she was practically born (the moving around had a little to do with that).

As you can see from our pictures, we’ve been trying to remedy that mistake. The kids enjoy helping out a lot more (we’ve got a long way to go!) and I am feeling like their ability to “play” doing “real world” things is making a difference. Little E already knows how to cut vegetables and hold a knife and the veggie so that he doesn’t cut himself. Sure, the chunks come out a little uneven, and the cuts are more often crooked than straight – but Little E is learning how to cook (and not just Mac & Cheese!) when he is 3. By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a gourmet chef, right?

Well, making gourmet chefs is not our goal as parents – but raising children who aren’t afraid to try “real world” things is. We want to expose them to all the wonderful things life has to offer, and not just “shield” them by letting them play with “fake” or “pretend” things – we want them to get down and dirty and figure things out.

Like the article at Kitchen Stewardship said: “Let us also live real lives and teach our children how to do real work, trusting that they, too, were created for more than just pretending.”