Alright, everyone teases me about being busy. Here are my reasons for staying so active:
1. I love being outside. I am sure part of that comes from growing up in the mountains and my love for the beach. (passed on from my dad!) Spending time at the park is very soothing to me.
2. I enjoy watching my kids learn from other people and their reactions- story time, music time.
3. I like my kids having a chance to run around without having a mess to clean up after. (mat time at the YMCA)
4. I love the water. (pool time at the YMCA)
5. I love people. (Meeting up with other friends is a great way to get to chat and get to know others.)
6. When I am at home, I feel like all I am doing is cleaning up messes. If I try to clean around them, another area of the house is being destroyed. Haven't quite figured that out.
Here is where I need your help. I honestly don't know what to do inside the house with the kids. Here are the things we do like doing inside the house:
1. Playing board games
2. Reading books
3. Playing Wii/computer
4. Attempting to get cleaning done (I am trying to get the kids more involved with this process thanks to the Parenting Breakthrough!)
5. I am very left brained/math oriented so the crafty/imaginitive stuff doesn't come as easily.
Since I want to limit #3 as much as possible, and I want to encourage my kids to play, what other ideas do you have? How do you spend your time at home with your little ones? I want to learn how to truly be a "stay at home" mom instead of on the go so much. I just don' t know how to do it. Help!
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12 comments:
We are all about Legos. They spend a crazy amount of time with those little bricks.
Lately, I've found that hiding toys helps. My boys, I realized, only played with cars. And they would just dump out all the toys. It'd be a mess and then they wouldn't play with anything even the cars. So I locked up a bunch of random stuff...they haven't even noticed things are missing...and now they play with the cars and I don't have huge mess.
I've also tried to incorporate arts/craft, cool science, and other "school" type things that are fun but still have an educational basis. I try to check out books from the library on little things to make/do with the boys. I'm not a very organized person so I haven't been good at it, but I've had goals to plan a weekly theme and check out books to go with it, both for me to research ideas and the boys to read about the subject. One time we had music week. We made drums with tincans and balloons. Rainmakers out of paper towel rolls with beans...and so forth. I found most of the ideas in books. Most of the ideas are simple and inexpensive. Your kids are older so you could even have "field trips" and get your out of the house fix.
Now you've motivated me, maybe I'll plan something for this coming week...maybe cooking classes.
Thanks for the ideas! We do have legos, but they were mostly the ones that came as cars, so I am looking for legos on craigslist to just build anything with! I have done the theme week once or twice, so thanks for the reminder! It is a good way to keep me on track! I will start that up again. The library has theme bags. I love the field trip idea too. Keep the ideas coming!
I go for walks with the kids, color and draw with them. I find if I just sit on the floor with them, they LOVE it. They find all sorts of things to play with if I just SIT STILL.
Kathy, I love your idea to just sit still and let them play. I knew I could count on you. :-) I made a realization yesterday that when we leave all the time, they are tired and crabby when we get back, so of course they aren't in the mood to just play- they want to veg! I guess it's good to learn now. One more year with Emily before kindergarten.
I am just like you Kelly...we are always going and doing things, for exactly the same reasons!
Kelly- Just know you're doing a great job with whatever you're doing. If you love to be gone and your kids do too then I hope you don't feel guilty about it.
One thing Cade loves to do and therefore the little kids do too is writing books. I fold and staple computer paper into books give them pencils, crayons and makerer and they just go from there. Cade will often write the little kids' books for them and they will "illustrate" them. Cade has a whole series(I think 13 books so far) of Star Warsand a few Indiana Jones. Maybe Dallin would like writing Pokemon adventures.
Keep up the good work Kel!
Kelly,
I've been making myself stay home for the past few days, and I'm finding it hard to be doing what I should be. I've been spending too much time on my computer. I think I'm so computer addicted. So I guess thats the next thing I need to do is put computer restrictions on myself. AGGH!
The kids are having a good time playing together. But I'm sure that wont last more then a few days. And the house is just getting messy, messy.
Carrie
There are some great ideas here. Thanks for putting the idea out there. I feel like there is always room for improvement and new ideas. Bridger is so physical (loves to climb, bike, play) it takes a lot more concentration from us both to sit and do quieter projects. We recently have been trying to do a lot of flash cards with shapes or letters or colors and he seems to really like it (especially if you ask "is this a square?" when OBVIOUSLY the card is a triangle).
Also, Thanks again for your help on Saturday. It was a huge weight off my mind - you really helped me out a ton!
I don't see anything wrong with "being on the go". You enjoy it. Your kids enjoy it. Why try to change?
I feel the same way. I rather be on the go than staying at home because that will usually end up at watching TV and I hate the feeling I get from that. I have been struggling with the same guilt of not really making time for learning this summer, but then again winter will soon be here and we will have a lot of time to stay indoors. So I've just been telling myself that it's OK, everyone else if off school and on vacations why shouldn't we, even if I don't have school aged kids (2 and 3). But when we do stay indoors we do a lot of drawing, and play dough, and crafts. We also do weekly themes, for example we learn a letter that whole week and do crafts and read books about it. I've found a few blogs and sites that have lots of good ideas. Here are my favorites:
www.notimeforflashcards.com
www.familyeducation.com
Hope that helps, and know that you are not alone and that you are doing a great job!
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