I don’t know about you but this week is a little…slow going, no? It might help if I could somehow wean myself off the reflexive, constant refreshing of the news and, as they say, be a little bit more in the now.
That said, being in the now is a bit busy, obviously, with five children under foot and all feeling a little unsettled.
It’s spring break here so we don’t need to be full pelt homeschooling, but life in our house is definitely happier with a little structure.
Despite my 10year old’s protests to the contrary, a directionless day can sometimes just descend into something resembling a scene from Lord of the Flies – or at best, a lot of people repeatedly asking for snacks and complaining that they are just SO BORED.
To keep the days ticking over I rely heavily on people with cleverer, better ideas than me sharing their activities online and this is one that was inspired by an account on Instagram, Busy Toddler.
I adapted it a bit to make it appropriate for both Wilf (3) and Mim (5), when we first did this a few months ago and I plan on revisiting it this week for some educational fun (the best kind of fun).
It involves….Stickers (always a good start); math (or maths, I’ve been an expat for too long), and a bit of IKEA butcher roll paper.
Write out some big numbers on a sheet – I stuck to 1-5 but as it turns out CBeebies and Numberblocks have done a fantastic job for Wilf so I could have been more ambitious and gone up to 10. Tape the paper up on the wall. Then write the corresponding numbers on the stickers (and/or the corresponding number of dots).
Casually leave the stickers somewhere close to the numbers on the wall and then stand back and let your toddler match them up.
To make this also work for a kindergartener – especially one who loves stickers – just make the number stickers into sums that they have to solve before matching them to the correct number. This would also lend itself to matching up stickers with the numbers-as-words, as a further adaptation.
Can I upload a time lapse to WordPress? I hope so as this one is pretty cute and not even particularly sped up as Wilf does everything at 5x speed.
Good luck out there! Educational fun interspersed with the soothing sounds of Paw Patrol Mighty Pups, for a truly balanced childhood.
tMatM x