I'm trying to make plans for the kids this fall. I sorta "flew by the seat of my pants" this summer and my brain is seriously running out of things to do for the kids...or I think of cool things last minute but lack motivation to get it done. I want the fall to be fun and more scheduled so Mallory can look forward to certain things and I won't have to think about "what are we going to do today" every day.
I have a few things tossing around in my brain, but I'm hoping to take Mallory to the gym weekly instead of every-now-and-then. I'm hoping our playgroup will re-form during the fall and I'm looking into a family kindermusik to take both kids to. I'm also thinking about swim lessons, but may postpone that until the winter.
Nothing is for certain. Everything is up in the air. But I'm hoping to nail it all down within the next 2 weeks. A new schedule starting Sept 1 is my goal, carrying us through until Thanksgiving. We will have a week off for vacation in October, but other than that, I'm hoping we'll be at home in order to have some sense of normalcy until the holidays...
We'll see.
Do any of you moms that have had a 2-year-old have any suggestions on fun activities? Should Mallory be cutting? Gluing? Pasting? I don't really want to glue or paste yet, but that's mainly a selfish thing as I think of the cleaning efforts. I'm interested in some good project ideas...
6 comments:
Um, I'm afraid I'm no help... Besides MD only being 1, anything outside of worrying about who's taking care of MD for the day is beyond our world right now. Good luck! Oh, the breakfast pics are good too...looks yummy :)
Some ideas on activities for two-year olds (from someone who doesn't like to clean up art projects):
decorating paper with stickers, crayons, colored pencils, etc.; a variety of blocks; building train track; watching bugs or birds; dumping water; pinto beans (or rice if you're brave); dolls and all their accoutrements; dressing up; matchbox cars; Mr. Potato head; stringing large beads, etc.
Nothing too creative, but - hey - the world is new to them. What a two-year-old wants is to DO things.
Some of Vera's favorite at home activities are Playdoh with lots of cookie cutters/rolling pins/etc., coloring, old magazines to cut and glue pics from (do it with her and make it educational by looking for circles, red things, vehicles, etc.), blowing bubbles, stringing beads, sorting buttons, reading books, playing on the porch with a big bowl of water and water toys... May think of more later.
How 'bout a glue stick? That's at least a little less messy. A favorite in our house was shaving cream. I would let the kids "finger paint" on the kitchen table or kitchen counter.
have you tried www.parents.com?? I had to hunt a little bit through the site, but this is the link to the kids crafts page...there are all kinds of things to do! Good luck!! http://www.parents.com/fun/arts-crafts/kid/
-Frag
Well, I only know about boys, but here goes...
1. Go for walks and let her walk. She will see so much! Have her find things and then create an art project with what she found.
2. Read her higher level books non-fiction books to them. My boys will listen to that all day.
3. Teach her to write her name by letting her trace it, connect the dots, etc. You can hold the top of her hand or arm until she gets stronger.
4. Use paint projects that use just water on the book. Then the water turns into colors on the book.
5. They love playing with calculators too. Just figuring out that they can punch things into this.
6. In the Fall, have them pick leaves and make placemats out of them with contact paper. Michael still has his.
7. Easles (spelling?) are excellent too. This makes it easier for them to draw or write then to do this on the floor or even at a table.
My kids spend very little time in their rooms. I try to do something with them every day.
Your kids are too young for this, but it's an idea for the future. We are going to let each of them pick a football team (by the helmet that they like). I'm going to buy them the jersey. Then they will track who the team plays, the score, and their win/losses. This will help them with tracking something, making a chart, using the Internet to find information, and the final statistics. It gives us family time too and Mike is going to get involved in this too.
If this goes well, I will do this with all of the major sports. This will prepare them more for the Winter olympics in 2010. Then I want to do something else with that. We've been watching these and they seem to really enjoy the different sports.
Okay, since I homeschool, I have to come up with ideas all of the time. If you try to do fun things, rather than things with a definite purpose, they figure out the purposes even quicker. They get so bored of blocks and stuff after a while. They still love the colored pencils and stickers though. They love markers too.
Michael did really well on the part of the standardized test that asks about experiences. Some of the questions weren't things we actually talked about, but things he saw a long the way of doing something else; like walking, playing with a calculator,etc.
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