Do I Buy the Gloves?

It's cold outside! 

Ty and Za are taking hats and gloves to school for recess time. Not a big deal for adults - huge deal for kids.

 First, WHY can they not take the gloves and hats off together? I have shown them (and seen Za's preschool teacher show her) to take the gloves off, put them in the hat, and put the hat in the coat's hood or arm. Somehow, apparel ends up in different parts of the house, even different levels of the house.

 This raises two parenting questions:

1. Do I stand by the front door, and remind each child to keep their gear together? For how long? I know the kids are young and need reminding and examples, but really, how. long. I am happy to give them instructions, but at what point am I babying them too much? I want to use everyday events as teaching moments. This seems perfect, but it's just not.

2. What is the natural consequence for forgetting hats and gloves? Should it be, you don't have warm hands and a head at school? That bothers me, because I don't want little kids outside uncomfortable, or getting a headache or chapped skin. I want to teach the kids to be responsible, have a natural consequence, and keep their belongings organized.

I thought about this conundrum in the shower. Later as I wrote a grocery list, I added gloves. Our grocery store normally has little seasonal items, like kid gloves. Then I scratched it off the list.

Now I'm writing a blog post about it. Do I buy backup gloves for when we cannot find one, so we always have another pair to grab? Am I reinforcing disorganization by buying the second pair of gloves?

 AND, most of all, am I reading too much into this event?

Cleaning, and Then Recycling

Cleaning with my kids soon turned into a recycling and reusing activity, where we found forgotten treasures. The kids had control over what we kept, and they surprised me with a nice experience. 

Summer break often means cleaning time.

I sat down with my kids as they began "craft time," which is what they call all art/coloring/gluing/messy type activities. I wanted to clean as they played, and I wanted their input. Sometimes toy purging ends terribly, so I wanted them to take ownership in the process.

Ty found small coloring pages inside a plastic, traveling holder.

Immediately, we started having good luck. As I cleaned out their art bags and boxes, we discovered buried toys - birthday morning, almost!

We found a pile of paper plates and construction paper that I had saved because they had very few marks on them. Za grabbed a magazine and started cutting pictures and gluing them. (Lots of fine motor practice for my 3-year-old).

 
We organized and put old papers in the recycling. The kids had fun organizing, and deciding what belongings stayed or left. After we finished, I started sharpening colored pencils. Za was still dumping glue on a plate when she asked for the cup of colors I was making.

I think I remember doing something similar in school. Maybe with eraser crumbs too?

The finished project.

Za was proud that she created her own "pretty plate" and showed it to everyone who came to our house. We had fun organizing and recycling, and I attribute the lack of arguing to giving the kids power over what they kept, and what they didn't.

We Addressed the 8 Intelligences! 

Bodily- kinesthetic, interpersonal.

Financial Friday: Turn Cup Lids Into Stencils and Shapes

Part of my resolution/goal/work-in-progress for this year was organizing my kitchen. I have done some big projects and small ones. My kitchen really doesn't have a new appearance, but as month 9 of the year approaches, I am overall happy with the progress.

One organizing project needed to be the sippy-cup and restaurant take-home plastic cup section. We had so many that finding a proper lid-cup match took longer than pouring the milk. I took this moment to work on organizational skills with the kids. The kids and I sat down and sorted through the cabinet. We organized:

1. We went around the house, found stray cups, and washed them.
2. We tossed gross cups and ones with hidden cracks.
3. We lined up the cups and found matching lids.
4. We neatly put all the cups back in the cabinet.

After throwing yucky and lost cups away, we were left with about a dozen lids. I figured we could brainstorm a project using bodily-kinesthetic since they were plastic and the kids would probably play with them. Honestly, they sat on my counter for a few days until we decided what to do with them.

I decided to cut them into shapes. I used the straw hole as a starting point for the scissors. My kids know their shapes, so we didn't spend tons of time with them. I was determined to use these almost-free resources, so I kept brainstorming.

Soon, we had the paint out using them as stencils. What worked so well was that the ridge of the lid gave my kids a great place to hold so they did not scoot around.

As we continued, my two-year-old struggled a bit. She couldn't move the paint and hold the lid simultaneously.

We put the paint in the middle of the shapes instead of transferring paint from a cup to the stencil's center.

She was incredibly proud of her work. and thrilled that her shapes looked like shapes and not blobs.

The kids were giggly-excited over their work and they have no idea that the project that kept them entertained for so long was almost free. 

Find more blog posts with activities for preschoolers and link up your own blog post.

The Broken Truck

Toys crowd every living space of my house, garage, and even car. My two children’s birthdays are within four days of each other and after one month of Christmas. All of the grandparents are divorced, so that means we have five celebrations for all three events, complete with aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandparents. Don’t worry about the math; all those parties add up to way too many toys.



My husband and I take preventive measures against this tidal wave of toys. We donate. We trash broken toys. We move them to the garage for outside toys and then they become trash. Lots and lots of toys out the door.

As my children get older, not all toys make it out the door. For instance, a wonderful friend of mine gave my son Ty a monster truck for Christmas. He broke a wheel off immediately, really within his first play session with it. My husband and I tried fixing it (and couldn’t) and threw it away (and Ty picked it out of the garbage).

I then considered my options:

1. Call my friend and get the receipt, or at least the store’s name. Then dig the packaging out of the recycling, tape the box back together, and situate the truck in what was sure to be a poorly reconstructed box. Then take it back for an exchange and haggle with store clerks while holding two kids who are super excited to be in a toy store and super tired of standing in line.

2. Dig the box out of the recycling, find out the brand name, and call/email them. Play phone/email tag.

3. Write a blog post about junky toys that break within five minutes of your kids playing with them, with a link back to the manufacture’s website. Tweet furiously.

Options one and two seem frustrating and I am really too nice for option three.

So now we have this broken monster truck that Ty is attached to and no real plan, except for our last option:

4. Sneak it out of the house and into the garbage when he is asleep.

We really wanted the monster truck out of the house. The kids have too many toys and they certainly don’t need a broken one. Monster trucks alone? Ty probably has a dozen of varying sizes. When he lines them up for them to enter the living room, or the racing arena, they stretch for two feet. He does not need this monster truck, so we worked to find another option.

We never found a suitable option, and as the months have passed since Christmas, I am glad. Out of all of his toys, he uses this broken monster truck with a flood of creativity.

The broken monster truck always has a different situation as to why it was hurt in the monster race. Sometimes the driver wrecked and other times a different truck’s driver was driving carelessly. One time, a police car had to stop the competition for his bulldozers and tractors to enter the arena and tow the three-wheeled truck to safety. Another time, he pulled our king sized bed’s brown comforter to the living room and made it a mud pit where the truck had a wreck, and yes, lost its wheel. 

Ty has too many toys, toys that are meant to build creativity and wonder. Teach colors and shapes. Form him into a future leader and possibly president. Yet he uses this broken monster truck to stretch his imagination.

Out of all the toys I stress over tossing or donating, I gave the least worry to the one with perhaps the most potential.

Photo Credit

Project: Organizing Kitchen Drawers

I have dutifully reorganized my kitchen - almost all of it. Before I began, Ty and Za's belongings were crammed into corners. This caused two big problems:

1. I couldn't find my stuff because their stuff was in front of my nice dishes, pretty bowls, etc.

2. I couldn't get to their sippy cups and bowls without knocking it all out. Even tonight, I broke a dish. (The other cabinets will be next).

See my kitchen towels? They match my coffee-themed kitchen. The tiny cloths are in the back.

I began with a small task, which normally helps me continue working because I see fast results. I moved the kids' tiny baby washcloths into the kitchen towel drawer. Yes, this completely goes against my image of a perfect kitchen, since they are bathroom items in a kitchen drawer. It works out nicely though:

I am saving the Earth (yay) because I do not use tissues for runny noses or paper towels for messy spaghetti-sauced faces. These are also softer than paper products, making my children less likely to fight me. Finally, I don't have to buy the paper products, which probably saves me about $10 a month.

Small accomplishment, but an important one in the kitchen organizing project!

Project: Organizing Kitchen Shelves

I am organizing my kitchen. The need has been present for a long, long time - like since Ty started eating solid food years ago. Before I had kids, I wanted to keep my kitchen and just add kids and their stuff to the mixture. This is not working so I am adjusting, at least while they are little. I will have a time to display pretty wedding gifts and special plates that coordinate with holidays for many, many decades. My kids will be little once, and the kitchen needs to reflect that.

This is how I started: with a really worn empty shelf that the kids constantly pulled food off.

My pantry needed organized. I took this shelf out and scrubbed it with Ty. I really wanted to get around painting it, but there was no way around it. My kitchen is two shades of brown and I luckily had some leftover. I feared having brown shelves with white pantry walls, but I actually like the results.

Organized kitchen shelf.

The biggest problem was my kids pulled food off. They would bring me glass jars or industrial sized containers of ketchup. The bottom shelf is now food that they most commonly eat - cereal, bread and on. Now when they bring it to me, I just fix them their choice. All 'my food' (read: boring bread crumbs and pasta sauce) is up high, out of their little hands.

I am still organizing, but this is my first finished kitchen project and it has helped immensely in my everyday life!

Simple Organizing

Maybe we split a hot chocolate while we decorated.

I know this is late, but I am still going to post an activity from December, because I am always late and because you all understand. 

One of Ty's beloved activities is making connected rings from construction paper. It is easy and we can decorate the playroom (our basement) with whatever color correlates with the season. He likes doing it so much that we change colors several times a year: green/red for Christmas, red/pink for Valentine's Day, purple/yellow for Easter and on and on. That is actually what got me started doing this - colors. It was a simple way to teach him colors. 

We have since moved on from colors into organizing and math skills. The math skills are pretty easy to recognize (counting, counting by tens, etc.), but what about organizing?

1. We had to separate the paper from the rest of the colors in the construction paper pad.

2. We organized all our supplies: scissors, stickers, stapler.

3. We sorted the cut paper into piles.

4. We planned out our teamwork. Ty made an assembly line of putting stickers on (we used the free ones from the mail) alternating colors. I stapled them together (he's not big enough for a stapler yet).

Separating piles of colors, and those with and without stickers. Plus, teaching Za colors.

The high school English teacher in me sees this as applicable to future use, such as writing a paper (of course). He can separate the information pertinent to his thesis, organize his information, divide it into paragraphs using an outline, and then assemble the paper.

Anything to add? I feel like I am missing something beside color identification, math skills, and organization.

Project: Organizing Kitchen

At one point in my mommyhood, I really (deep down, did not doubt it in my heart) believed I could have a perfect kitchen. The type you see in Pottery Barn catalogs and on television shows that depict unnatural home lives. Then I had Ty and Za and realized several things:

1. I cannot follow my kids all day and pick up. I can pick up in general, but cannot (and will not) follow behind with a spray bottle and towel.
2. I become overwhelmed if I do not lower my house cleaning expectations. This is bad for me, my children, my husband, and generally anyone else I would encounter.
3. I would rather focus on working and teaching my students children. Reading, exploring, building blocks-anything is inherently more important that house cleaning.
4. Pottery Barn catalogs are stupid. (I love their stuff, but really. Really).

In an effort to have some sort of functional organization, I have been working on my kitchen. This room is the hub of my house, especially since my kids eat nonstop. Also, with my attempts at cooking and preparing fresh, non-prepackaged foods, I stand at a chopping board extra time. All of this is fine, but aside from cramming the sippy cups into a corner of my cabinet, I really have not adjusted my kitchen for kids. (We do have safety locks, but I'm referring to organization).

Organized kids are happy kids, and kids who live with organized play things hopefully apply organizational methods to their personal and school lives in a natural, unforced way.

So, stay tuned. Project: Organizing Kitchen is underway.

Guest Blogger

Hello Followers! I guest blogged for a great writer I met through Twitter. (You can follow me @switchclassroom).

Cortney's website is: http://www.evanhaslanded.com/. I was the guest writer for Ask the Teacher Tuesday. (She is @Cortney_plus2 . She tweets fun stuff).

Naturally, I wrote about organization. That is my favorite topic dealing with organization. I am working on an organization website and this is the sort of information I plan to cover.

My guest blogging post is here! Yay!

The Jessica Bag

I had lunch two weeks ago with a friend from high school. She is a more experienced SAHM, so I was eager to mooch ideas. She came into the restaurant with a great one: a bag filled with crayons, coloring books, books, and just little stuff to occupy the kids while they wait to eat.

That is so simple. Why didn't I think of that? (I'll catch on more, after awhile). She told me she leaves the bag in the car so she can pull it out when they go in somewhere. 

So, I made my own. We have a five hour trip to Michigan, starting Saturday, and I wanted my Jessica Bag before I left. I spent $10 at Target in the $1 section. I wrapped all the "gifts" with scraps of birthday and Christmas wrapping paper. I'll let Ty open one every so often as we travel. Then they will go in the bag. Organized me!

SAHM successes are important, and their value will show in our children.