Last week, while making playdough and preparing to host our First Playdate Ever, I thought it would be great to write down some of the kid stuff I'm doing here. It's not quite preschool unschooling, but I'm trying to get out of the "TV all morning while I clean house" rut. Plus, my kids seem to prefer to do stuff, anyway, rather than just sit and stare.
Then I saw this which seemed really fitting thanks to Life, In a Nutshell for the link!):
Currently, I have younger sis drawing upstairs while older sis is using her leap-pad. Peace, finally. When they're on separate floors of the house, they can't rip stuff out of each other's hands.
(I promised older sis that we could watch a "show" (probably our Max and Ruby DVD) at 1 (I set the kitchen timer to go off), and she's reminded me already, but I'll try to put her off a little longer.)
Anyway, my big idea today, after looking at this book last night, with some Montessori hand skill development stuff I saw once, and maybe a blog...it's hard to pinpoint the inspirations...anyway, two parts to this:
- Give each kid a cookie sheet (more like a jelly roll pan, but it's what I use for cookies: the ones with the edge all the way around, not the ones with no edges...make sense?), some bowls (I used our plastic ones from Ikea in different colours), and a big spoon. Then I dumped four or five different kinds of pasta on their cookie sheets. I thought about sorting it for them, one kind in each bowl, but instead I just let them do whatever, which involved lots of moving the pasta from the sheet to a bowl to another bowl to the floor (of course). I asked questions, like "what colour is that bowl?" or "which shape is the biggest?"
(This led to older sis saying we needed to make something out of the noodles for lunch. I already had lunch worked out, so I said we needed to make a recipe or a shopping list, and she happily took off and started "writing recipes." Worked for me. - When they were both bored of the noodles, I cleared the table but left the cookie sheets. Then i grabbed a couple magnets from the fridge and showed younger sis that they stuck. She thought that was great, and made many trips to get more magnets. Older sis was still pretty absorbed with her writing, gluing and taping cut out magazine pictures to her creations.
I think they were working for 45 minutes to an hour, enough time for me to sit with them, get a little knitting done, sweep the floor, and start prep for lunch. I'm learning that I will need to use my time with them better than I have been. They are old enough now that I can leave them in another room while I get stuff done; I don't have to micro-manage every step.
Which leads me to my cleaning up for the day: I cleaned up the light fixture in the master bedroom (it was terribly dusty and had two light bulbs burnt out of three). I vacuumed upstairs, starting with the master bedroom. I got a chair and vacuumed the fuzzies that hang from our stucco ceiling. Then I changed the sheets on the bed, then vacuumed the carpets in the bedroom and the hallway. I have been far more successful with regular vacuuming when I let myself divide the house up and do a part each day rather than trying to do it all at once. I really don't like vacuuming. This might sound like pretty wimpy for housecleaning, but I am seriously clueless at this stuff, and at least having something of a schedule, and planning what my kids will do while I'm busy, is a big deal for me. (Thanks to Home Ec 101 for the schedule for cleaning each week!)
