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| Mister mouse showing me his "pirate" hat |
I can remember when I had our
second child and I thought I would never
be able to handle two children at the same time by myself (and now we have three under age 3!). At this point
in our life, we had not yet settled on homeschooling our children, so our
oldest was enrolled in our church preschool. He absolutely LOVED it there and
thrived!! In fact, I often tell my best friend (she was one of his 4yo
teachers) that they are the reason he learned to read so early, quickly and
easily. In fact, I’m absolutely terrified
that I’m not going to be able to teach my others! Seriously, it keeps me up
some nights and mister mouse is not even 3 years old yet! I digress...He was at
school ½ days for three days a week and I really only had the two of them together on Mondays and Fridays (and yes…in the afternoons, but our oldest would come home
and go straight down for his nap...boy that was nice!).
Then, it hit me one day
how much teachable time I was missing out on! I mean, sure I could sit him down
at the table to color, draw, write his letters, do flash cards, etc., but what
about when I was nursing mister mouse? What could I do then? Often times, my
sweet 4yo (at the time) would climb up next to me on the couch and just want to
be near me. But, there were plenty of times I could hear him rustling in the kitchen, playing with the pans, pulling things out of the pantry, dumping an entire bucket of toys all over his floor and the list goes on. So, before I sat down to feed mister
mouse, I grabbed a plastic sack (you know one of those ba-zillion you have
stuffed in your pantry closet?) and asked my son to come over to me. I told him we were going to play a game while mommy fed the baby. I was going to
give him 5 things to find, put in his sack and bring back to me. You should
have seen his face light up! First of all, you have to understand how much my
oldest loves playing games. And second,
he loves anything that allows him to run around the house! It was a win-win in
his book!!
So, I gave him a
list of 5 things (keeping in mind some of the toys he had in his room) to bring
back to me. They could be 5 colors, 5 shapes or a combination of the two. It
would go something like this:
“Bring me
something red, something brown, something square, something round and something
green. Ready? Set? GO!” (Often times I would repeat what I asked for 2-3 times so he could really get it in his head.)
And off he’d run! As I
was peacefully feeding mister mouse, I could hear the giggling and the clanging
of his toys as he shuffled through them. Pretty soon he’d come running back to
the living room his eyes lit up with excitement and joy. Then, he’d dump out
his findings and repeat to me what he’d found: “A red car, a brown train track,
a square block, a lego wheel and a green truck. Did I get it right, Mommy? Did
I?” “Yes you did! YAY!!!! Way to go! You have such a good memory!” “Can I play
again, Mommy?” “Of course you can!”
And we’d go on like that
for 30 – 40 minutes!! He absolutely loved
this game, and frankly, so did I. I had so
much joy watching him run after things and really think hard about what would work
for the list I gave him. There were times when he surprised me by what he found
and how it fit what I’d asked for. I was blown away by his intelligence, even
at the tender age of 4!!
This simple, easy and FUN activity taught:
*
memory
*
comprehension
*
color
recognition
*
shape
recognition
*
counting (he
would often count to make sure he had 5 items in the bag before he would say he
was finished)
This simple activity kept
him occupied while I was feeding a baby and taught him at the same time. And
who says you can’t multi-task while feeding a baby?!
I’m sure there are many
more variations you could do with this little came to increase the difficulty
as they grew older. I just haven’t thought them through yet. If you do (or have
done) something similar to this, comment here and tell me about it! I’d love to
hear your ideas!!!
Blessings,
Annette
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