This week has almost been a wash out. The only day of decent weather was yesterday. That was it! The rest of it has been rain at one point or another in the day, if not all day. This has brought a huge challenge to my house; how do I entertain a rambunctious toddler and exuberant preschooler inside for almost a week? Well, I still want to pull my hair out, but here is what I came up with.
Pattern Blocks: I picked up a cheap bag of these at our local educational store (Good Ideas) for around $6. They are made of foam, which is fine with me. I did not want to spend a ton on them, just in case the boys decided that they did not like them. When I first introduced them to the boys, Carter went nuts naming off the shapes. Pierce had fun trying to fit things together. After some research online, I found this:
http://www.prekinders.com/pattern-blocks/
I took them and placed them inside sheet protectors, and the boys can use them over and over to make the animals. Score!
Water Beads: I also found these at the local store. The boys had fun watching them grow, and even more fun once they figured out they bounce! I was not aware of them bouncing until Dan filled me in when I came home from work. They also love them in the bucket and swishing their hands through them. The downside? They boys figured out they can mash them with their hands, leaving the stuff all over them, and the stuff all over the house. I had to retire this activity for now, and I am hoping they will dry back out (which they have not yet). I wouldn't say it is a total bust, since they did learn something about polymers. I just need to figure out how to get them to stop smushing them.
Sorting Beads: Yes, I picked these up from there too. These are awesome, since you can stack them, play with them, fit them on your fingers, etc. Carter didn't quite understand the sorting aspect, but Pierce did. He was the one that also figured out you can stack them on top of each other and make patterns. As cool as I think these are, the boys only played for about 30 minutes with them, before they were thrown everywhere in the room. I was not kidding when I said this was a challenging week.
Woodbury Library: One of my dear friends had told me that this library has a HUGE toy room that the kids can play in. And she was not kidding. My boys loved the place; there were all sorts of puzzles, play kitchens, a huge train table, and of course Carter found the cars. It was a tad bit difficult trying to rein them in from making a lot of noise (and we were reminded a few times it is a library, not a playground). However, I will be going back there for them to play.
Alphabet Stomp: This was aimed more at Pierce, but Carter had fun copying him. We have a rug in our downstairs playroom (aka the basement), that has all the letters of the alphabet. I named off a letter, and Pierce had to stomp on the letter that I was naming off. This is great since he is struggling at letter recognition, and he was learning without realizing it.
Matching: Somebody had bought us this wooden Thomas the Tank Engine game that has 3 different activities inside. There are dominoes, matching the characters, and then matching the number to the corresponding number of objects. Pierce has graduated beyond the character matching; he has that down to a science, and Carter tries to do it. I figured the number matching would be a challenge, but it was nowhere near as much of a challenge as I was hoping. He had that all figured out quickly - and then I made him put everything in order, and try to match only the odd numbers. The game only goes up to 8, which is why I think it was not that hard. This has given me the idea to find more games like this.
The rest of the stuff we did was our usual stuff. Story time on Monday, gym on Tuesday, playground on Wednesday (the only day of no rain), and the gym today. Both boys are totally done with the being inside nonsense. I wish it was a warm rain so I could send them out and say have fun! Now this weekend, we can finish packing for California (6 days away! Yay!), and figure out what activities to bring for the boys to do on a 5 hour flight. Any ideas? Any ideas at all?
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