Playing outdoors, in my opinion, is essential for the mental and physical development of young children. There’s so much for small children to explore outdoors, not to mention the sunlight is very beneficial. It seems to me that they are more alert and use more of their senses than if they were inside. However, sometimes it’s hard to get outdoors every day. If you live in an apartment you might not have much space in the shared yard.
One idea is to bring a small table or a blanket out in the yard and do a craft outdoors or have a picnic. There are lots of fun Thanksgiving and Christmas crafts that involve collecting things from outside and making them into some cute decoration. Google Thanksgiving crafts and you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you have pine cones, then google thanksgiving pine cone craft, or if you have leaves, then google thanksgiving leaf craft, etc. You will find lots of fun craft ideas.
But don’t just have a structured craft time, let them run around some, go for a walk, etc. Fortunately in Texas we have nice weather to be outdoors most of the year. We don’t get snowed in much. One thing that we purchased for outside is a sandbox which my two year old plays in almost every day. If you have a toddler I strongly recommend getting or making a sandbox. Lowes sells some good play sand.
We also recently purchased a playground which my husband is putting together. Those can be kind of pricey. Going to a park is lots of fun. We go to parks kind of regularly. Lately my pregnancy has me going to the bathroom often and keeping my 2 year old from touching anything in the nasty park bathroom is quite difficult. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. Really kids can have lots of fun without a playground, just exploring in the woods, and playing with sticks, etc. My son’s favorite things to play with are sticks and rocks.
I admit, sometimes I get so bored of going outside and watching him play with a stick for 30 minutes, so I bring my iphone to play on or a book to read because I know being outside is best for my son. Kids never seem to get bored of playing outside. Well, I do have a nephew that says he is bored and wants to play a Wii game inside.
For older kids I think it’s good to play ball with them, bike, or have some quality interactive play that also involves skill outside. Older kids seem to have a lot of alone time in their rooms as opposed to young children who have more interaction and play in the same room as the parent inside. My two year old seems to thrive when playing more independently outside and have more structure inside. I have to be more watchful outside and set a boundary because we have no fence in the front yard. Sometimes I use the water hose as a boundary not to cross.
I try not to overwhelm him with too many rules outside. It should be a place where he can run around more freely (within the set boundary). I hope all of the playing outside is good for him. I plan on having a few classes outside every now and then when we start structured classes.
With the start of the school year I have found some great prices on school and art supplies. I am starting to collect quite a bit. My house has gotten quite cluttered, especially the top book shelf and kitchen counters, as most things I don’t want my son taking out without my help. We have several closets in our house that could be put to better use in my opinion. We have 4 tool closets in our house. We also have a tool shed. I don’t know how my husband has collected so many tools. But he doesn’t complain about my messes so I shouldn’t about his. Really I feel that it’s my responsibility to organize things in the house anyway considering he works full time and I’m at home with one child. I always find myself playing most of the day and little time cleaning or cooking. I have picked a small closet that I think would be great for a supply closet. A friend wrote on facebook about a thing called workboxes, so I am going to try that method with my son and use the bottom two shelves as workbox space for my son. Here is what the closet looked like before:
And after:
I decided to use some white paint from an old project to brighten it up a little. I know this closet will be very helpful when trying to think of a fun preschool craft instead of searching throughout the house for this and that.
Since I found out I’m expecting my husband has cleaned out two other closets and rewired a bedroom to make it safe for a baby room. I’m excited about decorating that room. I’m going to wait till I find out if baby is a girl or boy.
I’m not trying to take over my husband’s territory, but just trying to make things a little more practical and safer for a growing family.
My husband and I are just taking one project at a time and trying to make our house nicer and safer for the whole family. We are pretty happy with it so far.
So we have found out that our two year old is a big brother. We are expecting our second little baby. Yay! I went to a mid wife today. I am hoping to have a home birth this time around. I found out I was pregnant 6 days before my missed you know what (“.”). It showed two very dark lines which means I am pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I am very excited. I didn’t feel any symptoms until today. Today I’m getting pretty horrible morning sickness. I only had a tiny bit of morning sickness with our first. Hopefully it will pass soon. Does anyone know how to cope with morning sickness while watching an active 2 year old too? He screams “MOMMY!” at the bathroom door or tries to get into something he’s not supposed to.
We just had our home office professionally painted before we found out we were expecting. Looks like that will be a baby room instead. We are both happy about the change of plans. It was a room we weren’t using because we thought that we’d have another baby. After a year and a half of no pregnancy we decided to turn it to an office/guest room. Now we are starting the process of clearing and cleaning it out for baby stuff. I love the thought of making a baby room.
I’m so thankful that God has blessed us with two children. One child is great and two is twice as great!
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HELP! My two year old son is trying to sneak out of the house late at night. He hasn’t successfully escaped so far because he can’t quite get the dead bolt unlocked. Does anyone know how to keep a toddler safe in bed? He is a good climber. He would climb out of his crib so we switched him to a bed just before he turned two. He climbs over baby gates, so those are of no use now. He knows how to turn door knobs. He can barely touch the dead bolt but can’t switch it. He has tried putting keys to the dead bolt, thinking that will open it. I have a monitor in his room so I can hear him getting up. He doesn’t know about the monitor but I think he recently realized that we can hear him because he started sneaking. I was standing in the dining room watching him sneak out of his room. He was looking at his feet and slowly walking over the board on the floor that creaks. When he saw me he gasped and ran back to his bed. His bedroom door rubs on the carpet and requires a push to open. Sometimes I close it because he cannot open it. It seems like a good way to keep him safe inside. It also terrifies him. He will scream and cry and sounds so scared if I close his door. I feel bad about doing it. Should I keep it open and hope he doesn’t try to sneak out? Should I wait til he’s asleep and then close it? I’m pretty sure he will be strong enough to open it very shortly. Then what do I do? I put door knob covers on the doors leading outside. Hopefully that will help. I feel paranoid when I’m going to bed. Nothing would scare me more than to wake up and find my child is gone. Our neighborhood is safe but there’s quite a distance between our house and our neighbor’s. The road is dangerous, there’s wild animals out at night, and he could get lost in the woods. Yet to him, there’s nothing that would make him happier or that gets his attention more than “outside”. He loves to be outside. He can be outside all of the time and be completely happy with that. We play outside everyday for about an hour (more or less depending on my allergies). Even when it’s raining we will play out on the porch. But when it’s time to come inside it’s a sad time for him. He wants control of his own life and sneak outside and play in the middle of the night. To some kids it’s the cookie jar but for my toddler it’s going outside that’s the biggest temptation. I hope that my husband and I can keep him from breaking out and that he quickly learns that it is dangerous to go outside alone.
When I was a little girl, I loved drawing and coloring a picture for my mom. I was pretty proud of one particular picture. A few moments later I saw it in the trash. I was upset. I didn’t reason out in my head what my mom would do with all of the stuff I made her. After seeing one thing after another being thrown away I stopped drawing and thought to myself that coloring and art is for little kids and when you get older you’re not supposed to color.
Now I’m doing art and crafts with my child. I find myself thinking, “what do I do with all of these papers?” Most pages have a couple scribbles and a sticker. Am I going to be a hoarder and keep all of it or throw them away? Surely I can’t keep all of them. Who does that? I have to throw it away and if he’s upset then he will have to get over it, right? I asked my mother-in-love what she did with my husbands pictures when he was little and she actually still has a whole bunch. She put them in a filing drawer. I thought that was a good idea.
A few days later I found a frame at WalMart that can be easily opened and closed. I bought it and am trying it out. Each day I have been putting his new picture in it. His old one I can take out and put in a file folder. I realize that someday I’ll have to go through the file folders and throw away most of the pictures. But I’m saving that day for later and will try to throw pictures away when he can’t see me doing it. I’ll hold onto the special ones.
So for the question to keep or throw away, I have decided to keep, for now anyway.