beads, beads, and more beads!

Often when it’s rainy outside, we try to cheer ourselves up by having a lunchtime “Rainy Day Picnic” on our living room floor. However, it’s been freezing cold, icy, and snowy for so long, that on our way home from open gym today, we all decided that today would be perfect for an inside picnic, even without the rain. We just gave it a new name.

• Freezing Day Picnic: It’s always Maddy, Owen, and Cora’s job to pick up the living room and set up the big striped blanket on our picnic days. So while I packed lunches, they got to work and let me know when the room was ready. I brought in the lunches and scarves (we had to play up the freezing part a little) and set Cora’s chair on the floor (otherwise, she won’t sit still). Although my kiddos are pretty good with eating their veggies, I find that they will eat almost anything I shove in a small plastic bag, so I try to load them up with some extra good stuff while we picnic. Once lunch is over, clean-up involves gathering the plastic bags for next time, throwing away the trash, and shaking off the blanket. And the living room is already clean! Woo-hoo!

• Beads, beads, and more beads: Maddy, Owen, and I played with beads after Cora went down for her nap. I have found that nothing seems to relax these two like playing with beads. We have a huge tub of them, and stringing beads is not only great for improving their hand-eye coordination, but it is also a great activity for teaching colors, sorting, organizing, or making patterns. I always enjoy our conversations while we bead; today was especially interesting since Owen came up with a crazy story about how Lightening McQueen and Doc Hudson went swimming in the beads, and thank goodness Maddy’s little Princess Fairy was around because she dove in and saved them. . . but that’s another story.

I think I’ll bring the beads out in the next few days again and have Cora play with them, too. She might not be able to string them for quite awhile, but she will learn by watching her sister and brother that you don’t eat the beads but can still have fun with them by grouping them by color in piles or small bowls, feeling their texture when she squeezes them, or puts them in color lines on the back of packing tape.

So that’s our little bit of fun learning for today. . .