I can officially call LeapFrog Letter Factory
I also purchased the Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder
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Hands-on Counting Numbers With Number Line
I wanted to find some fun hands-on ways for Caroline to interact with counting numbers. I found some ideas on a few different websites and adapted them for our use.
Hands-on Counting Numbers
This activity was super easy to make! The flowers are from my scrapbooking stash. I wrote on them and the white strip of cardstock with a Sharpie marker. I laminated everything so it will last longer. (I love my laminator!)
Caroline is really enjoying this little activity! She carries the number line around off and on all day. For some reason she finds it totally fascinating.
We played for a while with one of her stuffed animals with me making Bunny talk. Bunny tried to count, but she kept getting stuck or making mistakes. Caroline “taught” her the numbers and how to count to twelve. Very cute and an easy way to check Caroline’s understanding of numbers.
If you are looking for fun numbers and counting activities, check out these:
Easy Indoor Sandbox For Preschoolers
One of Caroline’s favorite activities at the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum is the indoor sandbox. So far we haven’t purchased an outside sandbox for her, but we may look into that next spring. In the meantime, I wanted to come up with a way she could enjoy an indoor sandbox over the winter since she enjoys it so much. So here is my easy and inexpensive solution!
Easy Indoor Sandbox
I purchased a large plastic storage box and sand at Lowe’s. I went to the Dollar Tree and added:
- funnels
- measuring cups
- strainers
I also dug out some marbles from when I was a child.
We put it on a small table in the basement. It makes it easy for her to walk around the table. Because the basement floor is unfinished, we can easily clean up the spilled sand when she is done.
Total cost?
About $15 for what I know will be many hours of fun this winter.
(And, yes, that is a Michigan State cheerleader outfit. She wears it on game days. I love having a girl! LOL!)
What do you do with a child who won’t play by herself, goes from thing to thing to thing, and gets bored very quickly?
Yesterday I shared a bit about what I am doing with Caroline at home regarding learning. Today I want to ask a question. I’m sure I’m not the only one facing this. What do you do with a child who won’t play by herself and is bored with something within five minutes?
I was sharing with a friend in an email recently that it is so hard to keep Caroline occupied. If I prepare something for her or gather the materials for a new activity, she will generally do it for five minutes tops and then she is done. She isn’t interested in exploring all the different creative ways to use something. She definitely is not into doing something over and over again. Once she’s done it a couple of times, she’s ready to move on.
I don’t have the time or financial ability to find 10 new things for her to do each day. She has plenty of open-ended toys. We rotate toys. We have her put toys away before she goes on to the next thing (mostly – still working on that). She’s not over-sugared. But it is almost as though she needs a steady diet of new things to do and experience all day.
She also isn’t interested in playing alone. At. all. It doesn’t matter if she gets lots of one-on-one time for an hour or two. She still wants to be with us and have us play with her. We can’t play with her all day (and we don’t). But she isn’t lacking for attention.
A couple mornings a week we have a sitter come for a few hours to play with her just so we can get a break and focus on our work. She loves having the sitters come (two girls who are completely different) and always has a lot of fun.
Anyway, I am open to suggestions. I realize part of it may be her age, part of it is a function of having an only child, and part of it is training her to do things, but it is driving me nuts. The combination of a mom who needs time alone during the day to think, recharge, take care of a home, and work and a child who thinks she needs a play companion all day, every day and seems incapable of getting engrossed in anything by herself is just not working very well. I have to be honest. If things don’t change as she gets a little older, this may be the very thing that trumps everything else and forces us to choose to put her in school. I know she might grow out of it, but right now it is very hard.
(And I won’t even get into the part about the fact that she wakes up at 5:00 every morning and thinks it is time to get up. I am dreading the time change because her internal clock is so strong I don’t even want to think about how this is going to play out shortly. We’ve already tried adjusting her bedtime to start compensating for the change, and that’s not working either. It doesn’t matter what time she goes to bed. She wakes up early every. single. morning.)
So what do you do with a child who won’t play by herself?