Skip to main content

Busy book

When my daughter was about 2 years old, a friend passed along a book called The Toddler's Busy Book. It was written by a mom of several young children and she itemizes dozens of no cost activities that make use of everyday household objects and focuses on feeding kids' imaginations without t.v (and potentially, daycare). They are all great ideas but for me I was often daunted by the toddler book.  At the time, I was cramming all my mothering between daycare pickup and bedtime and weekends.  I often ended up feeling like the book was a record of every interactive creative learning moment I was missing.

Randomly, I'd take the book's suggestions of getting my young daughter to scrub a potato(5 minutes if I was lucky) with a vegetable brush or putting random items into a box for rainy days (10 minutes tops), but my big intentions with the busy book kind of faded.  I still loved the IDEA of the book, it's just that its actual purpose was not drawn upon a whole lot.

When my daughter was about 3 and, thanks to her brother's arrival, I had a bit more time to be around, we somehow got our hands on the Preschooler's Busy Book.  This time, even at her young age, she took over its' implementation.  As soon as she could start grasping the concept of a book of fun ideas, there was no looking back. As she has since improved her ability to read, she continues to consult the busy book on a regular basis, often listing out loud things we need to gather to play post office (a rubber stamp, 1 cent stamps, forms, postcards) or make crayon soap.  The book now is indeed much fuller of possibilities because it now has an in house administrator that ensures each and every idea gets tried.  She's no longer a preschooler but the ideas are cool enough that they can be expanded upon by an older child.

I always find it amusing to see a kid herself reading a book about how to keep kids busy.  That's one way, give them a busy book!



Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Kate Hall6/17/2012 8:28 am

    thats awesome, and part of every mom's goal, right? get the kids to keep THEMSELVES busy! awesome.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more

Fists full of lettuce

 It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom.  She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer).  Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life.  Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years.  Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer.  It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still.   We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue.  Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision.  They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped.  Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...
1 comment
Read more