"P" is for "Playing"

Playing is a child's work - well, my son works very hard ;-) I've been blessed with a boy who entertains himself very well...it doesn't take much to keep him bouncing around! Which actually creates a unique challenge for me - making sure I take the time to interact with him in meaningful ways during the day. Not that we don't interact, but it's easy for me to spend an entire morning doing "my" stuff (cleaning, straightening, laundry, nursing Cole, etc.) and not spend purposeful, one-on-one time with Graeme.

So, as part of that, and also to incorporate some "learning time", a recent goal of mine has been spending time each day doing craft/table play. We fingerpainted one day, colored in his coloring books...and yesterday, we tackled our first "letter of the week" from No Time for Flash Cards. I LOVE her blog. What was so fun is that I'm not officially teaching Graeme his alphabet (hey, he's not even 2!) but this kind of an activity is showing him that we can have FUN with letters. He'll be experiencing letters and numbers before we ever do "school". That is the best kind of learning - experience followed by instruction.

Here's our "P" (see these instructions here):


As you can see, I took the activity one step further, because I kept thinking of many "p" words he knows. Pancakes, our dog's name (Poco), and one of his favorite activities lately is Poke-ing. As you can see in the picture, he had lots of fun poke-ing the marker on the paper!

These types of things are quite simple to do (they don't take elaborate planning) but the rewards are many. Graeme spent the next 1/2 hour or so playing with a pile of pennies, coloring some more, and talking about his creations. Simple, but meaningful. For more living simply ideas, visit Stephanie's blog.



And some more pictures of my littlest man, who is learning to laugh! Isn't 3 months a fun age?!