Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Play at Home Mom

I came across this amazing website suggested to me by a fellow Mom and fell in love!
I love all their ideas and concepts and have started to implement them in my day to day life!
I highly recommend their blog and Facebook page! So many wonderful ideas!

Play at Home Moms

The idea of shutting off the techology and clearing away the over stimulating toys and gagets and just letting our children use their imaginations and creativity, it sounds so wonderful to me.

When Carebear was a baby I had no experience and NO clue what to do with her to keep her entertained. The day she saw TV for the first time her eyes glued and I got 5 minutes of peace, from that point on the TV remained on at all times!

Fast forward to now, she recently discovered the joys of youtube.com and how you can watch ANY show at ANY time! At first this seemed like a great idea but as the weeks have passed and our internet usage has soared so has the attitude and the tantrums!
It's been awful the past few weeks and although I know this is "just the typical terrible twos" I can't help but to feel there is more to it.

The other day Carebear was napping and so Buddy and I were in my room. He sat on the floor happily playing with some empty water bottles and I started to fold some laundry. My instinct was to turn the TV on and let him watch Treehouse, but then when I looked at him and saw how he was playing contently on his own I realized he didn't NEED anything to distract him, he was already quite heavily immersed in his own activity!
It was then it really hit me that Carebear NEVER needed anything to stimulate her mind and keep her busy but her own imagination! I know it sounds like a simple concept but it just never occurred to me before.
I started to do some research and have found so much wonderful information and ideas!!

How the joy of being bored for children can spark their imaginations. I'm now spending less time online and more time planning different games, activities and adventures for my kids!

Play at Home Moms and the wonderful people at Simplicity Parenting are helping me change the whole way I parent and I am LOVING it!!

We've already created and had so many wonderful adventures so far!
I've seen a HUGE change in Carebear and in Buddy since I started and can't wait to see how things change and grow! Each day starts a new adventure for us!

I started to cut out TV and now youtube! It's been a bit hard on Carebear who was so reliant on it, but we've successfully made it over 48 hours with zero television or internet and I'm hoping not to cave in! We just keep coming up with new activities to keep our day in motion and when the weather is a bit nicer I don't plan on being inside much!

We started our adventure with planning our day together! Based on the ideas suggested on Play at Home Moms we made our own  Daily Rhythm Chart (please check out their site for more info by clicking on the link)
I'm teaching the children Spanish so this was a great way for us all to learn the names of the activities of our day!
I made these magnets so we can move them around and pick the activity for our days. Carebear loves to help move then around and we talk about each one and what they mean. I think it helps us all know how we hope our day will flow. Things come up and change but we can just move our magnets around to accommodate the changes.

The magnets are laid out for morning, afernoon, evening and night.

There are loads of fun activities we can choose from and I'm printing more and more each day!

An example of our night time.

I can't wait to post all the fantastic photos that we've taken as we've learned and played together! It has been fun exploring colours, shapes, sounds, textures, smells, tastes and more!

We had our bath time the other day and turned off all the lights. I brought in some glow sticks and watched the water change colours as suggested on Play at Home Mom's Idea! The kids loved it!! We added different ones together to make new colours and made the whole room glow!

Then we put glow sticks inside of balloons and bounced them around in the dark! Carebear had so much fun she wanted to take the glow sticks to bed so she could make her bedroom glow! It was awesome!



Happy Playing to you All!

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