Tuesday: I had these grands today from about 9:30 until 5:30. Since it was a rather "wet" outside day, it meant that we had no choice but to play indoors. I had hoped the weather would clear by later in the afternoon so that we could go to a park and get some good outdoor play in, but that did not happen today.
Instead, we made the best of our time right at my little house. Thankfully, I DO have a lot of toys. These kiddos really do not need entertaining--they do really well with the materials I have right here and are quite a creative little bunch.
Sometimes it helps to divide and conquer ... in this case, it was just putting different things in separate rooms so that they weren't all competing for the same objects to play with. Here is Erin in my bedroom constructing a "city" and a "tower" with some very basic blocks I have.
Erin was very happy to spend some alone time in my room. We even closed off the door so that Cal and I could shoot hoops in the hallway without our basketballs bouncing into whatever Erin was creating.
Meanwhile, Aidan was busy making a "magnetic checker board" out of MagnaCubes. I really didn't think it was possible for him to do this, but he was quite determined! Aidan is a very precise builder. There is a lot of passion in this child ... I love him dearly.
Erin also had a lot of fun with baby "Bonnie" today. She carried her all over the house, interacting with her during our various activities. She decided Bonnie's bonnet needed to be converted into a gnome hat ... which cracked us up.
I dug out of my game drawers a game I purchased ... probably two years ago but have never gotten out for the kids! It's just that it sounded a lot better ON-LINE than it did when I actually received it and tried to figure out how on earth to play with it. BUT ... I have many weeks ahead that I will have an all-day with these guys and I simply must utilize all of the material I have in order for us to have meaningful time together. It's too easy to just flip on a video (which, by the way, has a HUGE draw) and then everyone just sits around and vegetates for hours on end. Not on my watch--not if it can be avoided anyway. We DO watch videos, but I try to intersperse them and keep them brief.Anyway, this is QUISI. It comes with 210 very interesting photographs on nice sturdy card stock. You can do a variety of activities with these cards. What we tried today was making up a story with them. All five of us sat at my table. I dealt each of us five random cards, and then I started by placing one of my cards on the table with a sentence that introduced the story. The next person (Aidan) then chose one of their five cards, placed it next to the one already on the table, and added to the story. Somehow we started with a world outside of our galaxy and ended up with leaders and wars and ... I forget how it finally ended.
Cal enjoyed himself HUGELY with this activity. After the five of us were finished playing, Cal and I made up a story together.
I also got "smart" during the week, realizing all of the kids enjoy fiddling around on my piano, and located my headphones to the piano and got it all set up for them. This worked really well! They all enjoyed taking turns, changing the sound effects, and whooping it up on the piano ... all without annoying anyone at all! Look at Aidan and Cal interacting about it!
Aidan finally cornered me long enough to play a game of checkers on his homemade magnetic checker board! I wasn't sure we could actually play the game on this board, but Aidan had it figured out perfectly (are you surprised?) and we played a very decent game together.
Aidan also requested that I get the Origami books and papers out so that he could make things. He is very very good at this, and it keeps him occupied for a good interval of time.
Erin and Gregory went fishing out in the hallway. The toy room was too crowded with toys they had already played with, so they settled for the hallway (this was my suggestion). They did pretty well, except it seems that Cal wanted ALL of the fish, no matter what. Erin's protests were quite LOUD. We had to kind of rein in our littlest Pahman and make him be a bit less aggressive with his fishing.
After we ate lunch, I hooked up my computer camera and suggested the kiddos each make a 3-minute video using our puppets. We got everything set up and then each of them had a turn making a video. It was pretty funny actually. Here is Cal with Oscar and Cocoa. Cal's movie quickly diminished into a karate match with Oscar winning by a long shot.
Meanwhile, the other three were busy in the other room. I "requested" that each person who was making a video be left alone to make up their own story without outside interference. Aidan had a hard time with this because he has "ideas" for everyone to do in their videos. He resigned himself to wait for his turn.
Here is Cal enjoying watching his video, which was basically a 3-minute video of two puppets fighting each other to the FINISH. He was very pleased.
We did a lot of eating today--mainly because I was actually prepared to serve a variety of quick foods for them to eat. Nobody seemed to be hungry by the time I drove them to their house, so I was glad about that.
I love you guys so much. I'll keep trying to come up with interesting things we can do together. Hopefully we won't be rained in every week!
