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When times get busy…
By Laura | October 18, 2008
It’s been a very busy week in the Hassan household. Appointments and my parents’ upcoming visit was enough to keep things quite hectic! With little time to “sit back and relax,” it was difficult to pay attention to the girls and their needs.
I feel bad about that, but happily, they have plenty of toys to explore.
Dawn and Emily spent a lot of time building with Lego. Dawn is starting to make more complex structures, while Emily is getting into more basic building.
The girls went to a neighbor’s birthday party on Thursday and had a blast!
Emily was overwhelmed by the number of people and became extremely clingy, but within half-an-hour, she started to loosen up and enjoy herself!
With life getting so hectic, how do you ensure your child has opportunities to expand their knowledge? When time is available, it’s easy to sit down with your child and play–which in itself, is a great motivation for a child to explore, but left to their own devices, | believe that many parents fear that the child isn’t getting many opportunities. Perhaps it’s the traditional-homeschooler that still in me that’s speaking.
This is why I LOVE Lego so much! It’s a toy with endless possibilities, as far as creativity goes, and allows a child to expand their mental horizon.
I’ve also taken to allowing Dawn to help out more in the kitchen. She is now my official “egg cracker!”
Not bad for her first time! Four cracked eggs and only one piece of shell fell in!
With her birthday coming up next week, I want to find her some good educatonal toys. One idea is the Tall Stackers set which shows the child how to build simple structures and that foundations are necessary to make something taller (which she has probably already started figuring out with the Lego).
Another thought is to get her an art easel where she can color and paint and have her own “personal space” for her art and supplies.
The third idea is a VTech game called the VSmile. It’s pretty much a preschooler version of a Nintendo system, but the games are great and it’s been wonderfully designed for young children. I like the fact that all the games incorporate learning on a nonchalant way.
For example, in the game that comes with the system, you race your cars around the track (motor dexterity and hand-eye coordonation) and try to catch as many stars as you can. Every so often, you are stopped and asked to choose between two letters to complete a word on the screen. For example, the word might be kite and the child has to choose between a ‘k’ or an ‘l’.
The console has many games available for purchase and can connect to a TV or computer monitor. WIth the way that Dawn loves computers, I’m sure she’d get lots of use out of it. Emily might even want to give it a try!
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