The Weekly Review: Week 40

Website of the Week

I have enjoyed exploring A Little Learning for Two. Almost every post has a great activity for little ones. This mom is super creative and I found a lot of new ideas on her blog. I just kept working my way back through her archives filing away idea after idea.

The Weekly Project

You would think that this week would involve panicking about holiday preparations. Instead I realized that in less than a week I'm going to be travelling for at least 24-28 hours (12 or more each way) in a car with two very young children. Therefore, every spare moment this week I've been preparing car friendly activities. I've done a few more busy/quiet book pages, and prepped some other activities as well.

Illness Week

This week's highlight was Ava getting sick on the last morning I would have had on my own to get some work done before the holidays. Instead, the two of us spent an entire day camped out on blankets and towels in front of the television. Poor girl was so nauseous she wouldn't even eat a goldfish cracker. I'm pretty sure she at nothing other than a single bite of a saltine all day. Fortunately, she was on the mend the next day and back to normal on the third day.

Ava and Michael this Week

Pretend play has arrived. This week, mostly at Michael's prompting, the children have played squinkie school. They've also had sleepovers. They played superheros complete with capes made from blankets. They were the parents of a sick baby. They brought her to the doctor (me) in a car made from a laundry basket. Michael informed me that the baby had a torn eardrum. I pretended that a funnel was an otoscope and peered into the baby doll's ear to confirm his diagnosis. I wrote out a prescription on a piece of paper and sent the little family back in their car to the pharmacy (again, me). I then filled the prescription with a medicine spoon and empty medicine bottle and they drove off to Ava's room where I overheard them dispensing medicine to their baby. Then Michael came back down for more medicine and told me they gave it all to the baby. I explained the concept of overdose and gently suggested that perhaps they needed more because they had accidentally spilled it? He thought that was a great explanation and brought his new bottle of medicine upstairs. I'm pretty sure that bottle got "spilled" several more times before they moved on to a new game. I adore all the pretend play and hope that this is just the beginning.

Busy Book - Fasteners Page

Now that our holiday car trip is less than a week away I am trying to finish a few more busy / quiet book pages. I am no longer focusing on perfect, beautiful, or unique. Instead my focus is on relatively quick with good play value in the car.

For those of you who don't know, a busy book (or quiet book) is a homemade book where each page or two-page spread is designed to be an activity.

Earlier in the fall I made several pages, and then abandoned the project for a while. These are the pages I had finished before:

• Shapes Page
• Caterpillar Patterns and Numbers Page
• Phonics Pockets Page
• Underwater Bead Maze Page
• Apple Tree Page
• Chalkboard Two-Page Spread

Busy Book / Quiet Book Fasteners

For this page I bought several types of fasteners at a craft store. I attached straps to the three that didn't come with one and then attached them to the page. Done. I'm hoping this one will interest the children, but I'm afraid that several of these will still be too hard for now.

Why, oh why? (Or one of the fundamental truths of parenthood.)

My children go to school only two mornings a week. I get four blessed hours of time to myself on those days. Much of my sanity lies in those hours. The other five days a week they are at home.

Therefore, one of the fundamental truths of parenthood dictates that the stomach bug will hit on a school morning - always. The universe gets bonus points if it happens on the last school morning before winter break.

(Note the pitifully listless child, carefully positioned bowl, towels laid down to protect the carpet, minimal clothing to get dirty, and hair pulled back. What you can't see is the television I am letting her watch in order to keep her in the safe-puking zone.)