Simple Pleasures

Here is my beautiful, blonde-haired boy thoroughly enjoying himself by pushing his bubble mower through the grass while the sprinklers were going. He was soaking wet and smiling from ear to ear by the time he was done. I sat watching him and what I ended up wishing was that he will always find this much pleasure in doing things he loves throughout his life. I hope that his love of learning continues through elementary and high school and into college and that he finds joy in studying subjects that fascinate him. I want him to find sports or activities that he does purely for enjoyment. I also hope that he will still find pleasure in the simple things, like a summer evening or a sunset or the smile on his child's face.

Let Your Kids Take the Lead

Being a former teacher, I think I have the tendancy to want to plan things with my children as if I were planning a lesson for my students. I will have a great idea for an activity or project, but then when I present it to my son, he has no interest in doing it. In a classroom with 30 kids, at least some of the kids will be interested in an activity, so it is never a complete flop, but with one kid it is a little different.

I have had to work at letting him take the lead in areas where it is appropriate for hime to do so. I believe that giving kids as many choices where you can makes it easier for them to accept the times when they simply need to do what they are asked. One thing that has worked well for us lately, is for me to keep a bunch of items that aren't accepted in our city's recycling and would normally be throw away, like used yogurt cups, empty cereal boxes, egg cartons, etc. in a cardboard box at the bottom of our pantry. My son knows that he can use these materials to create whatever he wants. Mainly he makes boats and sees whether or not they will float. I helped him a little with this one by taping the sails to a skewer he found in a kitchen drawer. He cut the sails himself and poked the skewer through what I believe is an empty sour cream container.

My two nieces spend a lot of time with me during the summer since both their moms work full-time. The other day, the younger one was in the grocery store with me and asked if we could make fruit salad. It sounded like a geat idea to me and her and my son had lots of fun cutting the fruit themselves (they actually used cheese spreaders which are quite dull but can still cut soft fruit easily) and then adding it to plain yogurt.

I know these aren't revolutionary ideas for activities to do with kids, but they have been keeping my brood entertained. Please share any extraordinary or ordinary ideas you have, the teacher in me is always looking for ideas, of course just for those times when my kids don't come up with great ones of their own :)