Kinda bored !!

So ... Now I've let one of my DCF's go and the other family are on Holidays and only return on Jan. Si I only have 3 kids ( 2 are my own) and yesterday ... I was soooo bored. We could not go outside and I don't think we will be able to go outisde again today. I am enjoying the quiet time for sure before chaos in Jan. when I will have 2 new babies to care for but it"s kinda too quiet ;0)

Yesterday we did 2 craft projects, we did 'exercises', dancing, music, 2 books ... I even allowed a 20 min. TV time as I had NO MORE ideas and they too seemed bored. They are 21 months old and one 3.5 year old ...You guys have any ideas of games and stuff we can do today ? Ofcourse I always have freeplay and they play well together for the most part. I always have play d'oh and coloring available but it just seems not enough to fill a day. It juts felt sooo long yesterday. Maybe it's juts me or maybe I am just overdue for my holidays too and I am running out of inspiration:)

Any ideas ???

I think we're all overdue for our holidays. This week can't go fast enough. I just need to get to tomorrow to see some light as that will be the last day for 2 of mine.

Have you decorated sugar cookies?
Finger paint?
Give them new things to colour on... books... giant paper on the floor
Making snow flakes and hanging them on the window or int he daycare room to make it snow.
I think Christmas movies are prefectly acceptable this week and can be lots of fun with a fort and some snacks.
Do you have a friend that can bring over their child. Maybe someone you don't normally have over because you are normally full of kids?

Good luck with the rest of your week and enjoy the quiet time.

Yeah we already did the sugar cookies ...actually we baked a lot. But we just made a cake which we will decorate later. It's a special day here tomorrow. I'm all out of the oversized paper and I am down a few other art supplies. We went crazy on craft lately. I think that's what doesn't help... I'm all crafted out LOL. But I like the snowflake idea ...it made me think about making a garland. I'e been wanting to make one but did not get to it. I think we will do that.

Maybe I can find us a play date too. I do not take the kids out and most of my friends with kids are not in the area but maybe I can find someone. (Gosh that sounds so desperate lol ) but it would make a nice change.

maybe it has a lot to do with being so close to the holidays too, time off with family and time to rest. I do here you with feeling bored due to being down in numbers, you get used to a certain amount of chaos and crazy days and when things slow down you have to get used to the change, will take a little, and before you know it, you will have 2 new babies to FILL UP THOSE SLOW DAYS! enjoy your last couple days before break, maybe do a little extra baking or cut loose and let the kids have more free time than normal, nothing wrong with that every once in a while. Have a Christmas movie day, it is the Holidays, excuses the loafing and laziness, just enjoy each other and relax your last few days before the New Year.

My building is doing a fire alarm test and evacuation drill today. We have been going over fire safety in between dancing, crafts, music time, etc. The only kids that have done any of this before are my own. My two dck's are new at this. They are getting really good at "Stop, Drop and Roll" and crawling under pretend smoke. Maybe going over some of these safety tips will give you something different to do.

my son is in love with the fire station next door. We have books and colouring pages all about fire trucks/fighter, and stations, even one about a fire house dog.

Theme: Adventure Days!

it was freezing rain and we all stayed in.

(this is what we did yesterday) - i have more leeway since 2 are mine ( 2 and 3 ) and my fulltime dck is 3 as well.

While i am not into themes, like you, i was kind of relax and it was last week anyways (at least for me and my dcks).

SO the theme was adventures day. We watched the movie (toy story 2 on vhs)

after that, we discuss their adventures, fave characters ( this one become children led as the toddlers tells the story in their own little way with sound effect)............. and then they switch to planes and cars, loading my small suitcases to go to the airport.

While they were doing that, i ask them if i can get snacks ready.

they were busy loading cargo, opening each green suitcase to look for Jessie (from toy story 2).

We eat snacks, they help clean up, and we talk about going to the library. (yeah, in this freezing rain, in fact my oldest 8 year old is even home, no bus!)

Note: we go to library for story time when the weather was nice, so they sort of memorize that routine.

Since i know this week is crappy, last week i loaded the myself with 20 picture books from the library last week.

So, we agree that I will be the librarian this week (caregiver driven activity), and we pick the picture books for our story time from the library book bins. I told them my story is about - Curdoroy, a brown bear with green over all. So, the 3 of them went to the dress up station(children driven activity) and find every green blanket they can find to wrap their teddy bears. That took like 10-20 minutes of them, just wrapping and unwrapping the bears. And now they are ready for story. After the story, they were looking for buttons in the house..LOL, thanks goodness i don't have babies in my care. We open the big jar of buttons, which was my after school favorites. (children and caregiver collaboration)

The 3 year old girl look for all the pinks, and purple, while both boys were busy looking for the one which has shade of green for Curdoroy. They counted the buttons: 7, 11, 16 and i was giggling in the background at the 2 year old attempts at counting. I give him praise for trying and we counted 1-5 together. I took out the number line props - from 1 to 10, and the another felt board with number line. I only did 1 up to 10, so my 3 year old daughter use it to count her buttons. After she filled the 10 spots in the number line, she counted the remaining buttons again 7, 11, 16 again.

The two boys were just happy arguing which one is blue or green and found a piggy bank to put their buttons in. So, I use another piggy bank for transition - PUT ALL BUTTONS IN THE PIGGYBanks. This is clean up time, without the song :clean up, everybody, everywhere. The two teams :(mom and 3 year old girl) versus (2 & 3 year old toddlers) race who finish putting our buttons back in the piggy bank.

Then off to wash our hands. They are seated in the dining table, my routine is give them fruits and veggie tray while I am preparing lunch. They continue their discussions about how many buttons Curduroy need, as my little girl saying " he need more than one buttons" and the boys said: he needs only ONE. boys versus girls ...LOL

After serving them their lunch, I grab the the tray of fruits and veggies and started eating with them. I eat my lunch so ever slow, (we got an hour block for lunch) ...okay because we chat too, about everything and anythingthing. These kids stayed in the dining table with me, just for the adventure stories while eating - the squirrels in our backyard, the bear that lives in the old train tracks, etc. we make these stories up as we go). We wash hands and then they go over to the stuff toy center to pick their teddy bears as I am getting the cots and pens ready.
Sleep quit time was 2-3pm.

at 3 pm, wash up, snacks.

We chit chat at snacks about Woody, and we thought, what if he got a parachute?

So, after snack, the parachute is out. (caregiver driven activity). We follow the rules of parachute play, we make up our own rules. we take turns. (caregiver & children collaboration. )

Zumbatomic music is on the background. (note: i am a license zumbatomic instructor (Zumba for kids). As they were getting to the end of the parachute play, i told them i feel like their is a penguin in me. We put the parachute aside and did "Penguin Dance".
2-3 year old is under Little Stars so Zumba moves are all about silly animal move imitation, like ROLL PLAY show on treehouse. So, this is max of 30 minutes structured (caregiver driven activity). Each caregiver can structure repeat marching, hands up, hands down, forward /back, turn around - to any music for the kids...just put it in the background as transition tool so they hear it first, then later lets dance. Lil starz as we call them need mental conditioning before taking part in a dance, as we adults also tap our toes when we hear a good music. Zumba actually is good at this when it comes to finding music that lets you move. Even the adult Zumba music (some are hit with the kids).

So with that activities, that ends at 4pm. We came to dining table for water and grab another fruit tray. After a little chit chat, I told them I washed up some big blankets last weekend............. of course, they all know what this mean. Fort building in the living room. (children driven activity [free play]). I brought one bin of blanket, they push the chairs around, they bring the bus inside the fort......... They were busy, I got my tea.

And mom was invited inside our fort when she came around 5pm for pick up.

Today, my toddlers are watching Toy Story 2 again, and my plan today is called SORTING DAY! my toy bins are labeled, and pretty sure the trains are in the animals bin. So, the theme of our day is around SORTING TOYS and putting the blocks in their respective COLOR CODED BINS.

I got them last week to sort blocks according to colors - keep them busy, teach them about colors - since it was mixed up last weekend, then we can make it an activity - toss the blocks in the right BIN COLOR. Of course, this is after we made cowboy woody out of the blocks.

While this is a long post, I hope you can pick tidbits and pieces that you can apply. I personally think this weekend is relax and less programming. The routine elements that I would keep is feeding time on schedule and story time. The play base learning can be loose and more on children driven activity or free play for that matter.

And there is the Christmas tree decorations that they put in their shopping basket, so today, they can hang it back in the tree again.

Cheers, Angie

No offence, but my Mom taught me that there is no reason for anyone to be bored ever in their lifetime. There is always too much to be done, too much to see, too much to read, too many fun things all around us. I taught that to my children. It's true. There aren't enough hours in my day for me to do all the things I love to do.

Now I have to ask you crafty, do you feel that you have to entertain your dckids all the time? How can they possibly be bored? I'm sure they are surrounded by toys, colouring, scissor practice, painting, puzzles, games, and on and on and on in your daycare. Don't allow the children to ever use that word. Tell them that it's imagination time. That's my word for freeplay time and my daycare kids never stop. It doesn't always have to be a productive craft, I throw colouring and paintings in the garbage all the time because they children were just practicing and the parents don't need every single piece of paper their child creates, just the special ones.

I remember you writting that in another post momof4 ...It made me laugh. I understand what you mean and there is a bunch of stuff to do around here too. I think it just felt that way since there were less of us and there was not as much noise or mouvement and our activities seemed to go by faster than usual. I mean supervising and helping 3 kids making an art project rather than 5 kids takes less time. The energy levels were lower too so when we singed and danced or whatever it was shorter than usual. The kids just wanted to go play on their own after a while. This Am we had time to color, bake a cake, do one circle time with a christmas book and play with baby dolls and it was only 10h00am. I did not do less than what we usually do but I found myself having more time to actualy just watch the kids play and I am running out of creativity. I think I am probably due for some holidays because I had a diffcult time filling this ''extra'' time. I don't think the kids were actualy bored but maybe they also felt the change in mouvement around here :)

That said I do think it is important to take time to sit back and just watch the clouds go by and enjoy quieter times with our kids. There is no need to rush and run and keep 'busy' all the time. This afternoon the weather turned better and I took the kids outside we walked, made a snowman, played in slides had a mini snow ball fight, it was fun. Then we lied down in the snow and watched it fall on us for a moment...That was really nice too. We need to take time to enjoy these simpler things and not always overstimulate ourselfs.

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Originally Posted by Momof4

Now I have to ask you crafty, do you feel that you have to entertain your dckids all the time? How can they possibly be bored?.

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And actually NO, that's the thing I feel they do not need me at all most of the time LOL. Just make sure they are safe and fed haha. No one here knows the word bored ...well not that I know of. haha

Quote:

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Originally Posted by crafty

........That said I do think it is important to take time to sit back and just watch the clouds go by and enjoy quieter times with our kids. There is no need to rush and run and keep 'busy' all the time..... We need to take time to enjoy these simpler things and not always overstimulate ourselfs.

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THIS is what I meant! I just don't want you to burn out! Letting the children play once in a while and sitting back with a smile and a cup of tea or coffee is healthy for us.