Fun Day

Today my son slept in. I thought for sure he would be getting up soon after my husband left for school/work, but instead he slept in until 8:50AM! I was thrilled. I decided to reward him with making today really fun. It is probably my job as a stay at home mom of one to help make all of his days fun, but that doesn't always happen. Especially with it being chilly out and my being very pregnant, and only knowing a handful of people in this town who don't work all day.

I definitely play with him and do activities with him, but I feel like at this point much of my time is spent trying to figure out how I will get through the next few (or many) hours until my husband gets home or until bedtime. I know this is normal for stay at home parents, but I am also realizing more and more how numbered our days are of it just being Elijah and I. Very soon we will have another one that will be with us constantly and while those will be special days, I do really want to cherish this one on one time with my eldest. SO back to my being determined and motivated to make today fun.

Almost everything I decided to do was activities I found on Pinterest. If you don't already use it, you should. It's amazing. A major time waster if you let it be, but fabulous and quite useful nonetheless. I spent about 15 minutes looking stuff up and just a few minutes prep time for each one. And then I became Fun Mom :o)

But first, we started our morning with tea time and a bit of watching Green Eggs and Ham.

After taking this picture I realized he needed a hair trim. So we did that and then got on to the more fun stuff. I let him choose what order we went in. First, he chose this project.

It was so easy! Basically you just cut out your shape out of colored construction paper. Then, using a q-tip and baby oil you can "paint"your designs onto the shape. We taped some twine to the backs and then hung them in the window. Unfortunately the sun has yet to shine through said window today, so we are still waiting on the finished product. I have to say though, if you do this, use lots of oil. we kept ours a little thin in most parts and I don't think those will shine through as much.

Next, we did this. My son doesn't have a nerf gun (yet) so instead I gave him a straw and made the object of the game be to blow the lego men off without knocking over the cups. Then he decided to make a second tower and compare knocking over his lego men to his dinosaurs. Turns out dinos are much stronger. This kept him busy long enough for me to do some dishes and make lunch. And now there are lots of little towers around the living room and I kind of love it.

After lunch we kept with the lego theme and printed out this cool coloring sheet. Instead of doing sums with dice, we did more number identification using the cards from this game. Whichever card he picked he got to color once he matched it and could tell me what number it was. He tends to get bored with coloring quickly but he loved this one.

After that, we moved to the other side of the table where I had placed this worksheet and some coins. We talked about the different sizes of the silver coins and how many go into the dollar. He filled in all the spots and found that we only had $2.65...the downside to not planning ahead.

Lastly, we kept the money theme going and went to play in his room. He has been really into setting up "toy stores", which he also calls "a different kind of Target" and has us come buy things. We always just pretend the money part. Today I gave him some coins and I was the shop keeper. Each section cost a different kind of coin. He came in, learned the cost of each item, made some thoughtful purchases, sorted through his money, then paid his bill. We did this probably 10 times and I let him keep part of the change for when he goes to a real store.

After all this it was time for quiet time, which just ended as I am typing this. It has been a fun and educational day but I honestly cannot believe it is only 4PM and I still have a solid 3 hours before my husband comes home! Movie time... :o)