Monday, May 14, 2007

Objects that inspire playful puttering.

Days like today I am reminded that random simple things can be the most entertaining for the boys. Here are a few things they played with today:

Wooden beads and lacing string. G likes to thread beads. A likes to use them to make things, count, push them into dough or sand to find as treasure...


Rocks in a painted box. A also does "math" with his rocks. He lines them up on the carpet in 2's, 3's or 4's, and adds, subtracts, and counts. G loves to count too...so we have more than one box of rocks! They also work great on the wooden conveyor belt that attaches to their tractor.


Shells (great for pushing into dough or hiding in sand box), wooden bowls, and a mirror. A uses all of the shells to make "tide pools" in the sandbox. The mirror is good for peeking around corners when playing hide & seek!


A tray and a tea set. We have tea parties and sell "lemonade" to each other several times a week. Also good for pouring (and pouring and pouring and pouring).

Today we also had out a sake set with a tiny pitcher and 2 small cups, and A used a child-sized baster to suck water out of the pitcher to fill the cups - mmmmm tasty.

We had a string tied across their shop, and they hung playsilks up to dry using wooden ladybug clothespins. A later found a deck of cards and hung up the face cards along the length of the clothesline.

Of course no day is complete without pulling out the stationery, pencils, pencil sharpener and eraser for writing letters to both visible and invisible friends.

Some days they are so intense and need even more physically intense activities or cannot slow down long enough to focus on small details. Some days though, they get to a point where they like to putter and can focus on their own games and activities - and that is when pulling out a box of random goodies can be the most fun.

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