October 2nd, 2013 - Family Fun Time - Writing in shaving cream

Are you a parent? Are you on the lookout for fun ways to interact with your kids? What about hands on ways of teaching? Or teaching by integrating play?  Today's post is on a very simple, cost effective way to accomplish these things.

Ever had one of those nights where all you want to do it cook dinner, eat, then read a book in the tub?   Yeah. That was me.  I was so drained, and my toddler, who apparently is NEVER drained just wanted to play. Mama, wanna have a dance party? Wanna jump rope? How about we put on our boots and play in the snow? After explaining to her 654,646,546,546,543,266,978,984,165,461,887 that mama needed to make her some dinner, I finally said the magic words.

Izzy…How about we do something MESSY?

She loves those words.  She stopped, and cocked her head to the side, and said, what mama? So I thought for a few minutes, and decided to put two of her loves together – ‘snow’ and her letters.  

I grabbed a bottle of papa’s shaving cream, a baking pan, and sprayed a copious amount into it.

Then I let her go to town. She showed me all of her letters, and chatted me up while I made dinner.  It was a great solution for both of us since she was itching to physically do something rather than just sit and talk with mama, and I was physically exhausted! 

She was very impressed that mama let her get dirty, and it was a sneaky way to help her enjoy practicing her letters.  And it is a great way for her to learn - she LOVED the hands on method of physically making her letters. At the same time, she loved the ease of just running her palm across the pan when she made a mistake to rectify it.   

What methods of learning, and teaching do you employ? 

Enjoy.

~Danielle