(a flashback to last summer)

Do you ever feel you need to be a chef, a seamstress, a house cleaning crew, a taxi service, a coach, a counselor, a mediator, a judge, both the good cop and the bad cop, an entertainer, a teacher, and the list goes on! I feel naggings to be more than I am reasonably capable and bigger than life. And in reality life often requires us to do more than reasonable, be more than what we think we are capable. But these little nudges, or sometimes big shoves, are opportunities for growth, opportunities to learn more about ourselves, and possibly a chance for memories to be made. Even when it doesn’t look that way in the beginning.

Does it ever look like that for you in the beginning? Me too… sometimes… like when it rains nickels from heaven. Painful but rewarding, 5 cents at a time.

Recently the “teacher-bug” bit me and I feel the need to make all the educational games, all the manipulatives, all the fine and gross motor skill toys that will broaden my children’s developmental horizon. There are days that I face the projects with immense amounts of motivation, and then sometimes my children don’t sleep through the night, or take a nap, or are teething, or are sick, or are just extra clingy, and the motivation that came with the “bug bite” fizzles like day-old soda. Do you ever find yourself trying to be the “fun parent” but in the preparation for the fun, the children end up fighting, crying, and/or laying on the stairs yelling at you and in your once ideal afternoon you become the less than patient parent that you would like to be, your voice is sharp, vision narrow, and find yourself at the end of your rope because, sometimes, it takes so much work to be fun.

Yah, me neither. <cough, cough>

My latest attempt paid off in the long run and we have enjoyed ourselves after the initial “getting it all together” fiasco. Maybe you can find a better time to tackle this, actually pretty simple, project than I did. I hope so! I wanted to make some file folder games and manipulatives for Little Mister to use and play with. You know, early education shrouded in fun and all that. I got a great idea from a friend to use bracelet beads for color sorting and counting. We bought these marine life beads that come in a variety of bright colors. They come with sea turtles, whales, dolphins and seals in 9 different colors. There are also zoo animal beads and safari beads. And beyond that there are beads that come in spheres, squares and stars, and non-bead toys too, that come a variety to please most preschoolers.

To make the file folder part I drew and cut out shapes out of different colors. I have 8 different colors, every color in a construction paper pack, and used a variety of shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, diamond, star, pentagon, and a rhombus (which I get is like a diamond on it’s side, but I was out of ideas, I already used a pentagon!). Now that I’m thinking about it some other shapes could be and oval, heart, shoe, hat, sock, pants, car, just about anything! I used double stick tape (or a swipe of a glue stick would work too) to lightly secure the shapes on the inside of the folder and then used clear packing tape and “laminated” the folder. Am I the only one who has done this? I mean, I don’t have a laminator and I didn’t want it to get torn the first time out, so you do what ya gotta do!

Ever since the bead bag came in the mail Mister has been at me to rip the bag open and when we did it was so fun! He immediately wanted to sort all the colors to the corresponding colored shape. Then he wanted to mix them all up and sort the colors onto the wrong colored shape. He got a kick out of the fact that they didn’t match any more, although he still matched all of the beads, just sorted them to a different color. Giggles galore, I’m telling you! When that fun faded we I decided to sort just the sea turtles and compare how many we had. We talked about “most” and “least”. These were new concepts so it did take some explaining, but with the beads there it was easy to see how there were more red sea turtles than purple and the orange had the most! There were only a few blue sea turtles and the gray had the least.

My Little Mister has only just begun to explore imaginative/pretend play. I’ve tried to encourage it with superhero capes, play-doh, little stuffed creatures, a card table tent, and other things to play with, but the colored beads were a breakthrough. After he had his fill of sorting and comparing (as soon as I tried to more directly turn it into a lesson his interest tapered quickly – good to remember!) he set up a pet shop, under the couch! He realized when he slid under the couch he “closely” resembled a turtle – shell and all! And since he fit so nicely he decided to slide his pets under with him. He’d slide all the way under, allow the skirt of the couch to fall down, wait a good 15 seconds, then flip the skirt up, announcing that his shop was open, slide out with his display of pets and ask me which pet I wanted to take home. Once decided on my “forever friend” he’d respond “at your service,” deliver the requested pet then slide back under the couch, letting the couch skirt close up shop. We played pet shop for a good 15 minutes, after 15+ minutes of sorting colors. The giggles alone made it all worth it!

Since the debut of our color matching file folder it has been a hit. New sorting strategies, new crazy ways to separate all of the beads, new games (including a rousing game of marine life dominoes) and some fun floor time together. It may be done with bracelet beads, construction paper shapes, and packing tape “lamination”, but it has provided some one-on-one, eye-to-eye, giggle together time, which sometimes, is what makes the day extraordinary!

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