Intentions…

One of my goals for the year was to spend more time ‘doing stuff’ with the girls.

I berate myself about this a fair bit. I have a degree in early childhood ed, I taught preschool for almost 10 years, I have hundreds of suitable three year old activities stored away somewhere in this brain, I just don’t often get them out!

So I have started a list… a list of activities we could do and I figured I might share some of my ideas with anyone else who reads this and might also have a three-year-old (or slightly younger or older) and at the same time maybe motivate myself to actually get off my bum and do them!

So firstly I need to collect some ‘stuff’ to make setting up the activities and living through them a lot easier. I am totally inspired by this blog ‘consumption rebellion’ so with the idea in mind that we a) don’t have buckets of money to spend on stuff and b) it isn’t really a great thing to just buy more and more new stuff I am setting my first goal to go take a look at the two local op shops and see if I can acquire some of the ‘stuff’ I want.

First on my list is one big or two smaller shallow tubs for water and sand play. I know I can get exactly what I want from Bunnings but I’d like to see if I can get something that will work just as well from the op shop. Some old large buttons and a set of old fashioned scales with weights are also on the list. A variety of kitchen utensils like egg beaters, funnels, ice cube trays and measuring cups which I am sure I will find at an opshop somewhere.

I am also on the look out for some old paint brushes and I’d love a bit of blackboard paint… not that I really expect to find these in an op shop, but you never know. I’ve just read on a US website that you can buy blackboard contact paper over there.. now that would be cool, though I’ve never heard of that being available here.

I also think I might buy the girls a pair of scissors each… and maybe a hole punch they’d love both of those. I’ve wanted to get a cheap set of water colours for them too, and some chalk and the lovely Shae provided those on Friday evening after we looked after her gorgeous girl for the afternoon… not like we needed a thank you to have another friend to play with but Yay! Maybe I will splurge a bit on some really decent soft vibrant coloured pencils and soft grey leads. We also need more paper to draw and paint on. That is frustrating cause when I was teaching I knew heaps of people to contact who gave us so much paper to draw and paint on – pre-used as well as clean. But now I don’t have any contacts.

This poor blog.. it started out as an idea of a way for me to share scrapping stuff… then moved more towards a place where I could just write about the things the girls were doing so I wouldn’t forget. Now it is moving into a list of things I want to do and a way to keep me accountable! But the plan is to get the girls to bed in the next half an hour so they wake at a decent time this arvo so we can head off.. posting this now so I might actually get out of my Pjs and go!