At the moment, I'm just trying to figure out something special to do tomorrow with Taran. He kept running around the house this afternoon asking for various Cleveland family members and I think tomorrow is going to be a hard day when Joe and I go back to work and he doesn't have a gaggle of family around to shower him with affection.
I just snuck down to the park with his blue bucket and pilfered some rocks by the river's edge. There is endless scope for imagination in a pile of rocks: Biggest? Littlest? Blue rock? Pink Rock? How Many? What shape? What does it remind you of?
I threw together a couple of rock animals for Jessikah for the morning to get her creative juices flowing. Now I think I'm going to have a hard time leaving tomorrow because it would be so much more fun to stick around here with the peanut and play with rocks. I used to have a whole rock collection when I was a kid and to this day, rock hunting/collecting is one of my favorite things to do on vacation. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with pictures and second-hand retelling of the day.
There are a couple of great sites that I love to go to when I'm looking for fun new crafty, sensory, nature play type activities to do with Taran.
The Imagination Tree has great projects for toddlers and Nurture Store (where I got the idea for rock art) also has really fun ideas although some are geared more for older kids. Check them out when you get a chance!
Miss you guys! Taran is super fun to hang out with. Thanks for the links to the cool websites, great ideas for our girls.
ReplyDeleteWe miss you already too! Taran keeps asking "Auntie K? Auntie K?" I really wish teleportation was possible.
ReplyDeleteLove the Imagination Tree- so happy you sent that to me a while back. And, will have to check out the Nurture Store. Always looking for ideas to keep this little handful of mine busy!
ReplyDeleteI can't remember if I've talked to you about this before, but sometime in the next couple of months, as he gets just a little older, I want to start making an Atlas with Taran. I originally thought I would wait longer, but one day Joe was pushing Taran in his little toy car, (pretend) stopping at various countries along the way (Now we are in Mongolia! Now we are in Morocco!) and then showing Taran the countries on a little World Map placemat someone gave us that we taped to the wall. Taran was really into it and the next day he kept running up to the map and pointing out the countries he'd learned. So then we started telling him details about the places - "they have yurts in Mongolia", "Shall we go visit a hyena in Libya".
DeleteThe idea is for each country of interest, we put information in a scrapbook we find interesting (animals, geographic features...) and talk about the music, food, etc. This could take us YEARS so it's a great ongoing project for rainy days.