Our house sits very close to the road. Fortunately, it’s not a very busy road. But it’s a road. Next to that road, we have two huge maple trees that dump Fortunately Emma is a good listener, and she played close to the house for quite a while. Then she got a little restless. Little by little she moved — you guessed it — closer to the road. So I improvised! I grabbed her sidewalk chalk and wrote huge alphabet letters on the sidewalk. I scrambled them all up, and then I challenged her to jump the alphabet in order.
Each letter took her a little bit of time to find, because they weren’t in the traditional A-Z order. But she LOVED it! She went through the alphabet several times (which took about half an hour) and then started to spell her name, Mommy, Daddy, etc. This bought enough time for my husband and I to finish the Great Leaf Pickup of ’09. (Of course, we were right there with her — close to the road — still making sure that she stayed put!)
In fact, she loved it so much that the next day she decided we needed some numbers too. (Note: We took both of these pictures on Day 2. While my husband is a HUGE Ohio State fan, he wouldn’t make her wear the OSU gear two days in a row. A girl has to have some limits, you know.)
She jumped from 1 to 20 and then started on phone numbers that she knows. While not every kid is as crazy about numbers and letters as our little lady is, this one really did work for me! I guess all of those years of studying to be a teacher paid off! And, of course, Emma got to play in the giant leaf piles before they disappeared! (This picture is from Day 1 — cleanup day. She was wearing her play pants and singing the Francesca Batistelli song “Free to be Me,” the one that talks about having rips in her jeans. She loves that she has a rip in her play jeans!)
For more ideas that work, stop by Works for Me Wednesday hosted by We Are THAT Family. You’ll find everything from cleaning tips to recipes to organization ideas!
