Pinterest

I love Pinterest.  I have found so many great ideas, recipes and projects in the never ending scroll of pins.  The problem is that I work three days a week and spend a lot of time gathering ideas on Pinterest.  Then I make a Target run to gather the supplies for all of these sensory, fine motor skills and art projects suggested for toddlers and this happens:

I got overexcited.  I came home from work with my bag of goodies and just could not contain myself.  It's kind of like how I open and try every new item I haven't bought before once I get home from the grocery store.  It's exactly like that.  In that case I generally tear into the goodies by the time I'm in the parking lot.  I simply cannot wait. 

So, first I got out the berry colander I bought and let him sift water with it.  The rain poured down and he loved watching it.  I also bought pipe cleaners for him to stick in the holes, but having an ounce of restraint, I saved that for another day.  Next I busted out a set of magnets and a muffin tin so he could play with the different sizes and colors.  He enjoyed lining them up and sticking them together, then we made a pattern across the refrigerator.  Next up?  Markers!  Washable markers that is.  Target had a Back-To-School sale and these things were under $2.  Becker had never played with markers before.  I wrote his name on a piece of paper and taped it to his high chair tray.  First he wanted to pull the cap off the back end and put it back on, which took some strength.  Then, he went to town testing out each color.  He quickly decided the paper was hindering his artistic flow and tore it off the tray saying "off".  I decided this was a good time to test the "washable" claim on these markers so I let him scribble all over the tray.  I may regret this decision later, but I don't think he can really grasp the idea of the paper at this age anyway so the tray seemed to be an acceptable option.  I also put a lot of faith in that "washable" claim by not using a smock.  Luckily for me and his white shirt, he was far more interested in drawing on the tray than himself.  After he had thoroughly colored the tray and admired his colorful hands, I thought it was a good time to introduce shaving cream.  I remembered playing with it in preschool and had seen some fun looking sensory activites involving a nice, big pile of Barbasol.  I squirted out a dallop and let him go.  He squished it, spread it, smeared it, loved it and asked for "moe".  This soft, thick, creamy substance had lots of appeal.  And as a bonus to me, it cleaned up the marker beneath it!  Yes the "washable" claim is valid.  The more he played with the shaving cream, the cleaner the tray and his hands got.  It was super easy to clean up with a wet rag and then it was time to make dinner.  Blame it on my excitement to share these fun new things with him, or his toddler attention span....but we plowed through this activity line-up in about an hour.  I think I'll slow it down and focus on one activity at a time on our next go at it, but one thing led to another and in a way it just flowed this way.  Good clean fun with learning to boot!