Waste Not, Want Not. Fruits and Veggies That is.
One big part of living on less is to make sure you use up everything you have. Everything that you buy and don’t use is wasting money. Keeping fruits and veggies in an edible state is always a hard one. Which fruits can go together and which ones make other ones spoil faster? Apple and banana? Grapes and carrots?
Luckily, there is a webpage that can help, imagine that? Here you can learn about how to keep fruits and vegetables fresh and prevent spoilage. It lists a bunch of common fruits and vegetables and where you can store them and for how long. For example, celery can go in the fridge but garlic should always be stored on the counter. A great resource for keeping your food fresh and not having to throw it in the compost pile.
Cereal Shapes
Dry cold cereal is a great tool for teaching kids about shapes. Fill a baggie with several types of cereal and let your toddler sort them out by shape.
Circles: Cheerios
Squares: Chex, Quaker Oat Squares
There are more shapes in some sugary cereals (Lucky Charms comes to mind). If you don’t want to buy an entire box, consider buying the little one-serving packs and letting your kids glue the shapes onto paper. Or just eating a small serving for a special treat.
And of course, there are other foods that come in basic shapes. Some crackers are triangle or rectangle shaped. When you start looking around your kitchen, you may find little teaching opportunities everywhere!
Little Dinosaurs
We’ve been checking out a different How Do Dinosaurs… book from the library for the past few weeks. The Boy really enjoys the rhythm and rhymes and has taken to reciting some parts. These are short picture books that teach a simple lesson. The dinosaurs learn their colors, count to ten, say good night, eat their food and go to school to name a few.
Younger kids might enjoy the counting and colors books and older kids will like to see the dinosaurs go to school and play with their friends. The silly, rhyming text is accompanied by great illustrations of dinosaurs with human parents. These are fantastic books for older kids who are into dinosaurs too.
Yarn Dolls
I often have bits of left over yarn from various crafting projects. Last week I made several yarn dolls with the scraps. This is a quick, relatively easy, very cheap way to make a toy. Older kids (I’d say ages 8 and up) could probably even make the doll themselves. For younger kids, the outcome is fun to play with. One skein of yarn can make quite a few dolls. The dolls can be used as tie-ons on a birthday gift or as party favors. You can adjust the size of the doll by using a larger piece of cardboard or a larger book around which to loop the yarn.
Keep Track of Your Little One’s Books
We currently have anywhere from 500 to ∞ children’s books littering the house. There is the full 5′ bookshelf in the kid’s room, the 7′ one in the living room, the books on the coffee table and the ones that are stashed in the couch for leisure reading between building train tracks and knocking down Lego towers.
We have ratty books, brand new books, books that make sounds, books that have lights and require batteries, puzzle books that come apart, cloth books, velcro books, old classics, new soon-to-be classics and possibly even lost library books. But how to keep track of them all and be able to share that list with relatives and friends so you don’t end up with 6 copies of Pat the Bunny?
Enter the website, LibraryThing.com. You can create a free account and start entering all the books you have by title, author or ISBN. When you are done you get a fairly simple looking URL that you can send around to family and friends. This lists all the books and you can even see how many people also have a certain book on their list. Over 2000 for The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein!
You can even make other lists for yourself, but since you can fit about 20 children’s books in the space that Andrew Carnegie’s biography would fit, it is especially helpful for managing the ever growing kid’s bookshelf.
Stickers as Travel Activity
We’ve recently completed two short trips, one by plane and one by train. On both occasions, The Boy had his own small backpack to carry. He was able to choose a few small toys and activities to take along. This worked quite well and freed up a bit of room in our own carry-ons. The best activity we had on both trips was our little baggie of stickers (cut from old address labels) and a few sheets of blank paper. The Boy was quite well occupied pulling the stickers off their backing and ‘decorating’ the paper with them. This activity was cheap (free actually) and very light-weight.
Old Return Address Labels
Although it may be tedious work to cut the picture off old return address labels, they can be put to good use as stickers for your child. Some relatives recently moved and gave The Boy all of their old return address labels to play with. We cut the name and address portion off and now have a good-sized bag of fun stickers for him.
Toddlerobics
We’ve recently discovered the Toddlerobics books and they have fast become favorites. One of our recent posts talked about ‘do-it-yourself’ toddler classes. If a gymnastics/activity class is not in the budget for you, check out these books for some toddlerobics at home. The Boy loves to do the activities in the book as I read them. Zita Newcome’s rhymes and illustrations appeal to children and adults alike. You can use these books to do a 20-30 minute gymnastics class at home!
Toddler Classes at Home
There are many classes available out there for toddler and preschool age kids, especially in urban areas. However, classes can be expensive and hard to fit into the budget of a single income family. If classes aren’t going to fit into your budget, here are some ideas of ways to do class activities and socialization at home.
1. Form a Playgroup. If you don’t know anyone in your area with kids, start hanging out at the park or another play area. If you already have some friends who are also stay at home parents, organize one or more day(s) per week to get your kids together to play. A park is an ideal place to start. When the weather turns bad, try a play area inside a mall or other free play area. This may not be a structured activity, but it will get your child playing with and around other children, an important part of early socialization skills.
2. Plan ‘Classes’ at Home. Plan an hour (or 10 minutes) every day (or once a week) to do some structures ‘class’ activities at home.
For Gymnastics: Put some pillows on the floor and let the kids do tumbling. Practice balancing on one foot, hopping and doing other stretching/tumbling activities.
For Art: Put a protective cover on the table and get out the paints. Use crayons, colored pencils, watercolors, scissors, glue, stickers and paper and simply let the kids explore different types of media.
For Music: If you are not a singer yourself, find a cd or dvd that has some good singing and encourage your kids to sing along. If you have toy musical instruments, get them out and have ‘band practice.’ Find songs that have a good rhythm for clapping hands and tapping toes. Sing songs that include movements like “Hokey-Pokey” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”
Getting an Early Start on Chores
Don’t think that just because your child is a toddler that they cannot start helping with ‘chores’ around the house. I have noticed that there is a window of opportunity where kids actually like to help. By taking advantage of that early window, you can set up routines and examples for your kids to follow as they grow.
Picking up Toys: I think the best way to start forming good habits is to have kids help pick up and put away their own toys. Teach them early on that part of playing with toys is putting them away. Even if you put away 90% of the toys and they only put away 10%, it is a good start.
Laundry: Putting dirty clothes in the laundry basket is a good place to start for kids helping with laundry. After they get undressed, ask your toddler to pick up the clothes and take them to the laundry basket. This works best if the laundry basket is low to the ground. If you have a taller hamper, consider putting a small step stool nearby. Toddlers and preschoolers might also be able to help load the washer and dryer, especially if you use front loaders.
Dining Table: Most preschoolers can start to help setting the table. Be prepared for things to be put in the wrong place and dropped on the floor though. Silverware might be a good place to start. For example, ask your child to take these spoons and put one at everyone’s place at the table. Or say, here is your cup, go put it at your place. Cleaning up after meals is a little more tricky. We typically head right into potty time or bath time or nap time right after meals, so help in clearing a washing up will have to start a little farther down the road for us.
Cleaning: Dusting is a great place for toddlers and preschoolers to begin helping. Give them a damp dust rag while you are dusting and let them go at it. They might just move the dust around instead of wiping it up, but at least they are getting the idea of wiping down the furniture. *Remember to keep toxic cleaning chemicals away from your child.
Yard Work: Most kids love to play outside. Make outside chores a fun activity for your child. If you are working in the garden, let them have a small plot in which to dig and use a watering can. Weeding (provided you are specific about what is a weed and what is not) can be another fun chore. The Boy also loves helping pick up clippings and taking them to the street or to the compost pile. Sometimes a child-sized accessory (like kid gardening gloves) is all it takes for kids to actually want to help out!
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