Fun With a Tube
The Boy’s current favorite toy is a cardboard tube that formerly held wrapping paper. It is the perfect bat to use inside the house with soft balls (not softballs!). It also makes a great tunnel for small cars and trumpet for a musical parade. Daddy reinforced it with duct tape after the first little bend. Two shades of duct tape no less - now it is a cool two-tone bat! Just a reminder that free toys can be found just about anywhere with a little imagination!
Summer Travel Ideas
Budget Travel has a list of 10 locations where you can ‘unfasten your seatbelts and get out and walk.’ It could be that none of these places are close by for you. However, there are probably some fun places to get out and walk around in your neck of the woods too. Check your local and regional city/chamber of commerce websites for budget activities. There might be some federal or state lands nearby that you could check out. One friend of ours decided to do several day trips during one week for their ’summer vacation.’ This way they did not have to pay for any lodging. Their kids got to see some new museums, beaches and parks without the hassle of packing for a week-long vacation.
Travel Toys and Tips
We used to be able to pack up the car (including the dog and all her paraphanelia) and hit the road quite easily. Now, with The Boy, packing has taken on a new meaning. We really have to consider every nook and cranny in the car and pack like we’re solving a puzzle with all the gear needed to keep a pre-schooler happy on a trip. And you can forget about the dog. She got demoted to a dog-sitter during vacations soon after The Boy was born.
Before you start cramming everything into your car and lashing stuff to the roof, consider these tips.
1. Many hotels and resorts provide baby gear such as pack and plays and high chairs. Restaurants provide booster seats. Call your destination before packing to see what baby/kid gear might be offered.
2. If you are traveling to a major city, there are usually baby equipment rental possibilities. Baby’s Away and Babies Travel Lite are two such rental outlets.
3. If you are traveling to visit relatives, ask them if they have baby equipment already or if they know of friends/neighbors in their area that might be willing to lend to you.
4. Unless you have a 15 hour flight or a seriously long road trip, you really don’t need too much for actual travel time. Keep your kids entertained with games like I Spy or the Alphabet Game. Take along books on tape or cd for the car. If they are old enough, give them a specific ‘travel’ bag that they can fill will activities. Or, my favorite, plan your travel for during nap time and hope they sleep most of the time!
Happy Traveling.
Watering the Rocks
Here’s a fun, cheap activity for a warm summer day. The Boy has his own small watering can (I think it was from the $1 bin at Target) and loves to use it to water anything and everything around the yard. Including the rocks. Every time we change out a 2.5 gallon water container from our emergency supplies, the old one goes out in the garden area on a shelf that he can easily reach. This way he can fill his watering can again and again without one of us having to turn on the hose or leave the water running.
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.
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.”
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