DAY 2 (Indoor Activities) - Dance Party!!

(As the weather turned a little cold, and my oldest stopped napping, my opportunities to share my activities has dwindled. My friend, Irene Gouge, is a home day-care provider, former elementary teacher and is a sleep coach, helping parents and children learn the tools to better napping and night-time sleeping! She's a genius and is one of my mommy role models. She's calm, thoughtful and creative! She agreed to share her expertise with you while I muddle through my busy schedule.)

By: Irene Gouge

When the temperatures drop or the weather outside is less than desirable, parents get nervous because outside time can be limited. In my experience doing a home daycare, I’ve had to work and perfect this since the key is to have stimulating activities so children are learning, growing and developing, using their bodies to get energy out so that everyone will nap well, and sleep well at night while having fun during the day! In the course of the next few days, I will share a few of my daycare tricks I do to help us get through those cold, cold days we have to spend inside. Try this one!

Dance Party

Materials needed:  scarves, towels, old ties or an old sheet cut into strips (something to have and swing around while you dance up a storm)

You can announce a Dance Party any time! We do it daily. You gotta’ get moving, and this is a fun easy to do whenever you need to activity.  Crank up your favorite music, grab your scarves and shake it up!   You can do this for 10 minutes to however long the fun lasts.  Sometimes we do two songs, take a break, and then do two more songs. There’s no one right way to do a dance party. This is a fun moving body activity for our little ones, but good for mom too and sneaks in some exercise. It’s a great way to get the sillies out!

A few other learning elements you can add to this to help with hand eye coordination, body movement and balance are:


 

• Throw the scarf up and catch it
• Twirl in circles
• Juggle the scarves
• Balance and walk with the scarf on your head
• Jump up and down
• Hop on one foot

Teach your child to follow directions with a little dance routine:

• 1Roll it up, roll it down
• 2Pump it side to side
• 3Touch your head
• 4Touch your toes
• 5Spin around and around
• 6And fall to the ground - Get up and do it again! Again! And again! 

To learn more about Irene Gouge and her "Sleep Coaching" visit loving-lessons.com.

Be Brave - BRAVING THE ELEMENTS

(As the weather turned a little cold, and my oldest stopped napping, my opportunities to share my activities dwindled. My friend, Irene Gouge, is a home day-care provider, former elementary teacher and is a sleep coach, helping parents and children learn the tools to better napping and night-time sleeping! She's a genius and is one of my mommy role models. She's calm, thoughtful and creative! She agreed to share her expertise with you while I muddle through my busy schedule.)

By: Irene Gouge

When the temperatures drop or the weather outside is less than desirable, parents get nervous because outside time can be limited. We know it’s important to get our kids outside every day, but what do you do to get that energy out so our kids are not driving us crazy?  In my time doing a home daycare, I’ve had time to work and perfect this since the key is to have stimulating activities so children are learning, growing and developing, using their bodies to get energy out so that everyone will nap well, and sleep well at night while having fun during the day! In the course of the next few days, I will share a few of my daycare tricks I do to help us get through braving the weather elements.

Get outside anyways       

Materials needed: outside winter or rain gear

Even on the cold days, get outside and walk, even if it is for 10 minutes.  Make the bundle up process fun while you are dressing up your snowman or snowwomen in the layers.  Children don’t always love the bundling process, but making a human snowman can be fun when you are describing and talking about what you are doing. 

When you get outside, it can be fun to watch our breath or find icicles if it is cold enough.  Once you’ve reached the limit of being outside, even if it’s 10 minutes, it’s always a nice treat to get back inside and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate with some marshmallows together. Caution: some children can get super hyper off the marshmallow so use your discretion. The process of bundling, being outside, and unbundling will most likely take 30-40 minutes.   

And even on rainy days, get outside and play in your rain coats.  Children can even get to use that cute umbrella they might have otherwise kept unused.  My kids love to go and find puddles to jump and splash in.   My kids also like to catch the rain drops in their mouth to see who can get the biggest drink while they are outside.  A warning with this activity:  put on grungy play clothes that you are ok with getting wet and maybe a little muddy.    

Learning and playing is messy… so plan for it! 

To learn more about Irene Gouge and her "Sleep Coaching" visit loving-lessons.com.