Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Quiet Time - Boredom Busters!

Master O has had a whole 2 days of Kindy in the last 3 weeks!  
We have managed to fill the days with all kinds of activities but we have faced one problem....
Master O is all boy.  
He has two volume levels, loud and louder!  
He loves to run, jump, dance, flip and climb.  Mummy, everyone needs some quiet time!!!  Mum's of babies also know how hard it can be to keep an active child entertained quietly when a baby is feeding or sleeping!

So over the holidays I sat down with Oliver and we chose 9 quiet activities.  
These are not only quiet as in the noise level but quiet for his body.  
As children approach school age it is really important for them to gradually increase the amount of time they can sit still and focus on the one activity!  
I can already forsee this being one of Master O's biggest challenges at school!

So we chose.....
I wanted these to be activities he actually liked doing rather than constantly asking him to draw a picture or read a book.
To be honest, it took a while to come up with these activities!
All the activities Master O chose, could be considered quiet (lego, blocks) but I knew that they would escalate in noise (eventually we would have jet planes finding aliens, complete with sound effects!)
Gradually he got the hang of it and got quite excited when he thought of a "quiet" activity!
Adding to them being "child chosen" I also,
did not want to use TV or DVD's as a way of being quiet and
I wanted the activities to have some "educational value"

We took some pictures of him doing these activities and added them to this table.
We have printed it out and laminated it.
Next time we need some quiet time he can just look at his "Boredom Busters" card,
he will be quietly entertained and we will all have some instant noise relief!
Photobucket

No comments:

Post a Comment