Toddler Independence: Outdoors
Printed in The Family Post: Summer Issue 2006
by Tulum Dothee
This is the time of year to get out and enjoy the outdoors. Follow your children’s lead and provide activities that interest them to do alone and for you to do together. Children let us know what they need by their actions. If they climb the cabinets, they need a climbing structure. If they dig in the garden give them a digging area. If they dump out pails or containers, they need a water table and a sandbox. What you do, they will want to do. Think of parallel activities to do along side each other, especially if you want chores to get done.
Set aside an area specifically for a children’s garden, separate from the household garden. If space is limited, use pots. Together with your children prepare the soil, let them plant satisfying seeds and starts like radishes, pumpkins, water melons, cherry tomatoes, nasturtiums, fun veggies and flowers that they can enjoy AND eat.
Get some child-sized gardening gloves and tools and, if you are lucky enough, a wheelbarrow. Buy the real thing, kid sized, instead of the plastic versions that break quickly. Children love digging, weeding, watering and hauling stuff around in their wheel barrow.
Be sure to train them to differentiate weeds from flowers. This is one area I recommend doing together to preserve your flowers
If you have enough room, designate an area that is just for digging in the dirt without planting so they can get out there and dig whenever they like.
Plant a sunflower house, vine teepee, Start a compost pile, bring in worms...
EQUIPMENT FOR OUTSIDE
Sandbox (of course!) with real hand trowels and metal buckets, molds, etc.
Balance beam
Bar/Rings to hang from
Something to climb
Something to hide in
Something to crawl through
Wheels: To pull, to push and to ride. Remember helmets!
Obstacle course
Fort supplies
Kid lawn furniture, light enough so that they can move it around to rearrange
Water table/activities with all your old plastic containers and bottles to experiment with. (It can be as simple as a dish washing basin on their table.)
Washing/scrubbing supplies to wash their water activity stuff, scrub their lawn furniture, the steps, patio, deck...
Outdoor art supplies: sidewalk chalk, mount butcher paper on a fence to paint, cover their table with butcher paper for everyone to decorate
Play in the shade, wear sunscreen, hats and HAVE FUN!!!!
10 surefire ways to have a successful summer:
Children thrive on routine: Keep your bed and meal times regular.
Include your children in the choice and planning of activities.
Remind your children that the rules are the same even though your schedule has changed.
Review the rules of behavior before the event. Remind them what will happen if the rules are not followed.
Prepare everyone for the day by reviewing the upcoming events.
Share your most and least favorite times of the day at bedtime.
Have your sweet treat at 3:00 pm instead of after dinner.
Keep journals and scrap books to activate minds and record memories.
Schedule weekly special one-on-one time with each member in your family. Remember to include your spouse!
Take time for yourself.
10 things to be sure to do this summer:
Take swim lessons.
Lie in a hammock.
Read a chapter book together.
Eat lots of fruits and veggies, hopefully right from your garden.
Go to the river.
Have BBQ’S.
Play lawn games.
Take more swim lessons.
Tell each other how much you love one another.
Say daily gratefuls.
Tulum Dothee has been teaching Montessori for 27 years and Positive Discipline and Self Help classes for 18 years. She owns and operates Oakhaven Montessori School for 3-6 year olds and has a private practice in Clinical Hypnotherapy and Consulting. You can e-mail questions for her to answer to tulumdothee@earthlink.net, or visit her website at www.asktulum.com. Call for more information 271-1258.
