Saturday, August 10, 2019

How can I teach the big kids when the littles need me so much???

Teaching your older kids with busy little ones underfoot...Classical Conversations



I have rarely been in the position of needing to educate older kids while little ones needed my attention since I am an unusual home school mom who has 3 kids but spread out in age.  However, some of my personal coping skills might come in handy on this topic of  "What do I do with toddler and baby while I attempt to teach my older children to read and do math?"

Here are some ideas that might work for you and your little kids.


1.  Sling your baby!  Get a sling and put baby in it from day one.  They will adapt and learn to enjoy it.  Your sling will become a safe refuge from the world around them and will give you many hours of hands-free baby care. If you dance quietly behind your older kids, baby will go to sleep after eating and then you can sit down and put your feet up while working quietly with the older kids.  Also great for making meals and doing other chores.  List of great slings to try


2.  Get a BIG refrigerator box from the appliance store.    corral the baby   Cut the top down so that you can see into the box and baby can see out.  This is like a play pen but baby will crawl in willingly.  Once baby is corralled in the box, have a variety of toys that they are allowed to play with only in the box.
          A.  You could allow them to have washable markers (if you take off all their clothes and leave them in their diaper) and color on the insides of the box.
          B.  Give them mega blocks to build with
          C.  Give them plastic bowls and spoons, rubbermaid containers with lids, pots and pans (if you can stand the noise), or any other thing they can play with but not stick up heir nose, in their ears, or injest.
          D.  If you have a banger, give them drum sticks and allow them to tap away on the box.  It is not too loud.
          E.  Make some fun-to-play-with attachments to the sides of the boxes, or make a board you can hang on the side that will entertain the little ones who like to fiddle with things and take things apart.  The blessing of the fridge box is that they will only take apart the items you allow them to.
                 
                       Some things you can add to the sides of the box would include short yarn with a ring on either end, that baby can get hold of and pull inside with them.  When you walk by you can pull them all back out to "reset" the fun.   You can have dad or older sibling make a busy board.  On a piece of plywood, you can attach all the little fiddly pieces of hardware and allow the baby to work on getting them open/closed.   A bolt to screw in and out, a hinge to open and close, an eye hook, a caster to spin, many fun things to try.    busy board ideas   

         F. Finally, assign older children time with baby/toddler.  If they can play nicely together (even if they don't do it all the time), set up appt. with baby and older sibling so that each child gets at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted time with Mom before lunch and after lunch.

Using all of the tactics on a rotation will keep things fresh and interesting all school year long and will allow you time to get schooling done with the older kids in your home.  You can multi-task while caring for baby and your older kids.

Do you have any good ideas I can pass on to my friends?  Share in the comments!

2 comments:

Smash Ogre said...

Excellent post, wish I had the fridge box when I was a kid ;-)

Smash Ogre said...

Good advice! especially the fridge box and markers idea, it was my fav.