We celebrate our Fridays here in Perugia because it means we survived another week away from home. I get off school at 3 and both boys are usually waiting for me. We usually take the bus home, drop off our bags and head to the park. This Friday was a little different. We missed our bus and it was a rainy day. There’s a park nearby so we took another bus there and played while waiting for the next bus going our way.
See saw…balance beam
climbing = joy
climbing
When we got home, I didn’t really feel like walking to the park near our house because it was wet and frankly I was tired but I still wanted to be outdoors with the boys. We have a front yard but haven’t a lot of time there and I thought maybe today will be a good day to do just that but what to do? I didn’t have to think much. I just followed their lead and we came up with some activities.
First they found some brooms and swept because there were lots of leaves and twigs. The boys really enjoyed this. It was a great activity for both gross motor and eye hand coordination. Plus they cared for our temporary home environment. The brooms were adult sized but worked fine
When they got bored with sweeping after about 30 minutes, I blew up some balloons. Much fun was had by all. Running, throwing, kicking, seeing how many can fit in hands at one time and eventually figuring out how to burst them. Solu eventually got tired of the balloons but Metu went on for a long time. It met his needs for large movements.
When he got tired, Solu started trying to burst the balloons with some sticks and then looked at some leaves. This gave me an idea!
He has been enjoying hunting (i spy, go find etc.) games where I tell him to find something so I thought he might enjoy a game I had in mind. I took leaves from some of the plants in our yard and went over each one with him pointing out something distinctive and then he had to find the plant it came from. He was really engaged by this and really observed the plants to look for the pertinent feature like color differences between the top and bottom of the leaf, feel of the margin, size, shape etc.
These three activities kept the boys busy for almost 2 hours and when we finally went inside, they were tired and hungry. A long bath, dinner and some books and they were ready to call it a day.
See our outdoor environment at home for different outdoor ideas.
Live a Good Life!
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