And other parenting hacks 🤣
Originally posted 2021-02-19 08:52:06.
Claire
1.6k Views
20 Comments
Aww Happy New Year
I was just telling my husband this was my favorite preschool activity 😅😅
A few years ago pre-COVID, we were at the state fair and ran into friends who had written their phone number with sharpie on their kids arms. I now carry a sharpie with me at big events (pre-COVID). One of my friends kids wandered away and was returned thanks to the sharpie number! (Sharpie takes about a week to wash off)
When I was a kid I would “paint” my wooden swing set with mud I would make. And by paint I mean smear it all over with my hands. I grew up in the country.
Did this with my 3yo this summer and he loved it so much! He still talks about it 😂
A+
I am stealing this one
I give my son a piece of sidewalk chalk and let him go nuts in the house, furniture, walls, wood floors, whatever. After hes done I just vacuum most of it up and use baby wipes to get the rest of it. 🤷♀️ he has fun for hours and it’s easy cleanup.
When I was a kid in kindergarten, I distinctly remember my class had these huge plastic lego blocks, they were like cinder blocks but made of lightweight plastic and we’d build forts and shit with them. I wanted to get my daughter (4) something like that for Christmas this past year. Fortunately, they still make those blocks. Unfortunately, they were -absurdly- expensive.
So I went to a hardware store. Lowes only sold scrap/damaged/discount wood in huge bundles and the cheapest was 400 dollars, but Home Depot had a section with damaged wood (that had a purple stripe down it, that didn’t matter to me) and I stocked up on scrap wood and cut it into varying lengths. They didn’t need to be perfect.
I then sat down a big tarp and gave her the blocks and let her actually paint them. Honestly, it was the most fun I think she’s ever had. She has a huge plastic tub in the garage full of wooden blocks she’s painted (and a lot of them she hasn’t painted yet!) and I let her draw on them with markers so she can keep ‘touching it up.’
She’s playing with them right now, building race tracks for hotwheels cars, and even a tiny jail for the cat.
Hacks like these really work and they let kids be creative!
My dad owned a paint store when I was a kid and he let me do this all the time with scrap pieces of wood and old paint brushes whenever he had to look after me while he was working. I’m sure he did it to keep me away from all of the various hazards and mischief I could have gotten into otherwise but I loved it!
I spent 1.5 hours with my toddler doing this last week. We painted a wall in the garden. Highly recommended if you have an 18 month old, even better if you have an outdoor tap/hosepipe, can put a puddle suit a and wellies on them and let them fill the water themselves!
I did this as a kid and really enjoyed it!
That water better not be lead-based
When parents become Tom Sawyer
Tiny paintbrushes water and large rocks work wonders for indoors during the winter.
Wow thanks for this article! I immediately bought a shower visor for my toddler after reading it! She hates when I pour water on her head to get the shampoo off and I never knew those existed. So awesome!
My son and I lived with my parents on a farm for his first 4 years. Grandpa always provided rags for washing the tractor and little logs of wood so he could help stack fire wood just like grandpa! He started when he was about 2 years old and is going strong at 5, now he gets to help the proper way tho. He loves feeling useful!
Yeah my kid wasn’t being fobbed off with water, he wanted to know why it wasn’t changing colour 😂
I vividly remember doing this as a kid in nursery school, and loving it, fully knowing it wasn’t real paint. Can’t wait to do this with little man!
When I’m painting outside, I give the little guy a paint brush and let him go at it with the actual paint.
https://www.awesomeinventions.com/parenting-hacks-genius-ideas/