Playground Love

This post is going to be a bit of a winge, so I apologize in advance…. I’ve been sick for the last two + weeks and it sucks. Sleep deprivation plus an entire family of sick peeps and no one to feel sorry for mom as she is the one trying to hold everything together and be sick at the same time. Sometimes it gets to me.

To keep my family busy and to try to maintain my already low energy levels- the following two books have come in quite handy:

1. Taro Gomi`s Play All Day

This book was given to me (yes a children`s book was given to me!) by my parents last year for Christmas. I`ve been saving it for a rainy day – which we`ve had a lot of recently- and it`s been a blast playing with the punch out figures. A`s been loving the new stories we can make with these people and animals. All you need is tape!

2. Made to Play by Joel Henriques

This one was a total spur of the moment. I had came across a mention of this book on the Artful Parent (sorry could not remember where) and on a whim decided to add it to my Christmas shopping order from Chapters. This book was created by Made by Joel blogger Joel Henriques and it`s been a total inspiration.

We really love the zoo mat he made:

Here`s our work in progress:

I love that we`ve been able to add a little bit each day to it.  First A made a map of the zoo she wanted to create and we named the animals we wanted in our zoo:

Then I cut out felt pieces and when I`ve had time and energy, I`ve sewn it to the mat. It`s been fun playing with the loose pieces too so weve been flexible with the play.  I love that long after the toilet paper roll animals have had their fun, we can make new ones, use different animals and even dinosaurs from our dinosaur collection.

I prefer the pieces sewn as that is one less toy I need to police with C crawling around and getting into. Incidentally, C is 7 months this week and crawling. Who ever heard of such ridiculousness. Our house is slowly undergoing some changes- like zap strapping cables to walls, strategically covering plugs and keeping an eagle eye out for small easily chokable items.

Getting back to Made to Play… I love that this comes from a male perspective. There are a ton of crafts and items in here that appeal to both boys and girls but also involve materials that I might not normally use (saw and wood for example) but that are easily approachable. Love this book and I know M loves it too! We already  have plans to make the construction disks for A as a stocking-stuffer:

and the modular leg bands we’ll be making when we want to play robots next:

Fun and awesome and I have all the supplies we need!!

Both books have been great resources and I’m glad we have them on hand.

So here’s to getting well again- anyone have any ideas? I’ve exhausted oscillococcinum and cold fx. Would try anything at this point!

xok

Tags: burnaby mama, joel henriques, playgroundlove.ca, taro gomi, things to do with sick toddlers

This entry was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2011 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Make. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.