My children are bored with everything I have for them inside, outside and upside down...everything. I have a really great park not to far from my house and we've been spending alot of time there lately trying to relieve the boredom. I called a friend of mine who's a nanny and we loaded everyone into the vans and off to our regular spot we went. The man-made creek. It has a windmill with a spout pouring out water at one end, and the creek is about four inches deep, has a concrete base covered in several inches of sand, with larger smooth stones. There's also a sandbar/beach next to the creek so it's fun for all ages. And it's FREE!
Unlike Monday we had the area all to ourselves! I slathered the kids with 70+ sunscreen and let them run. They spent an hour and a half building a dam in the creek to make the water deeper [wow! a whole 6"] and causing the creek to overflow into the sand area so they could build castles and rivers. I do mention in my daycare policies to send the children in old clothes because some of our play may include mud [and I mean it], I keep a few swim suits here for the older children to change into and some swimmers for the babies but now and then we do these things on a spur of the moment so we end up with messy clothes.
The girls started to dig into the sand and found 'clay' at the bottom, it might as well have been gold with the amount of excitement that it caused. Shrieks and screams and feverish digging to try and find more! I had playdough at home in the air conditioning for heavens sake and that was boring. Little did I know all I had to do was bury it under sand and water to make it exciting, oh yeah, and color it charcoal gray and make it slimey. Can't forget that part.
The kids were so dirty that I made them wash off under the water spout before we could eat our picnic lunch. [mostly to make sure I was feeding my kids and not some strangers] They didn't come clean but they were much better then when they started and no one complained about sand on their sandwich so it was all good.
At the end of the day the older kids grumbled when we had to leave the park but the babies made straight for the van, climbed in and Cookie was asleep before we were out of the park. I did my job, I wore them out...now for some quiet time [for me] Bye for now T.