The whole family has been down and out this week. It started with a cold and then little B man and Grant got a bit of pink eye to go along with it. It has been cold outside and we didn’t want to spread it to anyone else, so we were in the house A LOT this week. That means some very antsy kiddos.
Little G man didn’t get hit as hard as the other two so he was constantly needing some entertainment. [Unfortunately] we watched a lot of movies and cartoons, but we also did some preschool activities and other random stuff. He begged for me to pull out the rice/wheat for him to play in it. Along with playing in the kitchen sink, this is one of his absolute favorite inside activities.
Growing up, my mom had a couple large Tupperware containers filled with rice that we could play with. It really is fun, like playing in the sand at the beach. But it does make quite the mess with little kids. When little G man was really little, I made him do it on the floor on top of a huge plastic table cloth. That way I could just pick up the table cloth and dump all the spilled rice back into the container. He is getting a lot better now that he is older and knows how to keep it in the bowl and pan.
I let little B man join the fun the next time we pulled it out and resorted to the tablecloth on the floor. Surprisingly it works really well and they keep most of it on the tablecloth.
I did have to threaten little G man a few times, “Everything not on the tablecloth gets swept up and thrown away”. He did a pretty good job keeping it on the tablecloth, and even though he dumped ALL of it out on the tablecloth, it was really easy to clean up. The rest of it on the floor was swept up and thrown away.
I added wheat to the rice because we got A TON of bags full of red winter wheat a couple years ago from the local university ag research program that was giving it away. So I figured why not use that to play with (since we obviously aren’t using it to make whole wheat bread…that’s a lot of work!).
I just need to get some fun toys for him to play with when they’re digging in the rice/wheat, like THIS or THIS. Not many things keep these guys entertained for very long, but playing in the rice is definitely one that they loves when, especially when they are stuck inside.
