Connor’s Fall Plans

I titled this Connor’s Fall Plans, but in actuality they are my fall plans. This is my effort to expose Connor to new forms of play and get us out of the house doing things (even in the rain).

My husband Anthony and I split care of Connor. I work, Anthony watches; he works, I watch. I get to watch Connor Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings. This was our first week of trying out our new schedule, and we had a great first week!

Mondays are our free morning. I don’t have anything much planned for this day. It’s our chance to make any errands and do some chores. Most likely I’ll take this day to do some of our more routine artwork such as painting and crayons. On Monday this week we tried out markers for the first time.

Tuesdays are the get out of the house to play day. Most Tuesdays this will be at our closest park. I’ve told myself, we’ll be going whether or not it’s raining. Well, the Oregon rain decided to test my will. We had an unusually heavy rain. We waited awhile, and then we put our rain gear on and headed out.

Thanks to Bonnie for company and the awesome picture of my little guy. Connor loved the rain! (my little Oregonian) He’s been talking non stop about it since we splashed around in the park.

I had seen this invitation for flour play on Tinkerlab and decided to try it with Connor this week. We love including him in the kitchen as often as we can so this seemed like a great extension of that.

I was going to try and get a picture of the invitation of play, but as soon as Connor saw it he dove right in before I could snap one. Good sign!

We started with some scooping.

And some dumping.

This lasted a long time. Connor loved transferring the flour between all of the different containers.
Then Jasmine had to come along and check out what was happening.

She (very audibly) sniffed at the flour. You know you’ve reached the imitation stage when he then very audibly sniffed and snuffed at the flour just like the cat!
We also did a lot of grabbing and touching.

Then we got around to tasting.

His response (even though it doesn’t look that way from the picture) “Mmmm…mmmm….mmmm…mmmmm” Then we found the water and (naturally) needed to take a drink.

We got to squirt the water.

We refilled the bottle several times since squirting was just so much fun. We tried out the whisk.

Got goo in our hair!

And finally wanted to clean up the mess!

Like I said before. These “plans” are much more to get me to try out activities with our little guy. He’s interacting with his environment in new and creative ways every day and observing him learning has been incredible.

This is also in an effort for me to feel more at home with messy play and how to set it up so that I can clean up quick and easy. I taped the corners of a cheap shower curtain from the dollar store to the floor. That plus a few towels nearby made clean up quick and easy.

Have any suggestions for good messy play?