Creative Thinking

As mentioned in a previous post or two, I will not go outside to play if it is just Noah and me, due to safety reasons. That being said, I find it challenging and fun to think outside of the box for when we get home after work and after daycare.

Lately, Noah has been obsessed with building towers in the family room with tissue boxes and rolls of paper towel. When Noah started to crawl and became mobile, we made sure that all of the cleaning products were high up in a pantry closet and not under the kitchen sink. Instead of leaving the cupboards empty, I decided to store our paper towels in there.

Noah soon found this new spot and travels back and forth from the kitchen to the family room, carrying two paper towels at a time, to build a tower as tall as his Daddy, which is over six feet tall.

We build them up, one by one, or two by two, making different formations and various types of towers.

We also have a Nugget couch that Noah is in love with. For those who are not familiar with what a Nugget couch is, it consists of two triangle pillows, and two long cushions that can fold up. That is not the best description of it, but we make various forts, tunnels, slides, and jumping platforms with all of the different parts of the couch.

We also play hide and seek and lucky for me, as a blind Mom, Noah hides in the same three spots. He is either inside of a fort, behind the door in the den, or in the corner in the kitchen. Once I find him, he wants me to find him again, without switching his hiding spot. Whatever entertains the kid right?

Some other easy but fun and time consuming ideas are:

· We play with kinetic sand and he loves when I make big or small balls and he crushes them in his fingers, into the small portable sand box.

· We put Noah’s stuffed animals on a blanket and pull it around the house. Somehow, Noah always ends up on the blanket too.

· We have a dance party and jump around the room.

· We color at the table.

· We drum on boxes, or pillows, with spatula’s or spoons, or whatever we can find that makes noise.

· We chase each other around the house by crawling on our hands and knees.

· He likes giving his stuffed animals medicine with a syringe, or feeds them a baby bottle.

· We work on puzzles and play with cars on a big foam mat that has roads on it.

· We look at flash cards that have pictures, written words and braille. He is getting really good with his words.

· We read books, make silly voices and noises while we read or point to pictures.

· We play in the ball pit, jumping all around as he tackles me.

There are many other things to do inside, even though we would much rather be outside, running around and burning off our energy.

I need to remind myself of all of these fun things during the winter when we are not able to go outside as much due to the cold or snow.

I am looking forward to playing in the snow with Noah and I hope he loves it as much as I do!