Weekend Plans: Change
weekend Plans
Got plans? Yep, you do.
A New Chapter
This post is the first in what I hope will be a new theme of posts on Daycare and Development. It is designed for anyone caring for children, and my hope is that these activities can be used anywhere you’re caring for children: at home, at childcare, at grandparents’ house, and so on.
The idea for this series springs from my own experience as a working mom: All week long, I wish for more time with my kids. Then, in the limited time I have with them, I find myself: rushing them out the door in the morning, rushing them through the dinner and bedtime routine at night, and then spending much of the weekend ricocheting between social plans and chores.
I’m grateful to have friends and relationships, and feel extremely lucky that my kids are starting to make their own friends (and luckily for my husband and I, kids with fun parents). But I also want to make sure that I take the time on the weekend to really bond with my kids. One change I’ve made is to stop doing chores—almost entirely—on the weekends. That removes the onerous experiences of the weekend, but it still doesn’t make meaningful ones. As with many things in life, though, it’s hard to have great experiences without putting any planning or forethought in. But who has time for that?
Enter “Weekend Plans.”
In this section, I’ll share “lesson plans” for you and the kids you care about. Although they’re called Weekend Plans you can use them any time or anywhere you like. I’ll create a list of all the materials, and all you have to do is find a few minutes during the week to assemble the stuff you need. Then, Saturday morning—or whenever you choose to use them—you’re ready to go. Minimal planning required.
Now, when somebody asks, “Got any plans for the weekend?” you can say, “Yep, actually, I do.”
Times They are A’Changing
This being the autumn season, the theme of these Weekend Plans is CHANGE. The leaves are changing, the weather’s changing…heck, even Congress might be changing. Here’s hoping the changes in your life a positive ones.❤
What You’ll Need:
An assortment of coins
An empty egg carton or ice cube tray
Glue
A few sheets of printer paper or construction paper
Ice cube tray or small plastic cup
Empty water bottles or plastic containers with lids
Beads, dried rice, or beans
Tissue box or other small cardboard box
Ingredients for pumpkin bread
1 15 ounce-can pure pumpkin puree
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
To Do Ahead of Time:
Print: Kids in Parks Fall Colors search and Coin Images (see below)
Make a playlist: Check out 55 Songs About Change on Spinditty.com or make a Change playlist on your favorite music app.
Science and Nature
Try this Fall Colors leaf search from Kids in Parks. Learn about the trees in your neighborhood and enjoy their beautiful autumn color.
Talk about “Change of State.” Fill an ice cube tray or small plastic cup with water and put it in the freezer. Talk about how when water gets very cold it freezes. Once you have an ice cube, set it in a bowl on the counter. Watch it melt. Discuss how as the ice cube melts it becomes water again. With your child watching from a safe distance, heat the ice cube in the microwave or stove. When it starts to steam, discuss how water, heated to boiling, becomes a gas we call steam or water vapor.
Arts
Using the leaves you collected on your Fall Colors expedition, make leaf faces . You can have your little one look in the mirror and try to make a self-portrait. You can even talk about how you change as you get older, and your portrait will change too. If you have a budding artist in your midst, look at some of the self-portraits of Rembrandt and talk about the ways they changed over time.
Check out 55 Songs About Change on Spinditty .com and make a playlist of your favorites, or browse an autumn playlist on Spotify (search “change” in Songs) or Pandora (search “autumn chill”) and turn on the tunes.
If you have musical instruments in the house, try playing them at different tempos. Start slowly and then speed up. Once you’re playing as fast as you can, slow down as much as you can. Don’t have musical instruments? Make your own shakers using the instructions on this Howcast.
Math and Money
Time to hit the piggy bank. Give your child a small cup or bowl filled with coins. Talk about how different coins look and feel different and how much each is worth. Then ask your kids to sort the coins using an empty egg carton. Each type of coin will go in its own egg cup. (An ice cube tray works for this too.) For older kids, you can also practice counting up coins to give a total dollar amount, using the coin sheets below, or practice making change at an imaginary clothing store (use your kids’ own clothes and make up prices).
Community and Relationships
It’s election season. Talk about what a vote is and, if your children are old enough, talk about some of the issues at stake during the election. As a family, decide on one issue in your house that you’d like to vote on (some ideas: what you’d like to have for dinner or what to watch on movie night). Using construction paper and an old box (a tissue box works well, but any box with a slit cut into it will do), create ballots for each member of the family to vote on the issue. After the “election” act on the vote. Yay! Chocolate chip cookies for dinner!
For older kids: Talk about the term “social change.” What is social change? Are there things about your home, school, or larger community you’d like to change? Is there something you could do together or as a family to make a social change? Some ideas might be volunteering, donating coins to a charitable cause, writing a letter to a senator, and so on.
Movement
Play Duck Duck Goose. Don’t remember how? Here are the instructions. In Duck, Duck, Goose, players change roles. Sometimes they’re the duck and sometimes…they’re the…GOOSE!
Play musical chairs (you can even use one of your playlists above). In Musical Chairs, players walk around a circle of chairs until the music stops, which means you may change seats many times. Each time the music starts, one chair is removed, so the number of chairs changes too. (BTW: This works best with three or more people.)
Play Freeze Tag. In freeze tag, the person who is “it” chases the other players and tries to tag them. Once someone is tagged, they are “frozen,” meaning they can’t move until another player tags them and “unfreezes” them.
Practice flipping a coin, using some of your spare change. Have one person or team call heads and one call tails. The winner can decide a movement or physical challenge for the other person or team to complete.
Last but not least: Rake up some leaves and play in the pile!
Literacy and Literature
In Wink, The Ninja Who Wanted to Be Noticed, by J.C. Phillips, the title character Wink is delighted when he wins admission to a prestigious school for ninjas. Except, it turns out he’s not really ninja material. We’ve all been there, right? Life was all lined up, and then it all fell apart. This story has a great message, though, because Wink is perfect for something else, and all it takes is a serendipitous change of career to reveal his natural gifts.
In Olive and the Embarrassing Gift by Tor Freeman, Olive receives a less than desirable gift from her best friend Joe. She is embarrassed by it, but even more by what she does with the gift. In this cute book about friendship, Olive changes course, redeeming herself by standing up for a good friend, no matter how silly she looks.
Photo by Tobias Maschtaler on Unsplash
Life Skills
Getting toddlers dressed can feel like negotiating peace in the Middle East. But kids can be surprisingly compliant when unhurried and when given independence. (Dealing with their frustration at failures is another matter.) On the weekend, when no one’s rushing, play dress-up. Practice changing clothes: putting on and taking off socks, underpants, pull-ups, shirts and pants or dress-up clothes; or try the “flip flop over top” method of putting on a jacket. This video shows it pretty well (Hint: the hood or collar of the coat is positioned closest to the child’s feet, with the bottom hem of the coat farthest from their feet.)
Kids love cooking—at least mine do—and though it often turns into something of a kerfuffle, it’s teaching them valuable life skills and an appreciation for food. This weekend, my tots and I made scrambled eggs and bacon and, miraculously, no one got third-degree burns. My four-year-old is mastering cracking open eggs, and I’m excited/dreading baking this pumpkin bread recipe with them. (Pro tip, scroll to the bottom of the linked post to see ingredients and instructions.) If you choose to bake this with your kids, talk about how the batter changes each time you add something and how, after you cook it, it changes from goop to gorgeous…and remember, the mess that inevitably ensues will provide the opportunity to learn another life skill: cleaning up after one’s self.
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