We know we're not supposed to watch too much tv; it's bad for us, it's bad for kids. The pediatrician tells you no tv before the age of 2 and even after that it should be watched infrequently. Maybe some of you listened? I didn't. And don't get me wrong, it's not like we sit and watch tv all day long, but sometimes we definitely watch more than we should - especially when Lucas is sick, or when I was sick in the first trimester, or early in the morning when we wanted to keep sleeping but Lucas was awake, or when we were packing and unpacking from moving, or on a long car trip ... you get the point. There was always something that came up and we decided, a little too much tv won't hurt for now. And then we finished the move, I was out of my first trimester, what ever other excuse we had was no longer relevant, and we were still watching too much tv.
Then a few weeks ago we decided enough was enough and we were going to stop watching too much tv. Lucas was not a fan at first and he cried for Curious George and Thomas. But then after a while he stopped asking to watch tv all the time and he started playing with his toys instead. He's seems to not have as many break downs as before and he plays on his own for longer periods of time. Obviously we've only been doing this for like 2 weeks and are by no means amazing in any way, and we still watch a few minutes of tv each day. But I'm happy to say that it's more like 30 minutes a day. I won't even admit to what we were up to before this. I've had less free time for surfing the internet, blogging, and crafts. But I think it's worth it. Hopefully we'll be able to keep this up after the baby comes.
Anyway, while we were detoxing from tv and trying to come up with stuff to do, I found a blog on Pinterest that had a lot of cool ideas for activities to do with your kids that are also teaching tools at the same time. And they have tabs for different age groups so you can look up by your child's age to find appropriate activities. Most of you are already on pinterest and have probably seen this before, but for those of you who haven't, now you can look at it. http://www.icanteachmychild.com/
There were two activities we did that Lucas really loved. They both involve matching, he really likes matching. The first one was to match toy animals that we already have, to pictures of real animals. I just went online and googled a bunch of animals and printed off the pictures. I just did it onto normal paper with our color printer.
3 comments:
What a great idea and much better than watching TV and he's learning at the same time. It does make more work for you, but it's worth it!
Those are some really cool ideas that you found! There's also Mom's "no watching Tv until the family room is clean" rule. Although that doesn't really cut down as much as it helps the house stay cleaner. I'm glad you found something that works for you
Good job! i don't know what Matt and I are going to do when we have kids cause I'm pretty sure we spend like 2 hours a night watching TV and more like 5 hours a day on weekends... :P I like those ideas you found though! Maybe we can just watch TV after the kids go to bed and try to read more instead.
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