Our Tribe

Our Tribe

Thursday 5 April 2012

Playing is the answer

I'm having problems publishing a reply to those of you who have kindly commented. Thank you for doing so and just to prove I've read them, I've stolen one of the comments as today's title! I'll try and look at why I can't reply but I'm not technologically minded so it might take a while!


This week has been the school holidays and I feel like we've had a little taste of what it must be like to be out the house early. Bean has had swimming classes every morning at 9am. We have managed it on time every day but what a stress! Let's not pretend that there aren't stressful moments in our lives especially when there are multiple smalls involved but we aim to achieve a calm household and unstrained relationships. I'm not sure I could manage that if we had to do a school run every day. Crazy. This morning was complicated even more by the fact that I had arranged for Plum to spend an hour or so at a friends house whilst I took Pumpkin for a swim.

 The lessons themselves were fine but I think Bean struggled with being instructed what do when he wasn't feeling confident, secure or able. He actually plucked up the courage to tell the instructor today that he was only going to watch, which in our house is perfectly acceptable. The instructor was pretty good and seemed to offer him a lot of encouragement and support, so Bean did make it in the water. The thing that brought it all home to me was taking Pumpkin for a swim. We went in the leisure pool to start and he was adamant he wanted to go in the toddler pool so off we went. here he splashed happily amongst the sprays and bubbles and jumping under the water. He then asked to go back to the bigger pool where he was more relaxed and made me take him in the ever so bubbly jacuzzi and under the waterfall, things which 15 minutes earlier he was avoiding! In his own pace and in his own time he had become comfortable in the pool. Definitely, play is the answer.


We were even more tired after all this and a rather unproductive morning followed. We gave Plum a bath and played a game of Snakes and Ladders, Bean's suggestion. I notice he's now able to know how many dots on the die without actually counting. And a well eaten lunch was followed by some down time watching various programmes on the iplayer, I think I may have nodded off. Plum slept for a marathon 2 1/2 hours!


And then, as if by magic, a flurry of activity ensued. I suddenly found myself being torn between Bean who wanted to do colouring and Pumpkin who wanted to make a den, and Bean wanting to make soil (an idea he got from a gardening book he picked up at the library) and Pumpkin wanting to know if worms cry. I was also trying to get the dinner which was shepherd's pie tonight. One of Bean's favourites and we haven't had it for 'ages' as he keeps telling me. Bean also found a disc with some photos on it from his birthday last year and he kept saying he wanted to make them a jigsaw. I wasn't quite sure what he meant or where he had got this idea from but we used publisher to make a collage of the photos and this seemed to satisfy him. We played for about 2 hours, practising our colouring and name writing, building a den together and shoving vegetable peel into a bottle. I often find that their activity is a bit piece meal, we tend to have lots of activities on the go at once which the boys move between seamlessly. Sometimes these activities intertwine but sometimes they are separate pursuits. Often they will involve both boys, either separately or together. Sometimes they'll concentrate on one activity for a moment and other times it will be a lengthy engagement. This afternoon was the totally opposite of our morning; relaxed, fun, full of activity and laughter, comfortable, calm and full of learning. Playing is the answer.

No comments:

Post a Comment