ALuv is very much like his mama…an in-the-box thinker. When NJoy came along 3 years later, I figured he would probably be an out-of-the-box thinker; seeing that most siblings are completely different.
Don’t get me wrong, NJoy can be an in-the-box thinker at times; like this parking lot made on our fire place . But more often than not, it’s ALuv organizing all the cars (or blocks or trains) in a nice, neat line with NJoy coming along knocking all that hard work right over! Oh, the joys of siblings!
NJoy’s favorite item to play with these days is Play-Doh. But he’s not quite at the age in which he can play independently. Playing with Play-Doh goes more like this: “Mommy, make this…mommy, make that!” So when he asks every day about 10 times, I usually say, “No”. But about 4-5 times a week, the mama guilt piles up and I cave in.
One thing I’ve noticed is when an in-the-box thinker (a.k.a. “control freak”/me) plays Play-Doh with an out-of-the-box thinker, my world is rocked in a major way. Take for example this weekend. The grandparents came for a visit and wanted to bring gifts. They asked me for some gift ideas. (By the way, I keep a mental list of educational & fun gift ideas for such occasions.) I suggested this cute Play-Doh set featuring uppercase letters that I’d seen at Target. This was the perfect choice for NJoy since he also loves letters. It comes with a mat, which was laminated right away to last us more than 1 time!
They also brought this set that they’d had for a while at their house, which featured lower case letters. A win-win all around!
What happened to my counter space?
As expected, NJoy was in his element with his Play-Doh!
So, what does fresh, new Play-Doh look like when you set a child like NJoy free to explore? Why, a Play-Doh hodgepodge, of course! Does it really matter which color top you place on the containers?!?
What did this in-the-box thinker do with this Play-Doh hodgepodge? Since it was basically all one color, I rolled it out for ALuv to use as we reviewed his short o words.
Here he is re-matching his OP, OG, & OT words, then stamping 5 of the words into the Play-Doh.
dog
hot
Cookie Monster is a big hit from this set and NJoy and ALuv thought it’d be funny if Cookie ate the paper. I took their lead and called out words for Cookie Monster to “eat” as ALuv fed him.
So, I guess a Play-Doh hodgepodge does have a purpose in life after all, even for this in-the-box reading mama!
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~Becky
Awesome tip, Becky. I sometimes go crazy with all the “brownish” play-doh we end up with. I really like this idea & the suggested play-doh set!
I’m really hoping it’s an age thing and that we’ll outgrow it someday…by then, they probably won’t want to play with it anymore…oh well! 🙂
Love the play dough hodgepodge. I’m so proud of you, mixing the colors like that. 😉 Mommyhood is so stretching.
Yes, I would venture to say that mommyhood is one of the most stretching things I’ve ever done…in every way possible.