Tuesday 28 December 2010

The inbetween bit.

4pm Boxing Day and Rye was home.  Banging on the door, racing indoors, all smiles and happiness.  Slight dimming in the happiness when his dad foolishly tried to force a hug and goodbye from Rye.  Daft man, still isn't getting Rye's reluctance to say "goodbye" to him.  I shall simply have to be more firm next time, the last thing I want Rye to learn is that it's ok for an adult to force physical contact!

Anyway, it has been a fun few days; there's been play with the tree house:
Yesterday, we spent the day at a friend's house and Rye had a marvelous time playing with the lovely excavator J had bought him for Yule, which compliments the dumper truck his uncle had bought him too :-)  Such a lucky boy.  The star gift though has to be the torch that J's mum gave to Rye.  She was actually showing us things she'd bought in the sales - Rye was so taken with the torch though, she gave it to him, bless her. 

The task I set myself today was to rearrange the toy shelves in the lounge.  Rye over the past year has brought down more and more toys from his room; and rather than taking them back up they've been crammed onto the shelves.  There were also a lot of books, yet I noticed the children tended to read the same ones over and over and ignore the others.  So, I've decided to keep a few books downstairs, and every  so often rotate the books - this also frees up more shelf space.
The lower shelves while holding toys; this one has the gnome houses etc on it, can also double as a playing surface.  I've notice both children do like a play "surface".  The lounge just isn't big enough for a playframe,  I thought I would set up little play scenes for the children to discover every so often - and hopefully inspire new imaginings into their play.
I confess too; the tractor and the wooden construction vehicles, Rye has been gifted with this Yule, are so beautiful I want to show them off too, while again, also freeing up a shelf for "play"
Indeed we had marvelous fun earlier; I poured some dried brown chickpeas into an empty sweetie container for Rye to use as pretend pebbles;
He had great fun, using the excavator to dig out the "pebbles" and pop them in the dumper truck.. and then once full, to empty the dumper truck out onto the lid.  Naturally the floor ended up covered in chick peas.  We discovered though after tidy up; that the tub with the chickpeas in it, made a mighty fine drum.. and then we discovered it slid around on the floor brilliantly, so we tried twirling it around, then we slid it across the floor to each other as fast as we could.  We must have played with this tub of chickpeas well over an hour.

Then Rye decided he wanted to do some drawing - this is something else I've bravely decided to implement.  Up to now art materials and paper have been on the very top shelf and inaccessible to Rye.  I've decided to put some paper in a basket with the crayons and pencils so Rye can draw when ever he wants too.  The basket is fairly accessible to my mindee too.  While she still tends to put things in her mouth - its not quite as automatic as it was, so I feel she's ready for this extra freedom.   Anyway the drawing, we had a lot of fun, Rye asked me to draw him a few things so we could colour them in together, then he asked me to "draw" the names of the objects and of people he suggested. 
Then game time.  Rye really wanted to play the caterpillar game.  He picked up the game really quickly... and how to cheat!  The little monkey.  Much to my suprise I did really enjoy playing the game.  It is so simple I thought I'd get bored quite quickly - but actually it was a lot of fun, especially when Rye already had the colour for the caterpillar when he rolled the dice.  "Silly dice, I've got that colour".. or if he thought I wasn't watching he'd try to roll again.  Scamp!

Started off playing using one of the caterpillar heads each, then we decided to use 2 caterpillars each and the first to give both caterpillars their bodies were the winner.  Great fun.  I will  definitely be looking at picking up some more games to play together.

Tomorrow I'm working, I don't mind though, my mindee and Rye have become great friends and he does miss her when she's not here.  I expect he will enjoy showing her his new gifts and, of course, bossing her around. 

5 comments:

Becks said...

Sounds like a lovely getting back together day.
Lovely toys on show too. We have shelves full of books in the living room yet the children only seem to read certain ones for days on end before switching to a new bunch, must be the age they're at?
And good on you looking forward to work, it is what you make it after all......
Best wishes.
xx

Joxy34 said...

Very true, Becks :-)

arwen_tiw said...

We really need surfaces for play here too, there is always a little table somewhere around and the top of the low shelves gets used daily!

I can highly recommend The Little Orchard, another board game that is very accessible to young children, not too long, not too many rules, whilst also not being boring for parents!

Joxy34 said...

Thanks hun, I've been thinking of buying that game, nice to have a recommendation :-)

Ohhh I have enjoyed this festive period, it has been lovely.

Greentwinsmummy said...

Hullo Joxy x Thankyou for your kind words poppet x
I just read what you wrote here ***Slight dimming in the happiness when his dad foolishly tried to force a hug and goodbye from Rye. **
I am really trying to think about ways I can get the girls father to act in a better way, and to do that I need surely to understand him which is where I grind to a halt as in 14 years I can honestly say I understand him less and less. He does that sometimes, say oh come here, oh daddys got to go now etc and goes on and on about it,and its never struck me before that maybe the smalls dont make a big ohhh goodbye goodbye thing! because that makes it more a deal that hes going, I have flu and its hard to get my words out I hope you understan lol
I just wanted to thankyou for giving me something to think on
gtm X X X