Controlling the Toy Clutter

 Please tell me that I'm not the only mom out there who fights a daily struggle against all the toys and kid stuff?! We have a dedicated play room in our house, but that doesn't mean everything stays put. It still ends up spread through the house day after day. When things reach that point, it's frustrating for everyone. The kids can't find the item they want to play with, things get stepped on and broken, I get cranky, it's just bad. Hopefully you know exactly what I'm talking about and it's not just me!

I finally decided I had to get some semblance of control over the chaos before we all went nuts, and since my plan seems to be working out fairly well, I figured maybe someone like you could use it.

So, here's our playroom, or at least most of it. Maren gets the other half for her bedroom. This works because she naps during the day in my room, on the opposite end of the house from the playroom and all its noise, and only sleeps in here at night. It's nothing special, though I have big dreams for someday when I get around to decorating it.

 So, how to tame the mess?
First of all, my kids have way too many toys. I already knew this, but then after reading things like this and this I decided to do something about it. I went through all the toys (while the kids were out of the room to lessen the sorrow over the loss) and threw away all the toys that were broken or worn, or that didn't get played with but weren't worth donating (Happy Meal toys anyone?).
The next step is to put each type of toy in its own container, preferably with a lid. I love the selection of small boxes and baskets at Dollar Tree, but I have also found some good cheap containers at Walmart.
 After things had been sorted and organized, I let the kids back in the room. They got to take turns choosing a container of toys, until the small toy shelf was full. Now, go back and look at that picture. Our toy shelf is not very big. It will only fit 5-7 items, which really isn't very much (especially considering I require them to leave room for a few baby toys for Maren). We then chose 2-3 "big" toys (for example, the dress up box, the Little People Barn, etc) that sit around the room but not on the shelf.
Everything that's left went into the closet. Now, my kids are fairly good at staying out of the closet (perhaps because they were told that if they get anything out without permission it will get thrown away, and they have seen that statement in action), but if you feel yours won't then maybe find a way to lock it. We ended up with more than half our toys in the closet, which means we only have to keep control of 40% of our toys. This is SO much better!

So, now that the toys are organized and under control, where do you go from there? Here's the fun part. You know how your kids get tired of their toys and wind up with piles of stuff and still bored? Well, we're going to fix that. You could set up some kind of rotation schedule, which I tried for a while, but it only works if you stay on top of it. What I have found that works for us right now is a combination of toy rotation and bribery. ;)
Any time I ask my kids to do a big job (for example cleaning a large portion of the house with me), I tell them that anyone who works hard without fighting/whining/crying gets to choose a toy out of the closet. When the task has been successfully completed, any kid who met the criteria gets to go to the closet and pick something to get out, and then choose something from the playroom to put back in its place. The only things that always stay out are the books. This way they get to pick what is rotated and I get (mostly) willing help with work around the house. Their enjoyment of their toys stays fresh, and the house stays sorta clean.

I love watching them rediscover toys they haven't played with in a while. Like today, when one of them chose to bring out the box of dress-ups. They played together with all the costumes for almost an hour and had so much fun!

Field Trip: Explora

 We've discovered  a new favorite place to go in Albuquerque. I'd been there as a kid and remembered it as being really fun, but I didn't think that Erik was old enough to appreciate it so we hadn't really planned on going any time soon. Then, one day we were going to be in ABQ for the afternoon and called Mom Mower and Aunt Abby to see if they wanted to meet up with us somewhere in town. They chose Explora, and we decided to give it a try.
To my surprise, Erik loved Explora more than he's loved any other place in his life. I've never seen him so engaged in anything for such a long time. He was fascinated by all the interesting things around him and actually played and explored clear through his whole nap time without every acting tired in the slightest. We've been back several times now, and it has yet to fail to hold the same fascination for all of us. I won't even try to show you all the neat exhibits and activities, here's just a few shots to give you an idea of what this place is like.

Exploring the effect of slope on the trajectory of a moving object.

Animating a movie with Aunt Abby.

One of the most beloved areas, TRAINS!

Drawing circles with Daddy.

Another favorite; giant bubbles!

Exploring electricity.

With even more exhibits on light, sound, water, music, air flow, color, etc we've killed many hours here already and plan to do so again soon! If you're in the area I highly recommend checking Explora out, and if you aren't I'd encourage you to look around and see if you can find something similar.

*Nobody paid me to write this, I just really love this place and thought I'd let others know it's out there.

How DOES Your Child Benefit From Play?

As I was looking around for something totally unrelated, I stumbled across an article about exactly how playing benefits a child, and it also has suggestions for parents/caregivers to maximize the potential in play time.
It's been really fun to watch Erik and Paisley play, both together and separately. Erik is just starting to show signs of pretend play, which is so exciting (and dang cute) to watch. Paisley is fascinated with everything around her, and loves the fact that she can crawl over to anything she wants and check it out. We're getting lots of social interaction/training as we learn not to take toys away from each other and how to deal with it when someone else is playing with something you want (we've got a long ways to go in this department!). It's so fun to watch these two showing off their new skills as they play, I love to be able to see them figure out something they couldn't do the day before.

Gotta love the winters here. This was taken in December :)

Repairing a Broken Board Book (updated)

This post contains affiliate links.

So for a long time now I've been looking around for information on how to fix board books, specifically for ones with cracked spines. It's amazing to me that there's not much out there. I read through lots of websites that talked about how to repair regular books, but not board books. I finally decided to just take what I'd gleaned from my research and go for it.
Let me start with a picture of one of my repair candidates to show you why I didn't want to just slap some duct tape on and call it good, as so many websites said to do.

As you can see, Erik bends his books backwards until the spine snaps, typically in two or three places. From there it's way too easy for him to start pulling the book apart page by page. Even if he doesn't pull the book apart, the pages now have no foundation and start becoming misaligned, which makes turning pages surprisingly hard. I could just put a piece of tape over the spine, but that wouldn't do much of anything for us. 

Before I start I need to say that if you are repairing a book that you want to last for a long time (for your grand-kids to read some day down the road, perhaps?), you need to do a little research and be willing to spend a little extra money on glues and tapes that won't harm the paper in your book. I am not really looking to make my books last forever, but I don't want to buy Erik new books until he learns to take care of what he's got so I need these to last a little longer.
Okay, so what to do about your poor broken books? Let's gather our supplies:

-White glue, preferably acid free (I got mine for less than a dollar at my grocery store)
-Small paint brush (my preferred brush has a flat head, but I bet you could make any small brush work)
-Clamps (or anything heavy)

I did a lot of reading about what kind of glue to use (there are apparently "rules" about what ph your glue should be depending on the type of paper, etc) and finally decided that just regular white glue should be okay for my needs. I did finally find one blog that had a post about how to repair board books (she has removed the content though so I can't share a link), and she used the same method I'm going to show here except she used Mod Podge. It seems like that would work fine (again, if you're looking for repairs to last decades, you may want to do a little research before using ANY type of glue), but I didn't have any Mod Podge on hand and after reading this I wasn't about to try making my own. So far the plain old cheap glue has done great.
What to do:
First you want to apply a thin but even coat of glue to both sides of the insides of the cracks in your book's spine. Make sure the glue goes in as deep as the book is split, you don't want bubbles in your pages. When you're done with your brush, be sure to rinse it thoroughly if you intend to use it again.

Next, you push and pull on the pages in your book until the edges are all lined up (as much as possible anyway) and then clamp the spine. At this point I applied a light coat of glue all over the outside of the spine to just make sure every crack was sealed. Leave your book in the clamps for several hours (I've left my books anywhere from 8 hours to overnight) until the glue has had PLENTY of time to dry. 

*If you don't have clamps, you could just stack a pile of big heavy books on top of the book you just glued. Basically you're just looking for anything that will provide constant and VERY firm pressure to your book to hold it while the glue dries. 

Next, remove the clamps, and determine whether the little flap of paper that covers the spine is worth trying to save. On this book it was 95% gone, so I decided it wasn't worth saving. 

If you're like me and you've decided not to save the spine cover, than take some scissors and carefully trim the jagged edges so that it looks nice. I don't know about your kids, but if there is any kind of a flaw in a book Erik can't leave it alone and picks at it until he's destroyed the book. But, if I make sure all the edges are smooth and straight he typically won't mess with it. 

 If you've decided there is enough of the spine cover to try to save it, then..... Here I have to admit I have no experience, yet. (See update at bottom of post) I did not realize when I started this project that my hubby had polished off all the clear packing tape I had planned to use for book spine repairs. So, I have had to set aside all my books that need the spine cover repaired until after I get to the store. But, from past experience in making covers for some of my textbooks, I do have a tip. When taping the spine of your book, make sure you do so with the book closed. When a book is open the spine folds up on itself, making it smaller. If you were to tape a book while it was opened you would be unable to close it.
As soon as I get to the store, I will update this post with anything I learn from the experience of fixing the cover.
And now, just for showing-off purposes, here is the same book after the repair process is complete.

I was afraid the glue would soak through the pages and make them stick together, but it worked great!

*7/20/13       I just wanted to say that this has seemed to work really well with all the books I did this too. Erik is still pretty hard on his books, so every other month or so I have to pull the tape and things out and re-repair a book or two, but I think that would be the case even if we started out with brand new books each time. 

I never did do an update about taping the spines, but after doing it on my books I decided that it's pretty easy to figure out as long as you follow my suggestion to always tape the spine of the book with the book closed. The tape does get in the way if you need to do another repair later on down the road, but it's not too hard to cut it away and then put new tape on when you're done. 

*1/12/15      All the books that I repaired before posting this almost exactly two years ago are still in working order. There is one that is just about beyond fixing, but the rest are doing great. I think that's pretty good considering they've now survived Erik, Paisley, and Sharli!

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. 

Official Resource on Playtime

As the wife of a scientist (in training, about to graduate with his Masters in Wildlife and Fisheries Management) I am learning that if I can't cite a source from a peer-reviewed journal than my argument doesn't count. If I just say something like "Oh, I read online somewhere the other day that (fill in the blank with some interesting tidbit of info)" his response is often "Oh yeah? Says who? Did that come from a peer reviewed journal?" So, I was really excited to discover recently that there is a real, peer reviewed journal dedicated to PLAY! It is called The American Journal of Play and it is "a forum for discussing the history, science, and culture of play. The Journal aims to increase awareness and understanding of the role of play in learning and human development and the ways in which play illuminates cultural history." Source
All of the issues of this journal are available for free on their website, which is in linked in the first paragraph of this post. If you want to see what kinds of things the journal has, here is a list of some interesting looking articles.
One thing that makes this journal especially interesting is the wide range of topics they cover. It seems to me that just about anyone could find an article that interests them. Just in the most recent issue, there are articles on the influence of play in the professional work place, the influence of play on cartoon drawing, introducing autistic children to playing in group settings, and a study of play in monkeys, just to name a few.
Now, when you tell someone something interesting you learned about the importance of play, you can have the knowledge that your info came from a peer reviewed source.

Free Play Time

      One thing you will hear debated by parents, caregivers, school administrators, etc, is how important play time is to children. Schools have to decide how much time to devote to class time, and how much to spend on recess/play time. With so much focus on making good grades and ensuring that our kids have all the best learning opportunities, it's easy to see why schools are cutting play time shorter and shorter, and putting so much more emphasis on more traditional learning methods. So what's the big deal, we want our kids to be smart, right? We want them to do well in school, right?

      Play time IS a big deal, and here's an interesting article from NPR and another from babycenter that explain why. 

      I try to make sure that Erik and Paisley get some time to themselves every day to just spend how they want. Granted, Paisley is pretty restricted by what she's able to do right now, but even she can sit and play with her fingers and toes, practice making faces, and learn that she's able to function when not held or attended to by someone else. Erik loves to play on his own. He will voluntarily go down the hall to his bedroom to play by himself for pretty long stretches of time (long for a 13 month old anyways). He loves to sit and look at his books while I am doing other things around the house. He's even invented his own little games that he loves to play whenever he can. It's so fun to watch these two do their thing when they think no one is looking.