Sticking Close to Home

John's illness showed itself again last night at 7:30 p.m. when we would have been boarding our airplane to Boston, so, in a way, I was grateful for ultimate confirmation that we made the right choice to stay home. Most of the time John feels fine at this point, so I've been throwing a bit of a pity party for myself. We've been hanging out close to home, doing little busy-work projects.

I let John do "cutting practice" in which he cuts papers with his safety scissors. Meanwhile, Mary very happily busied herself using the child-sized broom to sweep up the paper scraps!

John has been asking for days for us to build a log cabin from a kit he received from Grandpa. I've been telling him that we have to wait for a time when Mary is asleep. I was surprised when, the first time Mary was actually napping when John was awake, John remembered and said, "Now can we build that log cabin?"

He didn't want us to follow the directions, but he had great fun anyway!

This morning we did a little project I learned of that strengthens fine motor skills, a precursor for writing. The child simply uses tongs and moves cotton balls from one place to another. I've been searching for those simple wooden tongs used to remove toast from a toaster, but haven't found them yet, so John used my too-big metal tongs.

First he moved the balls from one bowl to another.

Then he put one ball each into the spots in an egg carton. It was a very simple game, but John actually loved it, it occupied him, and he felt quite proud of himself afterward.