WFMW: The Witching Hour

In our house, the hour(s) after nap time can be LONG and trying on a tired mom. Since one of the things that I have been saying for months now is that I need to have a little more structure to our day, I decided to have an activity after nap time. I named it "Activity time." I don't plan anything fancy, but decided it was a starting point towards some structure around here. I built it up about how much fun we were going to have after our nap. In a short week, the kids are asking what the activity is going to be. The beauty of it is I usually pick things that I can get them started on and leave them working on at the table. Bonus: they are having fun, it gives me peace, keeps the fighting down and it gives me time to get dinner started (provided my newborn doesn't need me).

For our family, our 4 year old needs some help with fine motor skills. Problem is he balks every time I try to work with him on writing. So I have done mazes, coloring by number, connect the dots with his favorite super heroes, water coloring...anything to get a crayon/pencil in his hand. I cheat too - I use handouts from school as a jumping off point. Hope (2 yrs) usually colors during this time- and as it turns out, it's usually on herself more than the paper.

There are hundreds of places to get ideas, so do what works for your family. Works for me!

Here was today's activity - making peanut butter blossom cookies. It was more involved than most days, but my kids took short naps and we had a lot of time:

I realized as we got into it they were learning all kinds of things.

Here's how it went:

Bought fall hershey kisses
Grayson counted 20 out for each of them (counting practice)

They each sorted them in to 3 cups by color (sorting practice)

They unwrapped them (fine motor skills)

Obedience practice - they couldn't eat any of them until I said.

Sorting:
Unwrapping:

Another sneaky lesson - had them put all the wrappers in a cup so they could easily throw them away. We talked about cleaning up as we went along. :)

Making the cookies:

They each got to measure and put ingredients in the mixer.

Number recognition practice as I had them turn the mixer on to the number 3, 4, etc when it was time to mix.

Practice in taking turns.
Putting the kisses on the cookies.
Reward: yummy cookies for dinner. They had a blast and it made the hours until J got home go so much faster!