We Play with straws

Being stuck in the house has made us get a little creative during the day, as you can remember from this recent post. It also forces us to get a little more creative one evening a week while hubby teaches private instrument lessons in our home. It’s hard enough that the kids have so much energy they just want to run, but they’ve got to be a bit quieter than normal, too!

One night a week or two ago I had one boy who wanted to paint and another who just wanted to get into the pantry. I got a straw out for Sweet Pea, the 2 yr old who was attempting to get his own sweets from the pantry, and let him play with it while I got some paint ready for Cutie Pie. I laid out some big white paper on the kitchenette floor and prayed the boys would be relatively quite and occupied while the lessons were going on in the adjacent room.

Cutie Pie ran and got his trucks and the tire painting began. Sweet Pea was interested for a little while, then tried to paint with his straw. I remembered making bubble solution with the boys last summer and blowing it through straws with holes poked toward the bottom of the straws so the boys wouldn’t suck in the bubble solution. I quickly did this to the paint straw. Of course, then the splattering began. I had to nip it in the bud quickly, and so showed the boys how to drop paint with their fingertips and then blow through the straw to make streaks. This proved very entertaining and was actually pretty quiet, although Cutie Pie didn’t stay interested in it for very long.

Sweet Pea’s attention span still isn’t very long, so after getting them involved in straw-blowing painting I ran to my reference books and found an idea to race cotton balls by blowing them across the room using straws. (I honestly can’t remember which book I first saw this idea in as I have several that I referenced that night. This idea was in more than one so I figured it would be a good choice!) I decided I didn’t have much to lose, even if it did get a little noisy as the lesson was about to end and I needed to get the boys quickly occupied so paint didn’t end up everywhere as it does when they lose interest in something so messy! I set out the cotton balls, showed them quickly how to get the balls moving and they were off to giggling and scooting along on their tummies racing their cotton balls!

Since then I have discovered some other fun things to do with straws, and will definitely try them when I find myself in this situation again!

I’d love to hear ways you keep your kiddos quietly occupied! Please share and then hop on to another blog as part of Childhood 101’s We Play Tuesday!