Dear reader,
My toddlers love coloring. like, love it! They color something about once a day. It’s a crazy juxtaposition because my preschooler loathes coloring! While they were coloring today they ploughed through all the markers in record speed! They just became strong enough to yank the lids off so it’s fun new territory to not have to bring the marker to Mom to open. Not gonna lie, my normal response is to feel overwhelmed and surges of anger (triggered by the overwhelm), but today I had an ah-hah moment! It’s the perfect time to work on sooo many skills! First, there’s the responsibility aspect; we take care of the tools we use! But there’s also matching, and practicing our colors (which has been an key interest with them lately. Suddenly they’re not calling everything green or pink). So I sat down with them and made them match the lids and the markers, and we put them away right.
I mean, I know this is something every kid needs to learn, eventually. But the more I thought about it the more intentional the activity became, even if it wasn’t planned. And you know what? They aced it.
p.s. color wonder is genius! I’m not getting rewarded for saying so, I just love that I don’t have to worry about clothes or furniture being colored on. Getting marker (especially dry erase marker) out of everything has not been my favorite mommy experience. Probably my second least-favorite right behind potty training. And that’s saying something because there are a lot of unpleasant mommy experiences…
Age Range
2-3
Prep Required
on the fly
Time Needed
5 minutes
Supervision
10/10
(it’s a teaching moment)
