Room Redesign!

After my last post about struggling with time and creativity, I set to work in J~'s room creating corners, special play areas, an art wall, and more. I spent four hours (after he went to bed, of course) moving furniture, boxing up toys that I wanted him to take a break from for a while, figuring out where to put what, and trying to make the room more inviting than just another play space. What previously was just a room filled with extra toys and a place to store his clothes is now a playroom/discovery room complete with an art space, a comfy place to lay around and read/look at books, a table for free play/building block towers/doing puzzles/experimenting with play-doh, and a dress-up corner with a full-length mirror. I was so happy with myself - and sooo ready for bed! - when I stood back and looked in from the doorway... and so excited to see J~'s reaction the next morning.


When I opened the door to let him in the room, he looked around with a puzzled look at first... but then his lips turned up into the biggest smile as I talked about each area that he was looking at. I think his favorite area that morning was the closet-turned-comfy-reading-nook. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Polar Bear, Polar Bear have been two of his favorite books for a while now. We cozied up on the blankets and read the books while playing with the stuffed bears and looking at the pictures I put up on the walls.

It took J~ a week or so to really check out everything in the dress-up basket and start using the mirror to see how he looked. He's still not really into trying to "dress up" yet, but he takes at least a few of the various items out every day - usually the hats or headbands (bunny ears and devil horns). D~ had given him some mannequin heads a while back (with Mexican wrestling masks on them), and I took those out recently to show him that he could dress them up, too. After dressing up one of the heads myself with a hat, some sunglasses, and a lei, I picked out different items one-by-one and asked J~ which head they should go on. He was happy to point and pick between the different heads and even tried to place a few items on by himself.

He played with the blocks and Little People quite a bit for the first few days, but lately he's been using the table more for the puzzles, Play-doh, and free play.

I have an old alarm clock radio in his room and pull out the box of music toys every other day or so in an attempt to increase his interest both with the instruments and with dancing/silly-movement in general, but he mainly just likes it for background noise. I act silly and move around with the music hoping that he'll follow my lead, but he just smiles at me, bops in place once or twice, and goes back to whatever he was doing. Oh well. Whatever makes him happy.

For the first round with the Art Wall, I decided to put up four different pieces of construction paper and taped a blank greeting card in the middle of each piece. This gives him an idea of where the coloring should stay (with a little initial prompting). I hung some stickers in a chip clip on a mug hook above the paper. Ideally, I want to give him freedom to use materials freely, but I really don't want stickers all over his floor, door, carpet, table, bookcase... you get the idea. ;P For the same reason, I put the crayons in a cup on top of his bookcase so that he has to ask for each of these if he wants to use them. He loves the crayons... but moreso to carry around from room to room than to actually color with on the cards. :P J~ will make a few vertical or diagonal lines with one, two, or three different colors on a few of the cards, but then he's done. Since I've been pretty focused on just being a Mom for the past year-and-a-half+, I haven't done any art myself... so he hasn't really even seen anyone coloring (aside from brief encounters with kids at our town's Friday Night Fairs). Anyway... so I've put some more paper in the room and try to spend a little time every few days just making doodles and letting him see me color for enjoyment. He loves finger painting, but that's definitely not a good art medium for carpeted floors and independent creativity time. :P

J~ really seems to enjoy his room a lot more now that there are more defined activity areas... and just more areas in general. It's been almost a month already since I did all of this, and he's still enjoying it. I want to try to change it up every so often, though. Not so much the furniture or layout of the room but the activities at each "station". Regular building blocks (or other open-ended materials) instead of the Mega Bloks... different books in his bookcase... different posters in the reading nook... different wall-friendly art activities... more dress-up clothes and accessories.

I want to start introducing weekly/monthly/seasonal themes and create a little more structure to our weekdays. Maybe have different activites for each day... but that's another post in itself.

MINE!

Property Law As Viewed By A Toddler

1. If I like it, it's mine.
2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks like it's mine, it's mine.
8. If I saw it first, it's mine.
9. If I can see it, it's mine.
10. If I think it's mine, it's mine.
11. If I want it, it's mine.
12. If I "need" it, it's mine (yes, I know the difference between "want" and "need"!).
13. If I say it's mine, it's mine.
14. If you don't stop me from playing with it, it's mine.
15. If you tell me I can play with it, it's mine.
16. If it will upset me too much when you take it away from me, it's mine.
17. If I (think I) can play with it better than you can, it's mine.
18. If I play with it long enough, it's mine.
19. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it's mine.

20. If it's broken, it's yours (no wait, all the pieces are mine).


I've seen this online a few times, but all of this has just recently started to apply to J~. He doesn't get the opportunity to interact with many kiddos right now (at least at home). So when the one neighborhood tot comes over to play and starts pushing Jacob's lawn mower around... J~ gives a little protest cry and looks over at me as if in disbelief that someone else is touching his stuff! He does great when we're in the house pretending to share things with his Cabbage Patch baby, but I guess it's a little easier to share with an inanimate toy rather than a real life nemesis. ;O)