Friday, August 20, 2010

Keeping toddler busy.... next to impossible

Today Navyaa had school off due to Varalakshmi pooja. So I thought let me try keeping her busy like she is in school for another four hours(her school timings) so that she doesn't miss school much and do something interesting too. Let me tell you she loves her school now. Though her initial 2 hours of school were managed by her papa as I was busy preparing breakfast and lunch and then sachin declared he is leaving for office in another ten minutes. Now Navyaa is sole responsibilty of mine and so is the job to keep her occupied. It is really difficult to make a toddler busy that too if the toddler is like who wants new activities every 10 mins.

After a quick thinking I thought of using idea from Kids and Parents forum and decided her to give some bowls, vessels, cups, glasses and some solid uncooked stuff for pouring. I took following things:
  1. A big steel bowl
  2. Two plastic containers
  3. Her pouring cup and shovel from her sand set
  4. Small Funnel
  5. Half cup kidney beans and Half cup chick peas
  6. Steel spoon
I made her sit on carpet and gave all the stuff and let her on her own. I gave her all this around 12 p.m. She actually enjoyed  pouring it from one container to another using bowl, cup, shovel, spoon , funnel all which was in her reach. I was happy that am able to concentrate on my work in kitchen. In betweeen I was keeping an eye on her as she sometimes was popping the kidney beans or chick peas in her mouth. So this was one task not to let her put this stuff in her mouth. Another task was to keep her occupied at the same place and not letting her roam all over house(which was tough) Lo ji in just 20 minutes she was done with all this and  now again bored up and giving me silly looks. So I asked her to put all the chickpeas and kidney beans in one container and give it back to me. Surprisingly she did it. But Now what next. I replaced those with moong pulses. She was happy again with smaller pulses now in big container. Same activities started for another 20 minutes. Anyhow I was happy that I stole few more minutes to finish up the pending chores.
I came out of kitchen and lo what I see. To my surprise(which actually was obvious) I found pulses all over dining room and living room's floor scattered, and she was enjoying scattering them further. Felt like screaming on her... but who invited this me only..so tried my best not to let my BP raise. I asked her to keep the pulses back in the bowl and this time she refused and get back to her drawing book and crayons and I was left there with pulses scattered all over and yes I forgot to mention half of the pulses soaked in water too as she got hold of her water bottle and soaked few of them in bowl.

May be blessing in disguise as I quickly decided on my dinner... so collected whole lot of pusles, washed them thorughly to soak them in water , which eventually will turn out as moong salad in evening.

So I was able to keep her busy for almost one hour and she kept me busy in extra cleaning for 35 minutes.
So score card is again Me Zero and Navyaa One... She happily had her lunch and went to sleep and am here writing the post.

Yes I captured few of the moments too which I will share later maybe tonight

Added Later:
Here are the pics I was able to capature while she was busy pouring stuff :)

3 comments:

Ekta said...

he he...what fun these tots get seeing mothers work n run after them!
v sweet post Preeti.

love n hugs to Naavya.

The Bhandari's said...

Thanks Ekta :) Would love to know how is ur little one keeping u busy.. got to see Ruhaan in action

Anonymous said...

Hahaha my lovely nannu bhai .. u cannot keep her occupied on one thing for long .. nothing works here .. hahahaha