I love organization. I love cleanliness. I love peacefulness. All of these things can be conducive to allowing kids to focus and maximize their learning on the activity at hand, however, it's not giving them a chance to learn how to focus through distractions. Other than making sure I am taking my child to as many outdoor adventures, playdates and library groups as possible, I put a high value on multi-sensory activities that maintain my fairly minimal space.
Cooking with my son is an obvious choice and just between mixing ingredients, separating herbs, and following directions, he's already engaging all of his senses. There are plenty of small things he can do at three years old and when those run out he loves washing the sink and counters and the only thing he needs for all of that is something to safely bring him to counter level height. The activity does still take longer with him helping, but he's building up those skills so that one day it does not. We've been using a
learning tower since he was 18 months old and plan to use it for many years to come.
When the outdoors are not an option, which happens to be in the Arizona summer for us, it's even more valuable for me to bring the mess indoors. Playing with different textures can even help kids with food aversions become more open to trying new things. My son can be doing any activity, and if I ask if he wants to do a science experiment, I have his immediate attention. The more hands on the better so our favorites at this age are playdough, slime and obleck which we will often make and seal and it becomes our hands on activity for the whole week or longer. I like to have one option for indoor mess always available incase I don't have the time or energy for preparation and I've found the one that lasts the longest, because playdough always dries out for us and slime eventually gets really dirty, is
Kinetic Sand. I have so many fond memories of playing and building in the sand, so my son always has a big kit of it that we can get out on the coffee table and just through in some of his other toys and call it a day. We've already been using the kit for over a year and I don't see ever getting tired of it because that stuff is so cool I have fun with it.
The easiest sense for me to help develop is hearing because sound takes up no space. I do hold a lot of value in music appreciation so I did, quite some time ago, decided it was worth investing in a keyboard and I have a special place for the ukulele he was gifted along with my violin. So many other instruments we can make from objects around the house and even without those we have almost daily dance parties just by putting on background music throughout the house using our
Sonos speakers. I find music to be very transformative to our day and I often choose the playlist based on my energy level and my son follows suit and has learned to appreciate a wide variety of music.
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