This post might shock you, but our fun idea for the week (yes fun), is trash collection! I don’t know about your toddler, but my toddler loves to keep things clean! She has always enjoyed picking up her toys and putting things away. Now that she can say “away”, she also points out when Mama leaves something out: “Oh no, Mama! Away”, she says! LOL! It’s all I can do to keep this house picked up good enough for her haha! I’ve started telling her if she wants it put away she’ll have to help, or if she wants the dog hair swept up, she should get her broom, etc. Luckily, she’s actually helpful!
When we are out and about, she also notices trash on the ground, items on the floor in stores, etc. We stop to pick things up in the store, but I rarely have a place to put trash, so we usually leave the trash for “later”. We happened to have an extra dog poop bag on our walk the other evening. We decided to give one to Caroline and let her pick up the trash she saw on the walk. It turned out to be an awesome activity! We’ve done it a couple of times now!
She really enjoys the scavenger hunt aspect of finding the next piece of trash. She names the color, and even waits to pick things up before Mama or Daddy says it’s ok. We tell her to leave the “natural stuff” (leaves, sticks, etc), and only find trash. We don’t want her picking up cigarette butts or anything too nasty, so we have her get the go ahead from us first. She holds her bag and walks along with it the whole time. Not only is it fun for her, it prevents her from wanting “up, up, up” the entire walk!
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While we are outside we also stop at the playground, and do some exploring. Her latest interest was looking at and inspecting a tree. She played in the leaves that had fallen down, she felt the bark, looked up at the branches, and played peek-a-boo around the tree trunk!
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