I'm gearing up for a new school year in our house. We're homeschooling again, and this time I'll have two children that I'm teaching this year - Kindergarten and Second Grade. I'm excited for this, as are they, but I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do with my 3 year old. He can get a bit angry when he's not "included" in the school activities, and then he gets bored and destructive. So I'm coming up with ideas to use to make some busy boxes for him.
Most busy box ideas that I've seen tend to be filled with.... well, with cheap garbage that will end up in a landfill at some point. There's loads of little pieces that I just know I will hate, and then they will just end up making a mess all over the floor. I'm not going to have time to deal with all that! I'll be doing more classes myself through the autumn and winter. I need natural and sturdy components that he will enjoy playing with, and they need to be relatively budget friendly. I'm planning right now to try and come up with about Five different box themes - to go along with the Waldorf Color of the Day - and keep them set up just out of his reach where he can see and ask for them.
The colors for each day are: Monday - Purple
Tuesday - Red
Wednesday - Yellow
Thursday - Orange
Friday - Green
Saturday is Blue, and Sunday is White, but I don't think I'll need boxes for them. Yet.
Some components of the boxes will be things like peg dolls, wooden animals, homemade play dough, slices of branches to make playscapes, maybe some silk scarves if I can manage the expense. I'm also thinking themes like a farmyard, an ocean theme, woodland... Anything that will keep him engaged and busy. The bonus of having a set of busy boxes would be that my older two have a motivation to get their own work done, so they can play as well!
I've been able to get a few pieces painted and collected together already, and as you can see, both of my younger two are loving the bright colors and creativity that comes along with these loose pieces. In fact, they've responded so favorably to the smaller painted pieces that I'm tempted to paint their building blocks as well! I have a feeling these will be useful later on in meeting math goals for the older two, as we learn about balancing, levers, and weight.
I have more peg dolls ordered to come in soon, and as we can afford it I will collect more things like small bowls, little acorns, and perhaps even some wooden trees and landscape pieces. The long pieces are giant popsicle sticks that I bought last school year for the kids to make a catapult out of with my husband. They loved it of course, but then I needed something else to do with the sticks, so a rainbow set was born!
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