Kids love stickers. So when you get some unrequested address labels or other stickers in the mail, cut off the fun parts and give them to your kids or grandkids to use. My mother-in-law does this and we have a stash. The boys make pictures with them.
I keep a variety of crafty things for my kids to get creative with. Some of those items are wooden popsickle sticks, googly eyes, party confetti, sea shells, glitter glue, dry beans and macaroni…oh yeah, and markers and crayons and paints.
I get a lot of those items at the dollar store and as for markers and crayons I buy those when they go way down in price just before a new school year begins. I stock up on notebooks, markers or whatever I think we’ll use. You can get these items for as low as pennies.
Each of my boys have a notebook that I started teaching them how to draw or write in. Unfortunately for Jack (it gets harder to do all the same things with the 2nd child) his book hasn’t had as much work done in it. But I have a book or 2 from Brendan when he was about 2 yrs old or so and notes I made about how he said certain words. I was reading it the other day and realized I had forgotten some of the things I had written down. They grow up so fast ;( They really do, its astounding. I imagine that for my own mom it probably seems like not too long ago that I was so young. In almost 10 years my oldest will be nearly driving. Okay, I’m digressing…
Anyways… kids need to be creative and my boys are no exception and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money either! Be creative, think about the things your throwing out…old socks? My boys recently made puppets out of a few…and they seem to have forgotten about them almost as soon as they had them made. But you know what, the joy for them was in making them. And they did. And now I’ve put them away with the other projects I’ve saved. By the way, don’t be afraid to keep some and throw others out…I have to do it often- when they aren’t looking of course!
Enjoy them while they’re young!
