Often when I write about how long Aurora stays with a
specific activity I worry people either (A) think I am exaggerating (I am not),
or (B) believe I have one of those magic children who stays playing with
anything. Actually, it takes a great
deal of attention and creativity to keep a game fun for a long time. Additionally, I have intentionally been
trying to foster focus in my children.
There have been several times that I have hauled the whole crew and our
equipment to the zoo only to have Aurora run through the same mud puddle for
over an hour, but if that is what she wants to do that is how I want her to
focus her attention and I make no attempts to lead her elsewhere. Sometimes I feel a little punished by
this philosophy, like last Friday when at the library we played the same game
with a rabbit and a octopus for two hours and ten minutes:
Oh, Hi Octopus.
Hi rabbit.
Would you like to hop
with me?
Yes I love to bounce.
<bouncing,
bouncing>
Ouch!
Oh no! Are you okay?
I just hurt my tail/ear/arm/leg/etc.
Here I will give you a
big hug. There that feels much
better, doesn’t it?
Yes, thank you so much
my friend.
Say would you like to
bounce with me…
Finally, Adeline grew tired of her dinosaur and demanded to
be walked around. I cannot say I
argued much. In fact, Aurora would
have stayed there all night if we had not had Space Place to go to.
So that is the focus side of thing. The other reason that it may seem that
the Aurora of my blog is playing nonstop with whatever random activity I have
come up with is because I do not tend to blog about the flops.
Like the time I put her stuffed animal toy birds all around
the room and had her use binoculars to find them (30 seconds).
Or when we teamed up with our neighbors and tried to look at
snowflakes with magnifying glasses (2 minutes –at which time I collected the
magnifying glasses because the girls were using them as spoons to eat the snow
which could have been terrible since it was freezing outside and the rims were
metal…)
Or pretty much any attempt at violin practice before I added
the jelly beans (45 to 90 seconds).
At the end of the day, Aurora is only three!
