We've been taking adavntage of our zoo membership lately, but now the girls come armed with something only their Daddy would dedicate hours to making for them: a custom animal checklist to keep track of what they see and document what each animal is doing. If this sounds like something only a big (nerdy) kid would come up with, then you're right on the money! But, I have to give that nerdy husband of mine some credit on this one. He scored some major points from the girls (as if his point column wasn't already brimming!). They literally ran with this idea (okay, they strolled!) and loved circling their animals, and filling in the sheet. Clever Matt even left quite a few blank boxes for the girls to scetch the random animals he didn't think of (hornbill, anyone??).
This idea is right up there with our token system at bedtime, also Matt's brainstorm, which is absolutely genius! I'll bore you with that sometime. Let's just say we gained a minimum of an hour of kid-free time in the evening with this system. Needless to say, sometimes dads really do have the best ideas with a totally different perspective.
Bridget shows off her Daddy's handiwork last weekend:
Pretty soon the babies will each sport their own clipboards, too. (Yep, you read that right. This little activity even includes clipboards!)
After exploring the zoo for much longer than the girls are usually up for, thanks to the checklist, we made it to the playground to let our animals loose.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, Annie. This judgy look after your sister tried to eat that dirty playground platform will have to do.
Look for Matt's checklist at a zoo giftshop near you :)
No comments:
Post a Comment