Possible Solution—part 1

As many of you know I love to do activities with my boys. My oldest goes to preschool 5 days a week, and my youngest goes 2 days a week. So I don’t have to do a whole lot of planning since they do attend school. But still,  my favorite way to spend time is to do structured activities with them. I love planning for them, finding them, making them or buying them.

I started off with Tot Trays for Monkey. It worked great. I kept them high up, so that he would need help to get them down.

But then our shelves got overcrowded so we added this book case to house the trays. The problem was that Alligator and Monkey have access to this area whenever they are playing, so they would take down parts and things would get lost or misplaced.

So I think I have found my solution!

I baught this at Walmart for 9 dollars.

In the top drawer I have activities for Alligator, the middle is for Monkey, and the bottom is for activities that they can both do or an art project.

 

Each of the activities in bagged with all the necessary components, so when I want to play something with Alligator. I can go straight to that drawer and pull something out. Also, this helps me to organize ahead of time. So this morning, I went through all my Valentine themed activities that I have either made or bought from Time for Tots.  I sorted them based on who will play with them and now they are in the correct drawer.

So here is an example.

Here is the bag which has our muddy pig activity. This is an art activity that I will do with both boys. All the materials are in the bag. Including the glue, scissors, crayons, paint, a paper plate for the paint to be put on, the pig printable, construction paper, and paint brushes.

 

 

This way, when we have time, we can get out the bag and do the activity. The set up has already been done!

Oh, and I bet your thinking, but can’t they just open the drawers and pull out your stuff. Well, I have 2 solutions to that problem. Number 1, the cart has wheels so I and stow it in a closet if I need to. The other solution is a piece of tape. If they are messing with it, a pieces of tape on the side of the drawer will stop it from opening (Hey, it worked for the manufacturer!)