Hey Mamas! Todays post is all about making sure you don’t feel guilty about screen time for your kids but to find different avenues of entertainment for your sweet peas.
As a stay at home mom I’m literally multitasking all day from making sure my 2 year old that’s climbing all over doesn’t fall off something or my inquisitive 3 year old doesn’t do anything wild for the millisecond that I turn away to catch my breath. From the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep (and most nights even after they sleep) I’m constantly alert with them and through the day I’m also working my way through cooking, cleaning, loads of laundry, and so much more.
When my first born arrived I was the new mom that said to myself no screen time for my kids. And then our Rayyan’s Asthma was diagnosed at about 5 to 6 months of age and we had to give him inhalers to help control his asthma twice a day. Now you try to give a six month old an inhaler with a spacer. He would scream and fight it. To see him go through that was awful I couldn’t force the inhaler and spacer on his face. So I resorted to playing it’s-bitsy spider on my phone one day after he put up a good fight and refused to take the inhaler. I promised myself for those 5 min twice a day it was okay just so we could get through this inhaler. And then one morning he was fussy and I figured just 15 min of nursery rhymes on TV are okay until I finish doing my makeup. Those 15 min lead to 30 min just so I could get food up on the stove and so on and so forth; you see where I’m going with this?! Ultimately it became an avenue for me to get a couple minutes of sanity just so I could get a few minutes to get my stuff done.
I could go on and state all these statistics about the harmful effects screen time has on children; but most of us I assume already know that, so instead I’ll share some things I do with my boys to keep them entertained.
Now it’s definitely become a little (emphasis on little) easier now that they are 3 and 2. While they are still within my eyes range and I can keep an eye on them I provide them with a lot of projects and crafts.
- Construction Paper: this is a beautiful thing to buy when you have toddlers and A LOT of it. Some days I’ll cut shapes out for Rayyan and give him a washable child safe toddler glue stick. I’ll let him use his imagination and come up with fun crafty things to make. Sometimes a house, an airplane, a boat, burgers, I let his imagination and creative side take over once I get him started. This keeps him busy for at least an hour if not more.
- Blocks: my 2 year old can literally spend hours playing with blocks while I cook. He’ll build random structures, he’ll put them in buckets, he’ll pour them out of buckets…so much discovery, he loves them!!
- Magnets: these incredible magnets I bought from Amazon when Rayyan was a year old are THE best!! There’s a little architect in him I swear he loves to build with these magnets. He will build little cubes out of them and then bring his wooden cars and pretend the cube is a parking garage. He’ll build little house like structures and throw his dinosaurs in pretending it’s their house. So much creativity with these and they are fun to play with!! Again, keeps them busy for at least an hour!
- Easel: They love their easels! My parents got Rayyan his first easel on his 2nd Birthday and he loves it to this day!! We love Melissa & Doug products! So many fun educational toys you can never go wrong! This fun easel package comes with magnets, washable markers, eraser, chalk, and a paper roll! It’s amazing we practice our letters on this, writing, colors, and some days I just let the kids play independently with it!
- Play-Doh: Note* put a huge sheet down before you give them any play-doh! But let them get wild and creative just remember to save your carpets!! If anyone has a tip on how to get play-doh off of rugs and carpets please share. My moms house carpets and rugs are spotted with play-doh all over!!
- KiwiCo Inc: This subscription box is amazing!! The subscription box can be ordered for kids and adults of all ages. If you subscribe for your kids, your child will receive a personalized box in the mail, this is always so exciting for my three year old. He always says “a surprise for me, Mama” and now he’s recognized the box so the moment he sees it he is eager to have us help him open it. This month Rayyan received a box all about dinosaurs (His favorite!!). In the box we had a board game that helped us identify some of the dinosaur footprints, clay and fossil stamps, and cut up cloth so he could decorate and make his own dinosaur costume! He loved every minute of that creative craft time with me! Meanwhile we had amazons Alexa play dinosaur nursery rhymes for us! Definitely a subscription worth having.
I hope this helped to make you feel less guilty about giving your child screen time and gave you more ideas to get creative with your babies!!
You can purchase any of those items by clicking on the links! Thanks for your support!