5 Rainy Day Toddler Activities

It's that time of year when you just don't know what to expect from the weather. Your babysitting shift could land on a beautiful sunny day, or it might land on one of those days when you just don't want to get out of bed because it's so miserably cold.

That's why it's always good to have some rainy day activities in your back pocket. No matter what the day, we've got a list of co-op shift activities to keep the kids happy and keep you sane.

The Child Went Over the Mountain

This activity comes from our friend Jaimi at The Stay-at-Home-Mom Survival Guide. It's pretty simple but lots of fun. Pile up a bunch of couch cushions and pillows to make a mountain, and then have your toddler climb over them. Make sure the floor is safe for little heads to fall on (i.e. don't try this on tile).

Salt Paint

This is the coolest. But, okay, maybe it won't keep you entirely sane. You can make salt paint by combining Elmer's glue and Epsom salt. It's sticky and gooey--what a fantastic sensory activity. The results look a lot like beautiful shimmery snow. Thanks to Hands On As We Grow for this one.

Hat's Off!

Raid your newspaper recycling stash and get enough newspaper for every child in your babysitting co-op. Show them how to turn their newspaper into hats. For a wizard hat, roll the paper into a cone and tape the ends together. For an old-fashioned paper hat, fold the paper in half and lay it down with the folded side farthest away from you. Now fold the top two corners down so they touch in the middle of the page. You'll have a piece of paper with a triangle at the top and a long rectangular section across the bottom. There are two layers of paper making up the rectangle. Take the top layer of the rectangle and fold it up to the bottom of the triangle, then up again. Now turn the hat over and do the same thing with the bottom layer. 

Play Dough

It never hurts to have a stash of homemade play dough in your refrigerator for those rainy day co-op shifts. Use the following recipe for making your own dough, and then check out these fun play dough ideas from Sheryl at Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds.

• 2 cups plain flour (all purpose)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• Up to 1.5 cups boiling water (adding in increments until it feels just right)
• food colouring (optional)
• few drops glycerine (optional- adds more shine!)

Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a large mixing bowl. Add the boiling water and stir continuously until the dough becomes sticky and thoroughly combined. Add the food coloring and glycerine. Allow it to cool until it isn't comfortable to handle, and knead it vigorously for a couple of minutes. If it's too sticky add just a little flour. Keep it supple by storing it in a sealed plastic container in your fridge.

Shape Scavenger Hunt

Cut shapes out of paper: oval, circle, triangle, square, rectangle, hexagon, star. Give a shape to each child and start exploring your house looking for items that are shaped like the pieces of paper the children are carrying. It's amazing what you can find when you're looking for something simple and specific!

Have fun on your rainy day babysitting shifts! It might be so fun at your house on rainy days that you'll start hoping the sun won't come out! 

Story Time: My Name is Not Isabella

Pick up Jennifer Fosberry's My Name is Not Isabella and save it for a day when you have all girls at your babysitting co-op shift. On that, pull out this short gem-of-a-book and read it aloud. At least once.

Isabella is a character with a big imagination, but her heroes are real women who did really extraordinary things. The book includes short biographies of the featured heroines: Sally Ride, Annie Oakley, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, and Elizabeth Blackwell. What I love most of all about this book is the admiration for mothers. Yes, all of these women did wonderful things, but the story makes it clear that mothers are extraordinary for their everyday sacrifices and work. And that's a message that girls haven't heard enough over the last 40 years.

This line says it all: "A mother is a person who uses love and wisdom to raise children to be caring, accomplished adults." That's a goal worthy of any amazing girl.

You'll love Mike Litwin's bright, colorful illustrations that accompany the text as well. Check out his website for animations about Isabella.

Co-op Christmas Cookie Exchange

What's a cookie exchange? You bake one kind of cookie, and you go home with a beautiful assortment of cookies that will last throughout the holidays (presumably).

Are you looking for a great way to bring your babysitting co-op together for the holidays? Why not organize a co-op Christmas cookie exchange. It's simple to organize, doesn't require much work, and allows everyone to get reacquainted. Here's a simple checklist you can use to get your co-op cookie exchange in motion.

• Send invitations. Invite everyone in your co-op, and if you're in need of a few more families in your co-op, invite a few extra friends or neighbors who might want to participate. This would be a great chance for them to see your co-op in action and get to know the other parents.
• Determine how many cookies each guest will make. If you have fewer than 10 participants, ask each guest to make a dozen for each attendee. If you have more people than that, half a dozen cookies for each attendee should be plenty.
• Find out who's coming and what kinds of cookie's they're bringing. If everyone is bringing coconut macaroons, gently suggest some variety, like these white chocolate brownies.
• Decide on a simple menu of snacks and drinks. Cider or hot cocoa are great, along with some vegetables and hummus or finger sandwiches.
• Find a large table for the cookie spread. If you don't have a large dining room table, set up several card tables and cover them with a large tablecloth.
• Borrow serving trays. If you can't locate serving trays for displaying the cookies, ask guests to provide their own. In a pinch, cookie sheets draped with cloth napkins work just fine.
• Purchase extra plates, storage bags, and plastic wrap. If guests don't have a way to transport all of their loot home, you'll have supplies for them.
• Have the party! When you invite guests in, have them set out there cookies and then mix and mingle while they snack. Allow each guest to take 6 or 12 of each kind of cookie at the end of the party.
• Collect the recipes. Ask guests to email their recipe to you. You can compile them and send out a master list to everyone as a thoughtful Christmas gift.

What's your favorite holiday cookie recipe ever? We're hungry, and we want to make them.

Book Review of Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed

Do the little ones in your babysitting co-op need a kindness lesson? Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed serves up a great kindness lesson without feeling like a lesson at all. It begins with a simple picture of a simple child and says, "Ordinary Mary was so very ordinary that you'd never guess she could change the world. This ordinary kid? She did! She changed the world!"

Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed is a tribute to random acts of kindness and the chains of positive events that can start with something very small. Written by Emily Pearson and illustrated by Fumi Kosaka, this book is a nice read-aloud for preschool-aged kids. They'll enjoy the bright, primary-colored illustrations and the interesting set of characters that influence the friends and strangers around them.

Sometimes I've found that when kids aren't sharing well, or when they're overtired, they just need a reminder about the power that is in them to influence others. Frankly, we all need that reminder from time to time. Reading a story like this one will help to re-set your kids' outlooks and get them back on track.

4 Lifesaving Time Management Tips for Stay-at-Home Moms

It's all too easy for mothers of young children to feel they are at the mercy of everybody else. Have you ever felt that you can't make plans because your child may or may not be sleeping? Have you ever dragged kids along to appointments when they really shouldn't have been there? Have you ever gotten to the end of a busy, hectic day and wondered what in the world you accomplished?

Of course you have. I remember reading books about time management hoping to find some ideas of how to take control of my time, but none of the books were written for stay-at-home moms with young children. I thought 7 Habits of Highly Effective People might help, but it was clear from the start that Mr. Covey didn't have to worry about diaper changes and trips to Costco. I tried Julie Morgenstern, and while I found some useful ideas in her concept of placing tasks in designated times, again, I felt that she wasn't addressing my stage in life.

Staying at home with young children is an incredibly rewarding and challenging lifestyle, but if you don't have a plan for managing your time, your life can begin to feel like one bleary crisis after another. Guilt may override the inherent pleasures of motherhood when you feel that you cannot meet all your obligations. You can't care for your young children at the same time you get your hair cut. You can't seem to plan for the future (gifts, meal planning, date night) because you're always dealing with the present. Most of all, you can't remember the last time you spent an hour developing your own talents or pursuing a non-child-centric project of your own.

With the help of a babysitting co-op and a few extra tips, you can take control of your time, reduce your mother guilt, and feel like the captain of your own ship again, even if you have many little ones sticking their fingers under the bathroom door while you try to get a few moments of peace and quiet. Let's see how it's done.

Organize a Babysitting Co-op

Most stay-at-home moms don't have extra cash to spend on babysitting, so they take care of 100% of the childcare themselves. While this is admirable and certainly does save money, it's not your only cash-free option. By working with friends and neighbors in your own situation, you can pool your mothering resources and create time for each of you to take control of your lives and have some time for yourselves. Not only will you rediscover what it's like to go to the store by yourself, but you'll come back to your children with clarity, having had time to make plans, remember who you are, and rejuvenate. For all the information you need to organize a babysitting co-op of your own, read Babysitting Co-op 101.

Make a Weekly Schedule

Your schedule changes from week-to-week, but if you have a rough outline of what happens when, you're better able to manage your time and say "yes" or "no" to requests for your time at a moment's notice. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Monday: Laundry, Heavy Cleaning
Tuesday: Babysitting Shift, Baking and Freezer Meals
Wednesday: Shopping, Errands
Thursday: Free Day
Friday: Laundry, Moderate Cleaning
Saturday: Cleaning, Family Day, Preparation for Coming Week
Sunday: Church, Family

Let's say you're making a dentist appointment, and the receptionist asks if Tuesday the 14th will work. You know that you're responsible for a babysitting shift for your co-op on Tuesdays, so right away you know that won't work. However, you know that you can always count on free babysitting on Thursdays, so you ask if she has any appointments available on Thursdays.

Also, when you have a designated time for each of your major tasks, you can put things off a little, knowing they will get done in due time. It's Wednesday, and you notice the laundry piling up in the laundry room. Instead of feeling burdened by that laundry every time you see it, remember that laundry day is just two days away. It will get done. Today you have something else to take care of.

Decide on Your Non-Negotiables

Let's face it. Not everything on our massive to-do lists has to get done. Life will go on (maybe even with a little less stress) if some of those things are left unchecked at the end of the day.Yes, you've been wanting to make those chocolate chip pumpkin bars you found on Pinterest for a week, but they'll still be there if you don't have time to make them now. One person's non-negotiables may be very different from someone else's, and that's fine.

Your list may look different from mine, but here are some of my non-negotiables:

• Showering and dressing in something other than sweats or yoga pants
• Cleaning the kitchen after breakfast and after dinner
• Finding at least 10 minutes for personal devotional time
• Spending one-on-one time with each child at some point during the day
• Eating with the family

Outside of these non-negotiables, I can be flexible, but if I let these fundamental-to-me things slip, I don't feel right. I feel like I've lost control of my time and my life. Mountains of other things demand my time, and I will do a whole bunch of other things each day, but if some of those other things don't get done, life goes on.

Plan Just a Little Bit Ahead

When you finally have a few minutes to yourself, instead of immediately watching a re-run of Downton Abbey, take some time to plan "just a little bit ahead." Don't try to tackle a project like freezing a month's worth of crock-pot meals. Just do something to get ahead. Here are some ideas.

• Look at next week's calendar to see if there's anything unusual to prepare for (a birthday party you need to buy a present for, Mother's Day, etc.).
• Bake a batch of cookies and put them in the freezer.
• Cook dinner early!
• Go through your bill's drawer and make sure everything's on time.
• Gather up the library books and set them by the door so you don't forget them when you go out on your errands day.
• Set up a playdate.
• Make a shopping list.
• Pack your diaper bag for next time you have to go out.

You'll feel like you have more control over your life when you have little things taken care of ahead of time.

In Conclusion

You are the master of your days, even though it doesn't feel much like it when you're caring for children all day. Children can learn to abide by your schedule, and they can also learn that sometimes they, along with everyone else, has to be flexible in order for a family to thrive peaceably and happily. Organize a babysitting co-op, plan a little ahead, make a weekly schedule, and decide on your non-negotiables. Start today, and tomorrow you'll breathe a little deeper.

5-Minute Personalized Tooth Fairy Money Holder

Every now and then, our tooth fairy forgets about her duties (for a couple of days), and when this happens, she wants to do something a little extra special to make sure the toothless one feels extra-special and loved. In this case, our forgetful tooth fairy used a couple of 3x5 cards and a sewing machine to make a holder for that dollar bill that will soon be spent on candy (to corrupt the other teeth, no doubt). Here's how it works.

First, draw a charming tooth shape on an index card. If you want, you can find tooth shape clip art online, but if that seems like too much effort, just draw an upside-down mountain with two peaks.

Put one card on top of the other, and cut the tooth shape out of both cards. Next, draw a letter or number on the card. I used an "E" for Eva, but you could also do a number, as in "#1" for the very first tooth lost. Or if you're artistic, you could draw a simple design. But keep it simple. You're going to use sew over this guideline.

Use a zig-zag or straight stitch to sew right over the top of the letter or number. I changed the thread to something bright.

 Next, zig-zag around the side and bottom edges, leaving the top open for the money slot.

Slip the money in, and the tooth fairy is redeemed! How fun to find this on your pillow. Now that's a tooth fairy who cares!

Get It At Amazon!

It's here! The paperback version of Babysitting Co-op 101: A Win-Win Childcare Solution is available at Amazon. We're thrilled to bring you this valuable resource that will help you to start a babysitting co-op with people you know and trust in your own neighborhood.

Our book starts at the very beginning when you're trying to decide whether or not a babysitting co-op is right for you. Then it helps you to invite others to join you and explains how to run your first start-up meeting. You'll learn all the ins and outs of scheduling, medical release forms, numbers of children per shift, and meals. Babysitting Co-op 101 is also packed with resources like first aid tips, activities for your babysitting shifts, snack ideas, and dinner recipes.

It's not too late to sign up for our Goodreads Giveaway. Next week we'll be giving away three free copies, so head on over to Goodreads and sign up today!