Expecting a few extra moments with Gracia, this being a Sunday, I found myself searching through my list of Pinterest and Instagram saves for toddler activities I could prepare for at 6.30am in the morning.
In the end, how interesting it was that none of my fretful planning was needed. Before breakfast, we ended up on the sofa. Gracia asked for Eric Carle's A Foolish Tortoise so that's what we read, complete with dramatisation by whichever soft toy friends happened to be around! Then it was A Tiny Seed, with impromptu 'props' - nine shiny saga seeds which would all meet with incidents along the way preventing them from eventually taking root and germinating, and of course, one tiny green bean seed. Gracia got too excited about the seeds, and eventually a sharp admonishment about putting the seeds into her or my mouth sent her bursting into tears. End of read aloud. After breakfast, we practiced stamping using a single monarch butterfly stamp.
All the way home from church and right until we entered the door, we sang It's a Great Thing to Praise the Lord because we sang it in Sunday School, and made it extra fun and theological by adding in our own variations in the chorus. Our favourite was this Nap, nap, nap, nap in the light... Then before afternoon nap, Gracia asked for Loved - which was an unusual but oddly coincidental choice, as we had just read the chapter on the Lord's Prayer that morning from The Jesus Storybook Bible. It was then that I realised that the words used by Sally Lloyd Jones in Loved were the exact words used there!
After her afternoon nap, I had planned that we could paint the giant tree from A Tiny Seed, but instead, as Tim was setting up the air purifier, that became Gracia's post-nap activity - watching the set-up. She was fascinated by how the air blew our faces and hair when we went closet, so on the spur of the moment again, I went and got multi-coloured ribbons and taped them to the vents so we could watch them fly. I saw a feather lying around so brought that out too. How much fun she had with the feather! She loved watching it sometimes float up high after being caught on the wind, and of course trying to let it land on her hand. So I went to bring out more feathers. And somehow, the next feather became a lizard in her imagination and so we played catching lizards with more multi-coloured feathers. We even got a makeshift "dustbin" in which to throw the caught lizards... It was more fun than anything I could have planned.
Don't I have much to learn about taking my sabbath rest?
No comments:
Post a Comment