Consequences Play

Katie is continuously working on how to deal with the reality that there are consequences to decision... and not particularly nice consequences to bad decisions. Most recently her thoughts and play with regard to this has focused in on food. It started when we read The Hungry Caterpillar. On Saturday, the caterpillar eats a bunch of junk food and then he feels sick. The next day he eats one nice, green leaf, and he feels much better. This really tickled Katie. She wanted to read that part over and over. Then we got her some new play dough, and the first thing she made was a caterpillar with food for it. I said, "Let's make a green leaf!" And she said, "No, let's make a piece of cherry pie!" (That's one of the junk food pieces the caterpillar eats in the book). She made a bunch of junk food for the caterpillar and then he ate it all up, and then he felt so sick!!! THEN he ate a nice, green leaf and felt much better. She is playing this over and over again. I think she is actually a little confused, because she doesn't believe the caterpillar can make a cocoon until it eats all the junk and gets sick, like in the book... I attempted to tell her otherwise, but she is really stuck on this. Maybe I can find another book on caterpillars to show her it doesn't really work that way??? In any case, what she is really working on is the fact that the caterpillar WANTS to eat all this junk food, but the end result is getting sick. She talks about it at meal times. This morning the caterpillar made the decision NOT to eat the cookies before lunch time, just like his mommy told him. :-)

Easter Play

My daughter saw her Halloween angel costume yesterday, and asked if we could play angel. She wanted to act out the story of Mary being told that Jesus was going to be born. Since it is almost Easter, I asked if she wanted to learn a new angel story, and she did. And so we acted out the story of laying Jesus in the tomb, rolling the big stone in front of it, and the women going away sad to prepare spices to anoint the dead body... Then early in the morning on the first day of the week, they go to the tomb, and the body isn't there. Instead - an angel! They are terrified. And the angel says, "Don't be afraid! Jesus is alive! Go and tell the disciples and Peter to go to Galilee, and he will meet them there." But they go away and tell no one, because they are afraid. (We do it up - "Did we just see an angel? That is so strange! I've never seen an angel! What is going on? Jesus is alive? Dead people don't rise from the dead...") Then we go to the part where they tell Peter and John, and Peter and John run to the tomb, and there is no body. We take turns being either the angel in the angel costume or all the other characters.

Fairy Tale Imagination

Katie (3) is really into imagination games, and this is one we have started playing. We pick a fairy tale, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and we sort of act it out. Katie set out 3 bowls from her kitchen set, and she was Goldilocks. The first one was toooooo hot, mama bear's was toooooo cold, and baby bear's was juuuuust right. Then she does the chairs in the living room and then pretend beds on the floor of the living room. Then I (the 3 bears) come home and go to the kitchen, "Someone's been eating my bowl!" And so on. We end with a climactic encounter between me (the 3 bears) and her (Goldilocks), and she dashes away, never to return to the bear's house... until 10 seconds later when she declares "Again! Again!"

The Why Game

So Katie is 3, and everything is why, why, why. So the other night we turned the game around. My husband and I came up with questions to ask her - "Why do roller skates have wheels?" and such. It was interesting to hear her answers, and it showed us the kinds of answers she is looking for.... It got her thinking, and she loved playing the game this way!