Sick Day Activities

Chiquita has a cold.  She has had a phlegm-y cough and stuffy head for four days now.  Four days of no play dates, no church, no walks outside, no museums or playgrounds.  Four very long days...

Here's how we've coped:

• Ridiculous amounts of tv.  I'm just going to get that out of the way.  I've got two months left in my pregnancy and I get tired.  I just can't do 18 hours of play.

• Painting - we did a super easy Veteran's Day flag craft to send to my grandpa - it only took about 2 minutes though.  Luckily, she was entertained mixing her nearly completely destroyed set of paints (we got them probably 6 months ago, I guess I should be glad they lasted this long) and covering a paper plate (repeatedly) for about a half hour.

• Reading books 

• Dominoes - Chiquita learned the basic matching like sides together part in a restaurant in France, but I taught her how to build chains to knock down and we have twice as much fun!

• Our new Name Letter Hunt (inspired by the Pumpkin Number Hunt, which Chiquita refused to let me put away).  As I write this there is still an I hiding somewhere in the house!

• "Playing" the piano.  We have some work to do here.  Chiquita loves to play on the piano, and even tells me what the songs are about.  However, she gets upset if I try to practice real songs.  *Sigh*  It's hard to get any calming from practicing hymns with your 3 year old throwing a fit next to you.   

• Scented Sensory Rice - I have done this in the past, but came upon it again from Growing a Jeweled Rose as a great sick day activities while trolling pinterest.  I used Thieves essential oil from Young Living - it has cloves, lemon, eucalyptus, cinnamon and rosemary and colored my rice pink, since that's Chiquita's current favorite.  

We found some toys to play in the rice, and I suggested she could "plant" pom poms like flowers.  Then she just wanted to put all her toys in the tub....

*Bonus* Clean-up probably built her fine motor skills as much as play (pulling out all the tiny pom poms) and took at least as long.  We did this multiple times over our sick days.

• New coloring books.  Luckily Chiquita had begs for a big pack of miniature coloring books (with crayons, like party favors) last month and I had picked up a few coloring books last time I was in the dollar store without Chiquita.  She was very happy to open the mini books (they didn't last long) and colored in her new big coloring book for almost 10 minutes at a time various times through the last few days.  Great for non-tv distraction during food prep. 

• Painter's tape maze from Our Scribbled Walls - Why has it taken me so long to do this?  As always I think I underestimated Chiquita, thinking she was too young for mazes.  I made a maze with just one entrance and put one of her toys at the center of the maze for her to "rescue" (a favorite theme).  

Tip - for me it was easier to "draw" this maze but starting with a big outside square with an opening and a small 3 sided square in the center for the end.  Then I worked from the entrance to the middle, laying several "false" trails (as I thought).  The whole time I worked Chiquita asked "What's a maze?"  "What are you doing?"  Great suspense!

Chiquita loved it!  She brought out each one of her toys in turn to be rescued from the maze sometimes putting them at different "endings" (so much for my "false" trails).  This was great because it meant she actually had to learn different paths and couldn't finish the maze quite so fast.  She did try to jump the borders a few times but generally she followed the "rules" of the maze very well.