Sharp Reflections: Sick Days with Little Ones: The Pintrest Playroom Project

The stomach "flu" just hit my family. I knew the kids and I were going to be completely house ridden for a good week.I didn't want the kids and I to sit on the couch all week and waste away our time together watching Christmas specials. Not that there is anything wrong with Christmas specials. I LOVE them and for the first few sick days, we did LOTS of Christmas Stuff. BUT I wanted to stay away from the boob tube as much as possible. So, I took to my Pintrest board and decided the kids and I would try and pull off as many Pintrest projects as possible while we were home sick. This meant we could only use things we had on-hand at home. There was no running out to the store for us!

On Tuesday, at 8:23am, we started with this...

I got the idea from No One Has More Fun Then The Adam's. This was great because we have, like, 5 strainers in this house and I was happy to repurpose one for the kids to play with.

By 9:03am we'd created this ...

I pinned this idea from toddlerapproved.com. Toddler Approved drew theirs on butcher paper. I happen to have these super sturdy white boards sitting in our playroom for months. I can't even remember where they came from but I thought they were perfect for this game. I duct taped the boards together and drew on some shapes. The kids helped too. The kids come up with their own "games" for this but I would call out the shape or color, or both, then the kids would jump to it.

TIP: When doing projects like this, go ahead and let your kids do it the way they want to do it. It doesn't have to be "perfect". Ethan drew a really fantastic circle, all on his own, then he scribbled all over it with marker. I fixed it up later by coloring it in with blue.

Zoey drew some shapes on with green crayon too. Then she smeared green finger paint all over. I cleaned it up when she lost interest. It looked sloppy and messy but that's fine!

Another Idea I pinned came from Babycenter.com. HOPSCOTCH! Zoey loves playing hopscotch outside in the summer. So we flipped our shape and color game board over and drew our own. I let Zo pick a hopscotch design she liked after looking at a bunch in a Google image search. Zoey drew in some numbers and picked the colors she wanted for the squares. OH! But before that, E and Liv had a blast with the finger paint and gave our board a little extra something-something. Zoey came up with a fun way to play using her Fishing Busy Bag which was given to us at our MOMS Club busy bag exchange.

MOVING ON!

www.projectgreenify.com was where I pinned the idea for this masterpiece...

My totally awesome husband finished building this house around 12:30pm. Then I built the shelf (the shelf was Zoey's Idea).

AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER...

The kids and I were filling balloons with rice, oatmeal, water, beans, play-doh... you name it. Tot Treasures gave me the pin for this Gem..

TIP: See the corn all over the counter? If you have a dustbuster... use it with a smile when the kids spill while trying to fill the balloons or when your eldest throws the rice baloon across the kitchen and it explodes all over the place. I blame myself for using old cheap balloons left over from ZoZo's birthday party.

Daddy was not home while we filled our balloons. So when he got home Zoey and E taught him how we did it.

STEP 1
Fill a plastic squeeze bottle with your choice of stuffing. My man picked coffee beans.

STEP 2
Blow up the balloon and pinch the end shut.

STEP 3

Slip the end of the balloon over the squeeze bottle (with cap off), turn it upside down and shake the stuffing in. Then just pop the balloon off and tie it.

HOLY COW You guys! I am tired just thinking back to all this. (It being 11pm right now has nothing to do with me being tired right?)