littlehcolor-smallI’m not a parenting expert nor am I a child psychologist. But I am a creative person and I bring that to the table as I’m raising my daughter. I thought I’d share a few of the things that work for us and maybe you’ll have fun being creative with your kids too. Oh, and her daddy also does these kinds of things and it’s so interesting to see the different way she plays with each of us!

Little H is not quite two yet. Her language skills are still developing but she understands pretty much 100% of what I’m saying. I ask her A LOT of questions in an attempt to get her to notice everyday things.

“Is this banana purple?” I ask.

“No!” she says with a huge smile, she knows I’m being silly.

“Did you see a hippo at the pet store today?”

“No! Bun Buns!”

I’m hoping that in doing this, I’ll get her to think about funny things and things that are outside of the norm and maybe when she’s a bit older she might think about what would happen if we really did see a hippo at the pet store.

Another thing we do is color. We color pretty much everyday – she loves it. While we’re coloring we talk about the pictures. We talk about what’s happening on the pages and we talk about what might happen after that. I guess it’s a sort of simple story development we work on together and while she can’t really say “the dog is going to chase the ball…” she does point, gesture, laugh and giggle at the thought of some of these crazy ideas showing up in her coloring books.

Sometimes we color on blank paper. I ask her what she wants to see and she pretty much always says “Elmo.” So I draw Elmo. Then our dog and our cat and her daddy. I’ll ask her if there should be a sun or a moon in the sky and she will answer. I make it appear. The idea behind this is that I’d like her to see a blank page and imagine what it could become. I’m hoping that once she’s out of the Elmo stage she’ll really put her visual mind and her thought processes together and feel comfortable in bringing her visions to fruition on the page. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

As these games develop over time, I’ll come blog about them. It will be a great way to see how creative things unfold in the mind of a toddler. I hope you do these things with your kiddos and if you do, tell me about it in comments. I’m curious to see how we are similar and where we are different. You might give me some new games to play with little H, that would be fantastic :)

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