Make a Happy Corner

For yourself, that is.

Our master bedroom has an ugly corner - can you spot it?

Electric fans are downright ugly but necessary!

This view when I wake up everyday needs help.

Everything you see here is functional but lacks happiness

Hanging plants?  Good start.

I taped the red center of the fan to disguise the eyesore too 

Get rid of the old waste basket?

Yes, please.

I love you online shopping.

I love you spray paint.  

Our house help's assignment while I was at the office

A new happy corner!

Functional but pretty

It's not instagram-worthy but DIY-ing is more fun.

Playbox Subscriptions: Worth It?

It's fortunate that I have a day job, which allows my night-blogging to be without the pressure to earn.  Granted that I work in marketing and used to do the blog-sponsporing, nowadays as a reader I tune out from too many blogs for this reason.  (The irony of this has not escaped me)

For this reason I have decided that there aren't enough objective reviews out there, and being a single-job working mom gives me the luxury to do those.  The luxury of time is another story.  If I have any appetite to review something, it will be potential solutions for a busy working mom.   

In this case it's something very tempting : monthly play box subscriptions.  Are they worth it?

If you live in the Philippines there are two options: Kahone and Sandbox.  Wonderful idea, if you ask me.  But pricey!  Can't blame them, they're a business that needs to make maybe, 50% profit margin.  There are discounted subscription options but they require commitment.  Before you do, perhaps consider these three reasons:

1.  Can you DIY it?

In play box subscriptions, most of the activities are DIY-able.  I'm no creative genius, but I can certainly do an easy craft with my toddler/preschooler.  And you can do them at home with better quality materials.  Good markers and glue.  A glass jar instead of a plastic one.  You don't need more cheap stuff.  Or all that unnecessary plastic packaging used for the stuff inside. 

All you need to do is to invest in accessible craft materials around the house.  They'll pretty much last forever - longer than you think.  Buy the best you can afford and empower the kids to use them freely.

Make an accessible crafts shelf in the playroom with drawers full of stuff for creating

2.  Is it a special occasion or theme?

Kahone does a good job of special topics that would normally take a lot of time to research for DIY.  For Buwan ng Wika, I ordered a Filipino-themed box since I desperately want Ladybug to love her country and language.  It was also nearing her birthday so the package doubled as a special surprise.  

I just left it on her top shelf to discover after her bath.
She found it immediately and yelled "where did this box come from!?" 

I love the idea of gifting a play box and having kids get mail.  She loved seeing her name on the box.

3.  Will you make your child do all the activities?

Parenting style comes a lot into this.  Each play box will come with 4 activities or so, and the chances of consistent high interest in every activity will be slim.  Know that every box contains stimulus for play, but is highly parent-led rather than child-led.  If your child won't play, how will you react as a playmate?  As a parent?

My parenting style is child-led, since I've learned never to let the teacher role take over during playtime.  So that meant we only did half of the box and saved the rest for "later" (never).

The "sipa" activity was her favourite.  It was a great fine motor activity for her six-year old fingers, and a fun gross motor activity with the finished product.  We played with this for a week and it's still out in her shelf.

Some boxes seem to be very prepartion-intensive also.  We had to cut out the dresses to fit the paper dolls.

She did one at least, but lost interest in playing or talking about the traditional dress.
Sandbox seems to have less adult prep work needed.

The rest were too prep-intensive and even I didn't want to prepare them ahead.

***

The bottom-line when to pay for a play box:

... when kids will learn lessons more than just making "crafts" you can DIY

... when it's a very cool gift with no further expectations but to enjoy the moment

Personally here are the play boxes that I absolutely love investing in:

It's not a box, it's the panda's home in the River Safari zoo

It's not a box, it's the Antarctica continent

It's not a box, it's a treasure hunt chest

It's not a box, it's a "crystal palace"

It's not a box, it's some goods for our pretend toystore: "Fantastic Costumes for Cinderella"

It's not a box, it's an aquarium

Worth every peso, worth every minute.
***
Drop in a comment to share your own views!  

Simple Treasure Hunt

I love simple activities that can squeeze into that precious time before bedtime routines begin.  It lets me shake off office-mode and more importantly, get me into my child's world and reconnect.

But it has to be really simple - frankly, we'd never play on weekdays otherwise.  Like this:

All you need is a box of "treasure" (or whatever) and a map.
We drew this map together - which back then at three years old meant I drew while she guided me and chattered about it.  I used this chance to talk about spatial dimensions while I drew: round table, rectangle bed, curvy lines, and all.

A map of her room

It's worth mentioning that spatial skills training in this way starts around that age.   I may have started her on difficult puzzles too early because she shied away from them when she couldn't figure them out.  It was only later that I found out that puzzles should also progress from straight-sided ones, to the common jigsaw ones, to the cube ones.  So for a while, doing activities like this treasure hunt was the only thing that clicked for her.  
Spatial skills are also one of the intelligences that are neglected in traditional school.  I should know - those were my lowest test scores when I took aptitude tests in high school.  If like me, your curiosity makes you want to read more about spatial intelligence and activities, this article was helpful.

I asked her to go outside the room while I hid the treasure and marked the spot where I hid it

 You can make this as hard or as easy as you like to adjust to your child.

"Can you find where the treasure is?"

"Here!"

I let her lead, too.  She hid the treasure, marked the spot and called me back into the room to hunt:

X marks her spot.  In her trademark purple.

And that was our floor-time for the day.  

You can read more about floor-time as a "hands-on working mom hack" in the article I wrote for The Learning Basket.   And then head on back here to check out the growing gallery of after-work play ideas in the archives:

Click HERE or head to the galleries buttons on the upper right side of the blog.

My list is short so I'd love to learn with you.  How do you squeeze in play with your kids?

A Working Mom's Choice

Twice a day, my decision to be a working mom is put to the test.  
The first is when I leave home in the morning.  The energy needed to overcome the inertia of being mommy-mode at home takes lots and lots and lots of coffee.  
The second is ironic because it's when I leave the office.  Because of traffic.  Manila traffic mocks me everyday:  you asked for this.  this is living the dream, baby.     So why do I do it?  
Mariel and Sanne of The Learning Basket asked me to write about why I made the choice to be a working mom.  These two moms are amazing homeschoolers, but we met purely through our online discovery of surprisingly common passions.  I've always been vocal that homeschoolers are my inspiration and I use many of their principles in my life as a working mom.
My answer wrote itself, and turned out to be intensely personal and related to the picture above.  Haha!  If you read it, I hope sharing its message brings you purpose and peace whatever life path you're on.  Thank you for being here, learning along with me!
Click here to go to the post on The Learning Basket.