How Do You Get Your Kids to Clean?

How do you get your kids to help clean up after themselves?  In yaya-friendly Philippines, you don't.  Admittedly I'm still not that hung up over it, either.

After reading up on Montessori principles of independence and mastery, I know I need to rethink this and encourage Ladybug Girl to take care of herself and her surroundings.  In fact, Montessori curriculum starts with a strong foundation on "practical life" activities like pouring, dressing up self, and cleaning one's environment.

Ladybug Girl and her practical life work from her school scrapbook : cleaning a table and pouring

Independence is empowering in children who often feel powerless.  It naturally progresses to caring for their environment and for others.

Nyark.  I am so not doing any of this on purpose.

In toddler school, I love how her teachers in Poveda used a song as a signal for pack away time.  I sang that song at home, but was never consistent about it.  I never left instructions to teach her to pack away either, having seen how it can turn into a fearful or negative situation.

Her yaya was the one who potty trained her - I didn't do a thing!

I was shocked during floor play one day :  she drew with a marker, tossed it carelessly on the floor after, and then reached for a new color.  After I told her to pick it up, she dumped all the markers on floor, looking curious about my reaction the whole time.  She was three, and testing her limits.

It was time to start being more consistent at home.

Half of what makes Montessori work is a "prepared environment" that makes everything orderly, accessible and inviting for children.   I try to adapt that in little ways at home.  Of course the tools that work for me may not have benefits for others, but they sure work for my little one:

These three stools are always in use and moving around the house.

In use in the kitchen and bathroom 

A low shelf in the kitchen where she can get her own water and a spoonful of Nutella

The kid-height outdoor gardening and messy play area

I am so thankful for her Montessori school for doing most of the motivating on independence.  In the middle of the school year, her favorite phrase became "I did it all by myself!"

Here she started to clean her playroom table with her lampin and water spray bottle (we keep that in her room for her aqua beads crafts).  She even cleaned the floor.

Here's something else I copied from Ladybug Girl's classroom:

A cleaning supplies station inside her playroom.

Such a simpler solution in contrast to this horribly expensive toy that didn't even clean:

Look at that sorry excuse for a mop.  This ended up in a garage sale.

I found these great tools at Muji that are perfect for kids:

And this costs less than the toy, too.   Now that's a mop that can clean.

And finally the crown jewel of independence tools:

A teeny toilet!

It was a surprise from Awesome Guy one day.  It seems like a luxury, but it has been a major life saver since Ladybug Girl still can't manage to do the toilet by herself.   We saw one of these things in a Singapore mall and fell in love!  This is also one step ever closer to sleeping independently because she still goes to pee at night.

She uses the towel hung low to wipe and then flushes by herself.  Her little fingers still can't work that bidet.
Surprisingly, this only costs less than 2,000 pesos.

Seeing this little person on her toilet really makes me grin.  Before this, Ladybug Girl would wait until the last five seconds to pee - sometimes I would just be lifting her up to the bowl one second too late.  But now she just disappears from floor time and comes back on her own.  (Now this is something I wish her Montessori school had copied from other modern schools today.)     

A few weeks ago, her cousin came and he was just starting potty training -- he sat down on his own with no fuss, too.   This would have been great for potty training!  Such a relief not to have the run to the bathroom with her anymore.

You think maybe this is what independence will look like a couple of years from now?

As early as now Awesome Guy and I bet on what age our Ladybug Girl will stop needing a yaya.  My goal ended up four years later than his.

Whoops.  Time to get a move on.

Dinosaur Love : Play Round-up

Her Ninsie Tracy recently gave Ladybug Girl the most adorable dinosaur from a handmade-art fair in Singapore.  "Stompy" is her new favorite playmate and bedmate.

Isn't it cute?

Ladybug Girl has loved dinosaurs (and the color purple) since she was three years old.  So in honor of her new pal, Stompy : I've rounded up our play time that followed this interest.

First, we started with books:

This book started it all.  It's great because it's not a fake-cartoony book but it doesn't kill you with detail.  

Then we made it real:

I tucked these photos in the book, and she loves looking at them and identifying the dinosaur over and over again.   She gets a kick out of seeing mommy and daddy with real fossils.
(But she also keeps asking where she was.)

We've gone to the Mind Museum six times since it opened because of this guy here.  Never gets old.

We were lucky to catch this show during a Singapore visit.

And now we play!  Of course we had to make fossils of our own...

... and so we made some last Halloween.
These were plastic bugs in "amber" : clear gelatin with some yellow food color added.

She was very bothered though, because she didn't want the ladybug to be trapped.

We have a bag of expired coffee from two Christmases ago (yes, believe it), so I googled one day and found a super-easy recipe for making fossil impressions.  We've now done this a couple of times.

Coffee + Flour + Salt + Water

Press or roll out flat.

Punch out some circles

Make impressions.  You can poke a hole with a straw before they dry to turn them into ornaments.

Let them dry 1.5 days.    

I loved this one.  (This was a happy meal toy)

The day after we got Stompy, she brought out her dinosaur figures and drew a habitat for them.  

She didn't want Stompy to be lonely.

I love it when Awesome Guy joins in.

But his "habitat" was a spaceship:

And his dinosaurs were the Transformers Dino-bots: "Sludge.  Snarl.  Slag.  Swoop. Grimlock."

(I am very glad I have a daughter I can relate to.  Big applause for moms with sons!)

Here's our prehistoric habitat.  Ladybug Girl drew the asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs.  Can you spot it?

We also loved singing along to "Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs".

Then we sewed with a real needle and thread for the first time,

because of a particularly vigorous stomping session while racing cars and dinosaurs.

  

Stompy is well-loved.  Thanks Ninsie Tracy!

I must admit I've fallen in love with dinosaurs myself now.  How have you followed your child's interests?  My sister is learning the abacus for my math-genius nephew.  

Math!

Now that's love.

After-Work: When All Energy Fails

When the office has gotten more than its fair share

And the husband has conked out asleep

Drag some props to the floor

And call bedtime a "sleepover"

And then call it a day.

Goodnight, world.

Defining a New Sleep Space

We have been co-sleeping with Ladybug Girl since her birth.  From reading all my favorite international blogs, this is almost a taboo.  From asking around the office though, this is completely normal and energy-efficient (i.e: tipid sa aircon).

She did have her own room, but it was used mostly as her playroom.  

We had a single bed beside the master bed (not that she slept on it most nights).
Her convertible crib/toddler bed was moved to her playroom for naps.

Early this year, I promised Awesome Guy that it was time to start the transition to independent sleeping.  Poor guy, he was the one who was always displaced (from asking around, this is again another norm).  

So we packed away the crib, and brought this in her playroom:

An extra twin mattress that had been waiting eagerly for this day

This is all the rage in Montessori-style rooms, but frankly it just looked wrong to me:

Right?
This is just Ladybug Girl napping.  At night she still slept with us.  Yes, I move slow.

So in the interim I brought in the sofa bed from the spare room.  That stayed around for a few weeks.

Her upgraded nap space.  Yes, still nap.
I did say it would be a transition, right?

By that time I had gotten a bad case of bronchitis and then pneumonia, so the little girl and husband had to sleep in the playroom for two weeks.  That actually jump started the real move!  I guess I was the one who was unwilling to let go of sleeping beside my soft, fragrant little bed partner.  

Sniff.

And so when I got well, I finally moved the single bed out of the master bedroom and into Ladybug Girl's big girl room-slash-playroom.

Finally her own real bed!
With the higher bed, her bedside lamp is now the perfect height for her to reach herself.

If you're noticing that there is a mattress on the floor, you are very observant and discerning that she is still not sleeping by herself at night.  Now this is all her, folks.  She panics when waking up alone, so we are now taking turns sleeping with her at night to ease her into independence.

Here is where I'll possibly digress a bit to explain how parenting style affects all this.  In the Philippines, a sleeping arrangement with kids (and yayas) is a very personal choice.  Mine was to be on-duty at night so that I would be sure yaya would be alert and rested while I was at work during the day.  There are pros and cons to this, and good reasons either way.

On-topic:  now that she uses the same space for serious sleep and play, I worried that she may not get a restful night sleep with all the stimulation so accessible around her.

So now I want to carve out a more defined sleep space within her play room and make the bed look like a room within a room.

And also because when I wake up in my floor mattress, this very unfinished view bothers me:

You can even see the 3M stick-ons from the previous artwork expecting some action.

While cleaning out more junk some weekends ago, my meantime solution found me:

Leftover reposition-able wall stickers from Wee Gallery, now four years old.

One hour during a weeknight later:

And this is now my view when I wake up:

I'd love to put some sheer white curtains on either side of the bed.
I actually have the materials ready and will post that update when they're up.

Seriously, is there anything cuter than a sleeping baby-child?

That's not an easy view to give up at all.