Mix-it-up Monday: Clean up Cards

I have been reminded again this week of how incredibly uncooperative kids can be sometimes. Remember how I talked about putting together a poster this week as our activity we were going to try? Um...yeah. This is how far we got:

Please note that the drawings haven't been glued to the posters yet. *sigh*

So while we (or at least I) tried really hard to get the posters finished, it just didn't happen last week. We're going to keep working at it this week though. Hopefully we'll have finished products to show in a day or two. A couple of pointers if you decide to do something like this:

• Give them something specific to draw. When we first started out, I told them to draw pictures of some of their favorite things. I got whole sheets of paper back with tiny little drawings on them. In the end I gave them half sheets of paper and told them to fill it up with a specific favorite thing (favorite color, food, animal, toy, etc.). It worked a LOT better.
  
• For smaller kids with short attention spans, do one drawing and then come back to do another one later. I just could not keep Alyssa focused on drawing for any length of time (even though she will sit and do that by herself ALL DAY long). Plus, I wanted it to be fun so I wasn't going to tie her to her chair and force her to sit there until they were all finished (even if I wanted to at times...)
  
• Keep the magazine pictures to a minimum if you choose to use them. I really wanted the girls to be able to draw out their own items rather than just look them up in the books. For some things, we will come back to the magazines, but I feel like they are getting more out of the activity if they actually get to draw the items themselves. Plus, it's difficult to find all the right items in the magazines, depending on your supply.

It really has been a fun activity though. It's a good way to get to know your kids' likes and dislikes, even if you think you already know. I was surprised with a few of the things they picked, and a few of the things they didn't pick.

Although we didn't finish...at least we didn't completely tank. With Saturday's trip to the Zoo, we still managed to fit in an activity that we haven't done for a while.

This week's activity: Making the clean up cards described on my friend SuburbiaMom's blog, HERE (scroll down to: #2 Toy Card Game). I'm looking for anything to get the kids excited about cleaning up. Hopefully this will do it!

Did you try something new this week? If you did, let us know what it was and how it turned out!