change of pace

Jonathan's favorite thing right now is garbage trucks.  And when a two and a half year old has a favorite thing, it means that it will permeate everything they do.  For example, during breakfast he will start insisting that his spoon is a trash can as he is dumping his oatmeal into his mouth (the trash truck).  We watch videos on youtube of real trash trucks and of other children playing with toy trash trucks (I'm actually becoming quite fond of the little song, but Daddy finds it less fascinating).

He has commandeered three of my plastic flower pots and deemed them trash cans.  He fills them with toys and then dumps them into a large cardboard box- the trash truck- again, and again, and again.  This game has completely engaged him for 90% of his waking hours now going on three weeks.  And while it has endless fascination to him, playing it in 4 hour stretches day after day after day is making Mommy and Daddy go a little bit crazy.

So yesterday I decided that during nap-time I would take action.  Stealing an idea from one of my favorite mommy blogs, I hid the flowerpots and the box and instead set out a big wad of play-dough and little bowls filled with fall leaves, dry pasta, glass pebbles, and pieces of shells we collected at the beach.

The idea was to use these prompts to create some mixed-media sculpture.  And the goal was to have some time dedicated to playing together with him in a creative way that we both enjoyed.

So when I got him up from his nap, I told him I had a surprise downstairs to play with.  He loves surprises and was so full of anticipation that I could barely change his diaper.  And when he saw the set-up he was hooked. He spent a long time simply putting his fingers into each bowl, picking up handfuls of each and then putting them back in the bowl.  He got very upset when I tried to take anything out of the bowls or to play with the play-dough.

I tried to model some sculptures, but this usually ended in him saying "No Mommy, that is not how you play with this" and then him dis-assembling my art.

Eventually he dumped all of the bowls out onto the table and then spent time sorting all of the items back into their proper bowls.

  

He never did get into the idea of sculpting with the play-dough or sticking stuff into it; but he did a lot of sorting.  Eventually he decided that the bowls were trash trucks, needing to be filled.  But overall it was a success.  We had a glorious hour of non-trash-truck play and a little exploration of something novel.  Today we are back to trash trucks.