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As a busy grandkid babysitter, I'm always looking for easy crafts and activities for all of us boomers and seniors grandparents to share with our grandkids. Sometimes, though, things will conspire together to thwart my grand ole plans. Like yesterday. I had prepared a fun scavenger hunt for the grandchildren (more on that to come 🙂 I'm still tweaking it). I had just finished setting it all up, with clues for inside and out, when my oldest grandson cheerfully announced, "It's raining really hard!"
Ooops! There went that plan, along with ball tag, swinging, and kickball. We had already made our Mother's Day bookmarks, so that was out. Time for educational TV shows, right? Not so much. Their TV wasn't working for us in the living room. I was able to turn Netflix on in the kitchen and they gathered around the computer to watch The Electric Company. But it was a bit crowded and they only lasted for one show. NOW WHAT!
We trooped back into the living room for a fun game of Simon Says to get some of our wiggles out. Then I spotted a big bucket full of their old LEGOs. Ah ha! Gathering the boys, I said, "Let's pour out the LEGOs and play "Simon Says" with LEGOs. I have to admit, they weren't super enthused. First though, they got to teach me a sweet and simple trick their mom had come up with. We grabbed a blanket and spread it on the floor. THEN we dumped the LEGOs onto the blanket. Very easy AND it made for such easy clean up when we were down. We just gathered up the four corners and dumped it right back into the box. So simple, and yet I had never thought of it.
After we dumped the LEGOs, I made a "man." He wasn't all that super duper. BUT he was enough to get the boys' enthusiasm level bumped up a bit. Before you know it, they had started putting together their own cool little creations that are decorating this post. We ended up having a delightful afternoon together in spite of all our natural and technical glitches. Simple and sweet definitely won the day for this Sandwich Generation granny nanny. What are some simple babysitting tricks you've discovered while babysitting your grandchildren? We'd love to hear. And…
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