This weeks’ activity is a follow on from the ‘tot tea party’. After having fun and making a mess, Rebekah and Gabrielle were required to clean up...well, as far as they could ‘clean up’ without making much more mess! My mother thinks it is a good thing to teach little ones to start helping with chores from a young age. Work shouldn’t be viewed as a tiresome, horrible thing, but as fun!
Rebekah and Gabrielle did the dishes (not!) after their tea party. Yes indeed, those dishes got washed and dried, washed and dried several times over – in fact I needn’t have washed them again that afternoon they were so clean! (I am chief-in-charge-dishwasher!!)
I half filled a tub with warm water and a squirt of dish washing liquid. I put a sponge in the water and draped a dish cloth over my arm. Off I marched to deliver the dish washing supplies to my two (very) helpful and eager little ladies!
They took turns. Gabrielle washed first and Rebekah dried, then Rebekah washed and Gabrielle dried. It worked very nicely but I must admit that poor Gabrielle often found herself being bullied into drying because Rebekah, though two years younger and what we thought and called ‘the little baby’ because she was the smallest, most serene babe of the lot, thought that SHE should wash! Often Madam thinks she is the older one and Gabrielle the younger! They are so sweet, these two!
Scrubbing the tea cup shiny clean – a job well done!
Making sure they tea set is completely dry is a very important part of doing the dishes!
Gabrielle having a turn washing the dishes and Rebekah learning to be content with the drying up!
And dear Rebekah was made to dry! It is important that both jobs should be viewed equal. I have been ‘Dish Washing Mistress’ for years and Nancy the ‘Chief dryer-upper’. We find that without the one doing her job properly (and quickly), even though it might be much less ‘important’, the other cannot complete or do her job properly. No matter what we do, let us do it for the Lord!
After much drying and washing, the dishes were eventually packed onto a tray and taken inside where a bomb had obviously been dropped during the preparations for the tea party, so Nancy and I had to do our ‘important jobs’ and put the house back together again while Mom saw to the now, very wet tots. Another thing we have learned so far is that many hands do in fact make light work, especially when we work as equals and with happy, cheerful hearts. Nobody likes an unhappy, miserable and sour-faced worker! Tots learn by watching – ‘Tot see, tot do’. Ouch! A very big and important responsibility since little sisters (and brothers) look up to the big ones and copy, I think sometimes more so than they copy Mom or Dad! So, fellow big sisters in Christ, let us watch our attitude towards work and towards each other!
YOU can take part in Time for Tots! Just go to
THIS page and have a look!
At the end of a tot school year, I will pick five of my favourite toddler activity ideas and each finalist will receive a ‘Tot Champ’ button....BUT, the ‘Top of the Tots’ will receive a ‘Tot Box’ filled with fun goodies to make and do with 1-5 year olds! Isn’t that fun?!
‘To the Tots’,
Kelly-Anne
