It’s Spring Cleaning weekend. Time to donate the culled clothes and books and recycle unread magazines and newspapers. After a morning trip for bagels and a playground stop my 5yo and 6yo (boys) were essentially left to their imaginations while I filled up trashbags and donation boxes.
My sons are 18 months apart. They are natural playmates (though fighting came more naturally at first!) and when they were toddlers I decided to invest in their relationship and be scree-free with them even at the expense of a) peace of mind and the occasional break and b) a leg up on math/spelling/reading with academic apps that all my parent friends swapped tips about. VERY tempted MANY times to get an ipad but I kept thinking at some point - it’ll click.
Back to spring cleaning morning. They have spent the past hour fantasy playing some elaborate outer space adventure in their darkened bedroom complete with flashlights under sheets. The boys also built a ‘magic extractor’ (binoculars, egg timer, bugee cords) to get the magic out of ‘Half Magic’ by Edward Eager (recommended by @NJTheatreMOM and @Marilyn and @frazzled1 on a Children’s Lit Gems thread – thank you they LOVE THE BOOK!!).
Listening to snips of their play… they discovered that singing in the bathroom was much better then their bedroom and went from repeating some made-up verse 20 times at the top of their lungs to a spontaneous duet of 'Land of the Silver Birch" which they are studying in voice lessons… feels like the beginnings of payback for years when mothering them screen-free seemed like such a never-ending slog.
They are not at the top of their peer group in math and reading (they are mid-pack in hyper-competitive NYC) but they have such juicy imaginations and really enjoy PLAY.
OK back to spring cleaning. Just sharing a moment.