Obstacle Courses

It's the "Mom, I'm Bored" summer edition of Works For Me Wednesday over at We are That Family.

"Obstacle courses" are one of my kids' favorite activities. I sit outside and give them several instructions in a row, actions they must complete before returning to me. For example, "Run down the driveway, circle the tree, jump on your bike and ride to the car, hop off, find two pinecones and bring them to me, then think of a song to sing with the word "dog" in it and sing it."

Or "Walk backwards slowly to the tree. Then run around the circle part of the drive. Find three objects in the yard that do not belong (trash, misplaced toy, etc.). Put them where they belong. Come back and give me five." (Making "cleaning up the yard" a game always works for me. I just get to sit back and watch!)

It does require Mom to be present, but it's great to watch their laughter - and it releases a lot of pent-up energy. I'd say it also helps them learn to remember several directions at once. They have so much fun doing this, they want to do it over and over again. They never even really care who "wins." They love it.

Craft Stick Rewards and Chocolate

(For more parenting tips, check out the links at We are That Family.

So...in the continued effort to improve efficiency in our home, we are trying a new "positive reinforcement" idea. I put a "stick" in the kid's "cup" every time I catch him or her engaging in desirable behavior - sharing, asking nicely, not fighting, etc. Each stick stands for 10 minutes of t.v. or fun computer time (not their learning games).

It is really helping me make the decision for the "I wanna watch tv." request. We just look at their cups to see if they've earned enough time. We've only been doing this for about five days, but it is working so far. Sissy doesn't really understand that the sticks stand for something else. She's just excited about having a stick. ("I wana stick.") They can lose a craft stick for bad behavior, too. Our former system of losing privileges wasn't working with Dash anymore. (He was losing all of his privileges for the day too often.) We just needed to take a step back and try something new.

Just for fun, yesterday they went outside and painted the craft sticks. Our completed sticks...I'm going to let them decorate their cups today with stickers, etc., too.

In other news...I think I have mentioned before that my kids will eat practically anything if it is in frozen form. Here is one of our latest homemade "ice cream" treats. I started out making chocolate chia shakes that were inspired by ideas from Green and Crunchy and Kristen's Raw. The ingredients were raw soaked cashews, soaked dates, lucuma powder, raw cacao powder, soaked chia seeds, hemp seeds, etc.

I actually really enjoy drinking it, and Tornado drank it well, too. Dash was not really crazy about it, and neither was Sissy. It's funny; they tried it, didn't like it, but it was so tempting seeing Tornado and me drinking something thick and chocolaty from a straw - they asked for their cups back. They just barely sipped it, though, so I decided to make ice cream (by just freezing it in a bowl) out of their leftovers. I have made different versions with slightly different ingredients (adding banana, avocado, maybe a little agave nectar), but they love it just the same. They don't call it "the ice cream that's only sort of like ice cream only not as good." It's just ice cream to them, and they devour it.
In "slightly" less healthy (but "pretty" healthy) news...we've also been enjoying chocolate covered nuts these days. I just melt dark chocolate or vegan chocolate chips in the microwave, add a little milk, stir, dump in a bunch of nuts (any kind, the softer the better - like pecans or walnuts...almonds are good but even better if you use sliced almonds), stir, and drop spoonfuls on wax paper. Mmmm, I had really missed chocolate covered nuts; it had been awhile.