Hubby's idea of a clean kitchen
Tomorrow, my husband flies home after being out of the country for over 6 weeks. While I am way past ready to see him, the house is not. See, we have very different definitions of clean. To me, clean is the floor being vacuumed, the table & chairs being wiped off, and the dishwasher unloaded/reloaded at least once a week. To him, those things are done every 5 minutes…okay, maybe he's not that bad, but it feels like it sometimes. While he's gone, I get to keep the house how I like it and still focus on other things – like messy activities with the kids and finding great deals. The week before he comes home, we do a deep clean of the house. Well, I do a deep clean and try to keep the boys from destroying it behind me.
Monday, I learned he was coming home a day early so I had to speed things up a bit. This required coming up with creative ways to keep the boys entertained without the use of the TV. Although I'm not anti-TV, I'm not about to let them spend all day in front of it. While I was dishing up breakfast (I cheated and put cinnamon apple oatmeal in the crockpot last night), I thought today would be a good day for a scavenger hunt. The older 2 love scavenger hunts with images so they can do it on their own. Yesterday, we made a treasure chest (Jake & the Neverland Pirates…), so I decided to make it a little more complex than our normal hunts. I printed a bunch of gold doubloons on card stock. While I tidy up in the living room & dining room, they get to cut them out. Once they are done with that, I'll give them their treasure hunt pages. For each item they find, they get to put a gold doubloon into their treasure box.
Luckily, my idea has generated so much interest that my 6-year-old offered to wipe down the table after breakfast so he can get started faster. I love when an idea has benefits I didn't even consider!
To find age appropriate scavenger hunts for your child, including some great rhymes with or shaped like, head over to ScavengerHuntsforKids.com
What activities do you use to keep your children entertained while you work on something else?
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