The “Boxing Days” Part 1
You may think, if you are familiar with it, that the title of this piece refers to December 26th – the traditional English celebration of gift giving to others. However, what I have in mind today is not a date on the calendar, but a gift that will keep on giving.
Over the years, we have had four kinds of “fun boxes” at our house. I wanted to take some time today to explain two of them to you in hopes that they may be of benefit! Tomorrow I will tell you about the other two…
Fun Box #1 – The Toy Fun Box – It contains the toys your younger children can play with while you are working with your older children. The key to making this box work is that the things in it have to be appealing to your younger child, and ONLY accessible when you are working with your older children. One of my preschool daughters was really attracted to Barbie , so she had Barbie stuff in the Toy Fun Box; one son was crazy for the little plastic army guys. Remember – the get access to these toys ONLY when you are working with a sibling.
Fun Box #2 – The Reward Fun Box – It contained about $10 worth of things that I had purchased at the dollar store, or where I put the Happy Meal toys from MY Happy Meal.. The stuff parents hate and kids love – bubbles, sidewalk chalk, play dough, dress up makeup, etc. (My sister-in-law saved her “free gift with purchase” stuff for me for years!) When they were really young, we would set a goal to accomplish a day of school in a set time, and then they could choose a reward – not every day, because making it intermittent was the key to success. A successful day, or event or test merited a trip to the Reward Box.
I will look forward to “opening the rest of my boxes” for you tomorrow. Enjoy your “boxing” days – they will pass very swiftly.