Having Fun With Younger Grandkids
The ages of 3-6 can be an incredibly fun time for hanging out with your grandkids. They are past those terrible twos, and have developed some manner of social skills, but they are still in their prime time of childish curiosity and inquiry. Here are some activities you can do together to bring out those natural traits and help introduce them to the world.
Planting Seeds
Kids are fascinated by the idea of growth and change, especially when they are the ones that fostered that growth. Pick up a few small terra cotta pots at your local hardware or home improvement store, along with some seeds and soil. You can get a mix of flowers and other plants; black-eyed susans, strawberries, hostas, and tomatoes are hardy, easy to grow types. If you want, bring your grandkids along and let them pick out some seed packets with flowers that they like.
You’ll also want to get some acrylic paints and different sized brushes, if you don’t have any in your art box at home. First, paint and decorate the flower pots together and let them dry. Then fill them with soil and follow the planting instructions on the seed packet. Your grandkids will be able to follow their plants’ growth every time they visit.
Tie Dye
Tie dyeing is a creative, simple, and fun activity that can produce truly awesome results. You can pick up cheap, plain white T-shirts to dye, or renew some of your grandkid’s older, stained clothes with bright tie dye designs. Dying plain white sheets for their bed can also be a fun option.
You can pick up a tie dye kit at your local craft store for $10-20, or order them online at Amazon. This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to make those beautiful swirl designs. Just make sure you and your grandchild wear old clothes when you embark on your dying adventure!
Letters to the Easter Bunny, Santa, or Their Favorite Fictional Character
While some of you might have reservations about “taking advantage” of your grandkid’s youth in this activity, the letter responses I got from the Easter Bunny as a kid are still one of the highlights of my own childhood. While the Easter Bunny started “sending” letters to my fort in the woods behind my house, you don’t need a fort to make this activity fun.
If your grandkid has a “fort” or playhouse at your place, it’s best if the letters arrive there. If not, it’s fine for the letters to come to your own mailbox—just ask your grandkid to help you check the mail, when you know the letters are going to arrive.
How it works is this: just write a letter to your grandchild “from” whatever fictional character works best; if they have a favorite cartoon character that could work too. The letters can be about anything--asking the grandkid what they’re up to, what they enjoy doing, etc. Make sure the fictional character talks about themselves, too. Get creative and have fun with it. Put the letter in an envelope, stamp it, address it to your grandchild, and put the return address as someplace appropriate. If the letters were from Spongebob Squarepants, for example, the return address would have to be something like “100 Pineapple Under the Sea, Pacific Ocean, 88730.”
Encourage your grandkid to write response letters to the character, and “mail” them for them. Keep this up for 3 or 4 letters—long enough for it to be fun, but not long enough for your grandchild to get suspicious. Break it off cleanly; have the character tell the child that they are moving, going on a vacation, or something else that will end the communication.
This fun prank will help your grandkid’s writing skills, not to mention give them an amazingly fun and good time. I’m still grateful that my grandparents went through the trouble to pull such a cool and interesting prank on me as a kid.