Category: Ribbons

Kindness Wreath

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It’s a new season, and we needed a wreath to adorn our door in autumnal hues. Rather than by one that was ready to go, we put a little family TLC into the piece that’s going to welcome people into our home. If you don’t want to do this project in the fall, it would make a beautiful project around Thanksgiving or Christmas! Just change the ribbon colors accordingly.

First we gathered our materials – a bare branch wreath, and colored ribbon – I chose red, orange, and yellow for the season.

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As I cut the ribbon into lengths for the wreath, Travis and I talked about what kindness meant, and how to pay attention to acts of kindness around us. (Starting with his dad bringing me my camera so I didn’t miss capturing the moment!). Travis loved helping with the ribbon of course.

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We placed our ribbons in a jar, and now our wreath was a work in progress, part decoration part performance art!

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Travis was even more into the idea than I thought he would be. Over the next couple of days, he kept asking if we could think of more examples, and was so proud each time we got to add a ribbon.

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We discovered that kindnesses can be both big and small. Travis came up with moments including: petting the cat, a friend who shared snack with him, making tea for daddy, a mommy we saw help her son with a lollipop, getting a hug after an owie, and more.

When our wreath was full of ribbons, we decided it was time to hang it up on our door.

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A proud moment, and a beautiful reminder of kindness every time we cross the threshold now.

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Ribbons for Toddlers

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toddler 23( 5)

I’m finding Travis to be at a tough age for game ideas; he’s too old for many suggested toddler activities, yet too young for those aimed at preschoolers. Luckily, I’m learning I can count him to find a happy medium when presented with a toy or game, as with this ribbon example.

Filling an empty plastic jar with ribbons and streamers is a nice tactile game for younger toddlers – nothing to it! Travis first tried shoving them in all at once:

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But upon realizing that didn’t work, he began more patiently adding one at a time:

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Then of course comes the fun of dumping out.

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But he very quickly tired of the sensory play, and turned to a game we’d recently played at Gymboree: “Filling up” the air on “tires” (inflatable circle shapes) and “wiping the windows” on a “bus” climbing structure.

So he used his finger to “fill up the bottle” singing, “This is the way we fill up the tires,” and then turned the streamers and ribbons into cloths to “wash the bus.” Soon he was running all over the apartment with his ribbons to “fill up the window, fill up the couch, wash the wall, wash the floor” and so on and so forth.

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I love the way he takes games we’ve played and finds a way to make sense of them elsewhere in his world. Even though we as adults know that it makes no sense to “fill up a couch” with air the way you would a tire, he’s grasping  the concept and applying it, and I love watching him at play!