I hate when kids slam doors, play with doors, or just, in general, open and close doors. Call me paranoid, but I've been frightened by countless horror stories... So, a few days ago, when someone inevitably slammed their bedroom door, in a very wild 'free play' session, I decided it was time for an activity (that doesn't involve hinges of any kind).
Here are some ideas for your 'these-little-humans-need-to-be-reined-in-a-bit' moments.
Four hours until bedtime. Let's go.
The Activity: Emotions Faces (Print, Color, Cut, Play)
Prep time: 2 minutes (print the sheet, get out markers and scissors)
Keeps them busy for: 30-50 minutes
Ages: 3-8
Mess level: Paper scraps on the floor and marker caps everywhere. The basics.
Print out the faces templates (links below). It's a blank face with either a boycott or pigtails and a bunch of different expression circles — happy, sad, angry, silly, sleepy, embarrassed — that kids can cut out and swap onto the face. They color the body and the hair however they want, then mix and match emotions onto it.
Download the boy printable here
Download the girl printable here
Younger kids will spend a solid chunk of time just coloring and cutting. Older kids might get into the swapping, making the face look angry and then silly and then sleepy, and coming up with stories for why the face changed. Some kids will want to make their own expression circles from scratch, which is even better because that's another twenty minutes you didn't have to plan.
You get some cutting + coloring + something to play with when they're done. It's three activities disguised as one. And if you have a kid who's been having a rough afternoon emotionally, there's something quietly helpful about handling little faces that show different feelings. You don't have to make it all therapeutic, but it might be a good conversation starter.
The Dinner: One-Pot BBQ Chicken Pasta
This one-pot dinner (I know, I'm obsessed with these) is smoky, saucy, and everything cooks in one pot, including the pasta.
Sauté half an onion with smoked paprika in olive oil until it's soft and golden.
Add chopped chicken breast, brown it for a few minutes; it doesn't need to cook through yet, it'll finish in the sauce.
Toss in garlic, salt, and a pinch of red pepper flakes, cook for a minute, then pour in chicken broth and scrape up the browned bits from the bottom.
Stir in a can of diced tomatoes, a third of a cup of BBQ sauce (and a splash of liquid smoke if you have it). Bring it to a simmer, add one bag of whatever pasta you have, cover, and let it cook for about 15 minutes until the pasta is tender and the sauce has thickened up around it.
See the full recipe here
Time: 35 minutes.
Kid acceptance rate: Very high - it's pasta in a smoky-sweet sauce. Hard to argue with.
Cleanup: Again, one pot.
The Permission Slip
Sit down.
Actually, sit down. In a chair. With a coffee. And something sweet, a cookie, a piece of chocolate, whatever is in the house that counts as yours and not a communal snack the kids will descend on.
Drink the coffee while it's hot. Eat the thing slowly. Look at nothing in particular. Five minutes. Maybe ten if the house is quiet enough.
Don't worry - this is not laziness, and it is not a reward you have to earn by finishing the to-do list first. This is a human being refueling. You've been running since the morning, and the afternoon still has hours left in it, and you will be a better version of yourself for the bedtime stretch if you sit down for a few minutes now.
If you want to feel productive about it, make a batch of protein muffins on Sunday and grab one with your coffee every afternoon. They're filling, they taste really good, and the act of having your own designated snack that you made for yourself is a weirdly powerful thing.
But even without the muffins - just the sitting. Just the coffee. Do it for yourself.
The Wild Card: The "You're the Teacher" Game
Hand one of your kids a whiteboard, a marker, and the job of being the teacher. Their students are their siblings, their stuffed animals, or both. They can teach whatever they want - the parshah, reading, the rules of a game they invented, how to draw a house, the entire plot of a book they heard in school...
You don't have to participate. You just have to say, "Wow, that's a great lesson," from across the room when they look at you for validation. The kid playing teacher gets to feel important, and the kids playing students get to be entertained.
This works especially well with a bossy older sibling. I mean, you're channeling it. How proud would your parenting coach be?
Enjoy being a student again.
