Witching Hour Activities

If you have kids you know what The Witching Hour is...the time between dinner and bedtime that kids tend to LOSE it and suddenly have ADHD or something. I used to think that with Larry and I working that we didn't really have a witching hour, we'd just do whatever learning activity we couldn't do during the day at night. However, kids do not have any attention span during this time and do not care to learn anything at the end of the day. Not to mention once they are in school it's totally going to throw them off to learn during the day so I figured we should switch more to that model and I started having Larry do flash cards during the day with the girls (now that I work from home I've taken that on myself and do more fun learning activities during the day). 

However, this does make it more difficult to fill up the 1.75 hours we have after dinner and so finding something to do was a bit of a challenge. It took weeks of trial and error to see what was possible and I think we have a good routine down now so I thought I'd share it:

Games: we have started to introduce easy board games to the girls at night. We feel it's great to teach them taking turns and being a good sport, even if they feel they are losing. So far Gwen is hit or miss when it comes to actually wanting to play games, but Cara absolutely loves it.

Fun Bath: We do regular baths Sunday and Thursday right now, but the girls are always wanting to stay in it longer. I came up with the idea we should let them have a night that is just a "play in the bath" night. Once they are outside more and playing this will turn into a regular bath and we'll just add in another fun bath night, but for now this works for Tuesday night. I made it even better by letting them have this in the big bath in the master bathroom. What's great is we hardly ever use this bathtub, so now we are actually getting use out of it, I get to do a puzzle or laundry or whatever while they play and splash around AND I can get ready for bed while they are playing so they get even more time and it doesn't push into my night activities. I LOVE fun bath night!

Paint Night: I started letting the girls have a painting activity night. We grab some paper from this BIG pad that someone got them for a birthday, I grab some acrylic paint from my stash and let them just go crazy. They are good at keeping the paint on the paper and not everywhere else. I've never been a creative type so it's hard for me to find creative activities for the girls, but this is one I'm proud of. They love having fun with it.

Science Experiments: This one shouldn't be too surprising. I have always talked about loving doing STEAM activities with the girls and so I find fun little science experiments to show them. most of them are things dealing with baking soda and vinegar, but they still have fun.

Story Time: I've been doing my best to incorporate a bit of story time before our show each night. I know reading is SO good for kids and even though we do read before bed, I know you can't ever expose kids to too much reading. 

Of course most of this will probably change once Spring/Summer hits and we can be outside more (when it won't be SO dark at dinner time), but I'm pretty proud of the fact that we've found ways to stay sane and inside while we have littles.