On one of my recent yard sale excursions, I came across one that was predominantly made up of craft items. Ladies from all over brought their unused supplies in addition to items they made. I waltzed in near closing time as they were busy packing up, so I made a quick pass through to skim over the items remaining. A stack on the very last table caught my eye because it was piled high with a stack of reusable homemade canvas bags. Without skipping a beat I blurted out "how much?" a hurried reply came back "$2 for all of them" and with that I gathered them all up, paid and left a happy environmentalist camper.
It didn't take me long to find a use for them, I knew they would be perfect to help organize my sons school work. Every morning I attempt to work on some form of education with my oldest and these bags help me keep all of the material organized for the upcoming week. In order to keep the days straight I purchased some sheets of iron on letter transfers and assigned each bag the letter that corresponds with the day of the week. Inside, I place the material I chose to work on with all the required material of construction paper and writing utensils. This allows me to focus on the tasks at hand without having to run around the house gathering
up items and materials. I normally rip out several work sheets from pre-K books and Landon knows that the contents of this bag is what has to be accomplished in order to start play time.
Another little trick I found that worked wonders with my son...chocolate chips. It's amazing how much clarity a toddler gets when a single morsel of chocolate is dangled before his eyes like a carrot on a stick. Like some sort of divine intervention he is able to connect two associated pictures or tell me what letter "cat" starts with. Would it be too much to ask for the Theory of Relativity for a Twix bar. For a brief amount of time (or until I run out of chocolate incentive), I have his undivided attention and manage to work through all of the contents. He may actually be ready for pre-school...now only if I could figure out the potty training trick....chocolate's not even cutting it.