A-Camping We Will Go

For my daughter's 2nd birthday, she received a kid's camping set. Fun, right? At first, that is what I thought. It seemed like a great gift! I used to love making forts and tents as a kid, and when I was a teacher, the students loved when we did a camping theme and set up a tent in the room for reading and playing. The preschool teacher side of me loves stuff like this. I studied early childhood so I could do things like this - have a theme and set up fun, hands-on activities for the kids to do all week. For camping, we would set up a tent, build a fake fire, go on hikes around the school, eat marshmallows, read books about camping, pretend to go fishing, etc. I LOVED it. In fact, although I personally feel that I am supposed to be at home raising my children, I must admit that every now and then, I miss teaching preschool and all the fun ideas I could come up with.

So, why not do these awesome activities at home with my children? When I was pregnant with my daughter I honestly believed that staying at home with her would be just like having a preschool in my home. I dreamed of doing weekly crafts, art projects, and even themed snacks. Yet, somehow my dreams of an incredibly creative, stimulating environment have given way to real life. Sure, I still fill my kids days with plenty of stimulating activities - we paint, we sing, we dance, we read, we do science experiments in the bathtub and we have a lot of fun. But we also do laundry and vacuum and go to the grocery store. In her two and a half years of life, we have probably only done a handful of crafts and very little theme based play.

Until this week. Honestly, I have kind of been avoiding the tent. Not sure why because I really was excited to receive it. I think it just seemed bigger than I could handle. But this past weekend, I finally braved the tent. Oh, how I wish I had done it earlier! It has been so much fun. She has been playing in it almost non-stop. And it even motivated me to build a pretend fire for her to roast marshmallows. I bought her a book about camping and we have been talking non-stop about camping. I am even trying to convince my husband to take her camping for real. (Notice I am not planning on being included in this fabulous learning experience)

And the tent has even come with an unforeseen bonus: naps. As I think I have posted before, my daughter does not take regular naps (even though she really needs them). She has a rest time everyday where she must stay in her bed, but she only occasionally falls asleep. She usually just plays in her bed for a couple of hours. So, when she asked to nap in her tent on the first day, I was more than a little hesitant. But, I figured, it can't be much worse than her bed because she doesn't sleep in there either. I agreed but with strict rules that she could not bring any toys into her tent. And guess what? She slept!! In fact, in the last five days she has slept four - in her tent! I had every intention of letting her nap in the tent for a few days before I took it down. But now, I just can't bring myself to do it. I am enjoying this extra sleep (for me and her) too much. I may never take it down. Surely it's okay to let a child take naps in tent forever, right? Although I can't get my hopes up. Next week, I am sure I will report that naps are once again a thing of the past. But for now, I am getting what I can. And I will do it as long as it works.