Eating ice cream for breakfast
Why next Wednesday? Because now you have a day to aim for. Instead of reading this post and thinking, “I’ll just post this to Pinterest” where it can die a sorrowful death among all of the other great ideas you almost did…now you can put it on your calendar. The ideas I’m giving you are so simple, you could probably do them tomorrow. But because I believe it’s important to involve your kiddos in creating magic, I’ll let you have a few days to brainstorm with them.
I was inspired a few weeks ago by Magical Childhood’s post about making ordinary days magical to mix things up a bit. We have celebrated pajama day, and a whole two weeks of rainbows, but it’s been a while since we’ve had reason to do something special. The crew and I decided that we needed to celebrate “Upside-Down, Mixed Up Day.” From a child development standpoint, anything that requires a change of perspective helps to develop their perspective taking and cognitive flexibility. Not to mention the magic of celebrations simply for the sake of celebrating! We had a marvelous time brainstorming things to do: wearing pants on our head, walking backwards, switching clothes, putting socks on our arms, but when all was said and done, the day included the following extraordinary memory-making events:
1. We started the day off “backwards snuggles.” Simone is very tender in the morning, and often needs a little snuggle time before she is ready to join the group. Instead of Dad snuggling her, here she sits to snuggle Dad!
Sharing a “backwards snuggle”
2. Ice cream for breakfast! Technically, they were oatmeal ice cream sundaes – oatmeal, 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream, 1 squirt of whipped cream, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and cherries.
Ice cream for breakfast
Oatmeal ice cream sundaes
Ice cream for breakfast
3. Clothing backwards, inside out, or all of the above. Those of us in early childhood know that it doesn’t have to be a designated mixed up day in order to reverse the proper order of clothing, but seeing as how this day was special, we made sure to get our clothes on wrong. One of our group wore her jammies all day long!
Clothes on backwards
4. Blowing bubbles inside. I was actually out of bubbles (gasp!…I know…a preschool teacher out of bubbles? The nerve…) and too close to lunchtime to mix up some solution…so this didn’t last too long. Play Counts has a wonderful post about indoor bubbles that you must check out.
Blowing bubbles inside
5. Eating our morning snack in the dark, under the table. We had glow sticks in the freezer (which we thought we would use since we were eating in the dark), but it turns out that they were glow-less. I now have “glow sicks” on my shopping list.
Eating in the dark under the table. (The flash makes it look like we weren’t in the dark…trust me, we were!)
6. Drawing on paper taped to the underside of the table. Amazing how much motor coordination it takes to draw upside down!
The experience was more novel than long-lasting, except for these two! They could have stayed under the table with markers for hours!
7. Drinking milk out of a bowl at lunchtime. They were quite skilled at this thanks to cereal.
Drinking from bowls
8. Reading a story backwards. From a child development perspective, this was my favorite part. We chose a familiar book and read it one time through before we started at the end. When it was time to read backwards, the crew was so confused. Each line brought a completely unexpected twist in the plot; they expected the part of the book that sequentially came next. They couldn’t adjust to the backwards storyline! A good exercise in developing cognitive flexibility, for sure!
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I won’t be celebrating Upside Down Mixed Up Day again tomorrow, so I need some ideas of my own for next Wednesday so we can all celebrate something special on an ordinary day together. What made-up days do you celebrate just for fun? Do you have memories from your childhood that made the day-to-day magical? Give me some ideas below. I don’t have any nifty giveaways to entice you, but we will all benefit from a little collaboration!
Ha – awesome! And I love the idea of ice cream for breakfast!