Oh, and I have a very opinionated 4 year old. (Aren't they all?)
For a long time, I struggled every morning with getting him dressed. He didn't like what I picked out for him to wear. He didn't like anything in the drawer to pick out himself. I'd give him two choices, he wouldn't choose either. What he wanted to wear was dirty. He wanted to wear shorts and short-sleeves when it was 20 degrees. All of these things were usually accompanied by screaming, kicking, running away and hiding. SUCH a nightmare.
So I invented the "Clothes Map" (name coined by Drake).
On Sundays, we sit down together, and draw up a plan for what to wear for the entire week. It started off with me drawing the whole thing, but he has taken over for the most part and can do it all by himself. It's a great lesson on planning, decision making, practicing letters, drawing, and coloring. That makes it win-win-win-win-win, right?
Here's an example of one of our first maps. Drake drew faces and hair on them all, and told me all of their expressions, so I added those captions to the bottom of each person. The map is taped to the wall in his room.
We try to do all of our laundry on Sundays as well, so all of these choices are clean for the week. However, sometimes something is accidentally dirty. We solved this by letting Drake modify the map on Friday.
This is the latest map. Lots of the same choices week to week, lol. He did this one entirely by himself, and was so proud (except for a few additions to the t-shirts by me)
The beauty of this plan? We lay out the clothes on a school night on the rug. (Mr Owl always gets to be the head!)
We set an alarm clock. Drake gets up on his own, gets dressed on his own, and the first thing I see in the morning is this smiling face, no nightmare mornings anymore!!!
Wow he is getting so big! Seems like not too long ago he was a liitle bump during our sculpt classes!
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