Three year old fun

One of the roles of the stay at home mother of an only child is playmate. Much as ‘fostering a child’s independence’ makes a marvellous excuse to encourage them to play by themselves, play is how they learn and playing with others is how they learn about cooperation, turn taking , vocabulary and so on.

I’d like to think I’m a fairly fun playmate. I’m no three year old boy, but I try to keep up.
Popular games at the moment include:

CARS: driving around, racing, crashing and talking to each other.
BATHS: I don’t know where this game came from, but it involves building a giant communal bath (a carwash perhaps?) with lego, and then filling it with cars and toy animals. The lego fire truck hose becomes a shower, and there is usually even a separate ‘drying room’.
JUMPS: This involves a lot of jumping and then falling down. I’m not very good at it.
GOAL: Sort of like soccer except the goal keeper helps you get the ball into the goal.

All of these games seem to require a three year old’s outlook on life. The rules and logic are labyrinthine and ever changing. They provide me with fascinating bits of insight into the boy’s personality, his growing awareness of his environment and his interests. They provide me with opportunities for sneaky modelling of desired behaviour. They’re great games. But gosh it’s hard to keep up! And his attention span for them exceeds mine threefold.

I prefer the more structured kids activities like play doh, cooking, painting and craft. They may be messy (oh the mess!) but at least I understand the rules!