X marks the spot

A couple weeks ago Liza decided she didn't want to leave the house - ever - for any reason, even if it involved chocolate and lollipops. One of the develpmental milestone books we have said this is pretty normal for 2 1/2 year olds, which was comforting, but it didn't make running errands any easier. I had to get all wily on her ...

I told her we were going to go on an adventure, and before we left we needed to make a map. We got out the crayons and a piece of paper and made the world's simplest map - our house, Home Depot with a big orange sign, PetSmart with a goldfish on the sign, and Chik-Fil-A with a sandwich on the sign. We made a dotted line to go from one place to the next, starting and ending at our house. Then we packed up our backpack with the essentials (map, snack, handkerchief, rubber duck) and she was happy as a clam to go exploring with me.

She held the map in the car, and after every stop I asked her to tell me where we needed to go next, and darned if she didn't get it right each time.

It was a great way to involve her in planning the trip, and having the map helped keep me from trying to cram in a few extra errands that would have pushed her over the edge (No shoe store, mama! Not on map! PetSmart next!). I'm definitely going to have to try this again when I'm tempted to cram too much into the pre-holiday weeks.

*****

After the success with the errand map, I tried a variation of the idea on a recent trip to the art museum. Liza is old enough to actually look at the art, and we've read books that involved art museums and we've talked about what they're for, but I didn't expect to get more than about 30 minutes of art appreciation out of her before meltdown. In order to give her something to do while we were there (other than run amok and/or whine), we made up a "map" of things she needed to find in the museum.

I didn't do a ton of research about what would be in the exhibit, although I did check to make sure there was something by Mondrian (because I wanted to get a shape on the list and be sure she could find it). In case you can't read the photo, we had "flower, squares, woman, sculpture, fancy frame," and a late addition - "oval" - which she insisted we add after she identified one in a painting. I wrote out the words, and made a little pictogram to help her remember what it was, and a box we could check off when we located each thing.

Liza clutched that map all the way to the art museum, and she wanted me to pull over and mark off "sculpture" when we saw one in a park on the way there. She didn't want to put the map down to take off her coat - darn it, she was determined to find those items FAST.

I won't say the map made the trip through the museum any more leisurely, especially since Liza has the attention span of a gnat when she's hungry, but it did give us something to talk about and look for while we were there.

She was very enthusiastic about the Degas ballet paintings (go figure - Liza? liking dancers?), and she seemed to understand the whole concept that "it looks like dots and lines up close, but from the other side of the room it looks like a restaurant with a waiter and tables and everything." Some of the other patrons seemed to enjoy the fact that Liza announced "That's a spul-cher!" every time she saw any 3-D art, although I think some of them would have appreciated a lower volume.

Before we went to the museum, we talked about how art doesn't have to be pretty or look like anything you recognize, it just has to make you feel something, so a couple times during our museum expedition I asked Liza what that painting made her feel. My favorite answer: "hungry." Time to hit the cafe and get a Dega ballet kids' book at the gift store on the way out. Mission Accomplished!