Playing with buttons

Monday was Presidents' Day and though many had off of work and school, our school had an in-service day.  The problem was that my kids' daycare/school has two in-service days per year and Presidents' Day is one of them.  With Grandma able to come to watch them at 11:30, that left us without childcare for the morning.  So I took a half day off of work. 

I rarely take off of work, and am always reluctant to do so, even when I am sick.  On days that we have students, I find it is typically more challenging to prepare for a substitute and recover from missing the day than it is to be there.  On in-service days, I don't want to miss the professional development and chance to interact with my colleagues (and go on a lunch date with my husband since dinner dates are a true rarity).  But I wholeheartedly enjoyed my half day off on Monday.

I think the best decision I made was to wake up early, before the kids woke.  I was showered and ready to go, drinking my coffee and peacefully reading my book (the third of The Hunger Game - love that series!), when my cuties groggily made their way into the living room.  We had a great breakfast and spent the next hour or so reading stories and playing on the floor.  At one point, I got the idea in my head to get out all of the buttons that I had collected over the years from shirts that come with extras attached.  I opened the bin that I always blindly shove them in and was amazed at how many I had.  I told the kids we were going to do an activity with the buttons, and you would have thought I told them they got to have a huge bowl of ice cream.  (Clearly, I do not do these types of things often...there is definitely something to be said for novelty.)

The first part of the "activity" was simply taking all of the buttons out of the bags.  We decided to sort them in muffin tins into four piles...a huge, a teeny-tiny, a medium-big, and a medium-small pile.  The kids had a great time with this, and were quite good at discerning which pile the buttons should go in.  I was impressed with the sorting of two medium piles, by Everly, in particular.  In the end only two buttons needed to be switched, and the kids were able to figure that out by themselves. 

Cortlan then had the idea to sort them by color, as well.  They had to make the decisions about what buttons should go together to make three different colored piles of each size...interesting considering Cort's color blindness. 

Along the way, we counted, compared, and discussed our reasoning.  Finally, Cortlan thought it would be a great idea to line up the buttons and measure them with my measuring tape.  We measured each pile, wrote down the measurements, and then put the piles together, ultimately measuring a long line of buttons. 

 As a grand finale, we counted all of the buttons - there were seventy total.

Why am I writing about this?  Well, first, I have to say I was kind of proud of myself for actually coming up with an educational activity that could be adapted for each of my kids and that they thought was fun...despite the fact that I am a teacher, early childhood stuff is quite out of the box for me.  Second, I was amazed at how much my kids love to learn and explore in a structured environent.  They love imaginative play and I love to see what they can come up with on their own, but with just a little bit of guidance, they really did a great deal of learning through playing with buttons.  Third, while sitting with my kids at the counter, I experienced that rare Kairos time that I so cherish...my kids and I talked and laughed and played with buttons for an hour; time slipped away and yet stood still and I couldn't help but thinking of how I would love to hold onto the feeling and the moment forever.

Yes, taking the half day off was well worth it....and there is something to be said for novelty.