I just love improvising to keep small children engaged by pretending or creating free and always new fun! Playing together inside or out is a wonderful time for training as well as for the delicious sound of spontaneous laughter.
When our son and daughter-in-love were expecting their second child, longer times at “DD’s house” with our 3-year-old granddaughter, “Goldie,” happened often (with no twisting of my arm whatsoever). Goldie was my moniker for our first grandchild, whose golden, if unruly, hair looked woven straight from fibers of the throne of God.
We would draw, swim, bake cookies and read books, make up silly songs, and learn the names of flowers as we arranged them for the table. We talked about how great it was going to be to be a big sister and “practiced” the needed gentleness by improvising with ever-willing stuffed animals.
But with only two months to go before baby number two was on the scene, we also needed to think about sleeping arrangements for both girls when they stayed at our house. We’d saved the youth bed our boys had transitioned into and thought it would be a good time for Goldie to make that same transition, all the while keeping the Pack ‘N Play ready for our newborn.
Anticipating that she might need a little coaxing and marketing of her new bed, I decided to write a book for her called “Goldie’s New Bed.” Using digital pictures blown up on my printer and clear insert sleeves in a three-ring binder, I put together a tailor-made book just for my granddaughter. Spacing small paragraphs wide apart kept the words simple on the front of the right-side pages, and full-page photos filled the other side.
I bought a new stuffed poodle, named him “Doodle,” and put a colorful quilt on the youth bed. Once the bed was all made, I photographed it so she could read about it and look forward to it long before she spent that first night in “Goldie’s New Bed.”
Both book and new bed were such a hit that we decided to write more books together. Like a child outside the ice cream shop, I drooled over the promise of such a treat.
Her mother mentioned that the transition to her big girl bed at home was also having its own challenges, so I wrote the next story, “The Adventures of Goldie’s Green Sheets.” Reading about herself made her excited about the transition. This time I read her the story and we cut out illustrations from magazines so she could find them and tape them next to the text “all by herself!”
Every time she came over after that, her first question was, “Oh, DD, can we write a new book, …Pweese?”
We not only wrote “Goldie Meets Her New Sister,” but we played dress-up for hours. Watching her garbed in plastic tiara and dangling earrings, a gold princess gown, one of my gold short-sleeved turtle neck blouses, and a burgundy boa was spellbinding. We put on Vivaldi, and for hours she created dances. My camera snapped and snapped and the next book was a hit: “Goldie Dances Isadora.”
What I wouldn’t write, but what I would always remember, is this grandmother smiling from ear to ear at the blessing of our quality time together. She’d learn the fun of creating, reading, and writing, and I would have these wonderful unerasable memories years later.
Should you too want to make your own grandchildren books, you’ll need: a three-ring notebook, plastic sleeves to hold the pages, a printer for digital pictures to be printed the standard 8.5-inches by 11-inches size, old magazines for added photos, scissors, tape, and maybe some markers or colored pencils. Print the made-up story, arranged in short paragraphs, from your computer. Most importantly, realize that you are capturing precious moments to be cherished and enjoyed for a lifetime – and perhaps by future generations.