I Spy With My Little Eye

My kids and I sat on our favorite picnic quilt and enjoyed our family breakfast together. The sun was warm on our faces, the breeze was cool in our hair, the garden was starting to sprout, and the birds were wishing us good morning. We ate our berries and pancakes and smiled because we were together, and together is our favorite place to be!
‘I wish every morning could be just like this one,’ I thought to myself.

As we finished our breakfast, my son knew he needed to clean up after himself and come back outside to help water the garden. It’s his favorite thing to do! What boy doesn’t love to squirt water in the dirt and find worms? Then I had an idea… why not do a lesson with the water hose? The kids would be engaged, the weather is beautiful, and it’d be fun!
I ran inside, grabbed some chalk, and started to draw letters on our fence. He was already getting excited and repeatedly asking, “What are we doing!? Hey, I know that letter! Mommy, I want to see!”
I smiled knowing he was going to have a blast with my new “I Spy” game.

“Okay, Hud. Let’s play ‘I Spy’ together! When you find the letter, I want you to squirt the water at it!”

He jumped up and down with glee. More messes he can make! Yippee!

“I spy with my little eye… a G!”

SQUIIIIIIRRRTTT

With every letter he grew more and more excited, and before we knew it, all the letters had disappeared from the fence.
“Okay, Mommy! Now let’s do shapes!”

I grinned knowing my idea had worked. He was having a blast! We went to a dry part of the fence, and I drew shapes everywhere. My youngest watched excitedly knowing she was about to get another water show. She kicked her feet and grabbed handfuls of dirt, laughing and excited to learn, too.

“I spy with my little eye… a DIAMOND!”

SQUIIIIIIRRRTTT

We couldn’t help but giggle every time he squirted the water hose. We found so much joy as we reviewed our lessons and made a big mess!
We ended up doing uppercase letters, lowercase letters, letter sounds, shapes, & numbers 1-20. My fence was soaked, and so were we!
Mamas, we are our babies’ greatest teachers! They watch, listen, mimic, & trust us, so as they watch, show joy in learning! Incorporate fun games and things they love. Show them God’s beautiful nature and talk about His wonderful creations! There is a lesson in everything, whether it’s going on a nature walk and collecting something of every color, or painting a side of a leaf and imprinting it on paper for an art project.
My wise Aunt Debi Pearl once said to me, “What you do MATTERS,” and those words have stayed with me. So now I pass it on to you, my mama friend. Have a breakfast picnic, play in the water, and keep laughing and learning together!