Three year old children have attention spans of about fifteen seconds. That is a fact as I knew from working on projects with the producers from Sesame Street. Our messages to them need to be succinct. He knew he was looking at the skull of a mouse, but he also knew it related to a “spooky Halloween”. We drew a picture of a haunted house, but his picture was that of a scary face. It was beautiful!
Concrete thinking describes this age group. He drew what he knew and reveled in his own creation. I thought about the time I asked the kids to build something that could transport them to my house, which is fifteen miles away. I told them they could use cardboard gleaned from boxes or other sources, including the toilet paper rolls. I laughed to myself as I thought about the lack of toilet paper on the shelves in the stores, but also knew that it was a common stock in all of our homes. String and tape were additions to the list of things to be used.
Time was not a factor, they could share their project with me any time. A disappeared from the screen and secured his stock. Ten minutes later he returned to the screen with a taped cardboard box that was a present for “grandma”. If he put himself inside he would be transported to my house. This is concrete thinking.
“Creative threes” is the expression I use to describe kids this age. They are on the move! Their gross motor skills progress to jumping with two feet, walking backwards, catching large balls and balancing on short balance beams. Fine motor activities now include washing hands by themselves, holding a writing utensil in their fingers, and turning pages in a book.
While beginning to understand their own emotions, “I feel sad” or “I feel happy”, they begin to have empathy for others. With a warehouse of over three hundred words, they become more conversant. Along with their blossoming memory and creativity, social play becomes more comfortable to these children. Cognitively they now are able to play simple games. They begin to tell their own stories, love reading books, and will even attempt to tell the story. Shapes and colors hold special interest and they begin to learn the alphabet, numbers and counting.
Discovering what activities might fill the time I had with my own grandson who is three is the easy part. Googling “grandparents and skype“ filled my stockpile. I also found other sites when I googled activities for homeschooling children.