A little Can of Can-Do
Creating Happier more Mindful Children – How’s Lockdown Life going for you? We started off doing okay. We took Isabelle out of school the week before the schools officially closed, and it felt like a school holiday.
We joined in with online PE lessons, did lots of craft, baked and generally made the most of this unusual time off that we had. We’re in the garden a lot which has also been an absolute godsend.
We’ve only been on a grand total of four walks since the whole pandemic thing began. Isabelle is a sensitive soul and had overheard lots of conversations and some snippets of the news and had come to the conclusion that going outside was dangerous, and therefore hadn’t wanted to leave the house.
She does literally catch every germ going so I knew this was going to have her little worrying head spinning.
Fast-forward a few weeks and things aren’t so great.
We started to run out of craft stuff and I wasn’t sure if ordering it online was allowed as it wasn’t essential shopping. We binned off the PE lessons or it was just me standing there attempting it whilst Isabelle showed absolutely no interest.
The toddlers not sleeping great so my patience and ability to entertain both Freddie and Isabelle was being stretched to the limit. Picking activities to do with a nearly two year old and a nine year old is hard.
Spending so much time together each and every day has become a chore. The fun seems to have evaporated and we’re left with a tantruming toddler, a wannabe teenager and then there’s me who has become shouty frazzled mum.
Something has to change
We can’t go on like this so when I was sent a Little Can of Can-Do I was intrigued to see what this was all about.
What is a Can of Can-Do?
Life is hectic for most of us, we live in a world that never switches off. Technology plays a huge part in our everyday life, but it does make it harder to have much needed ‘down time’.
Whenever we were stuck my Mum always used to say “put can’t in your pocket and pull out can”.
A Can-Do is a can of 28 cards full of daily affirmation and mindfulness exercises for Children. Created by a husband and wife team with the input of their three daughters, the cards were made to instill important messages about confidence, mindfulness and gratitude. Each card has a lovely brightly coloured picture with a prompt or exercise to complete which you can use over and over again.
The Can-Do Can retails at £15.99 and is aimed at the 8 – 15 year age group but there’s nothing to stop you implementing this with younger children.
We decided that we’d start off by doing a daily lucky dip. These are best done at the end of the day so that you can reflect on that days activities.
The Sweet Game
Isabelle was thrilled with this challenge since sweets were involved so a lucky one to pick out first.
Red (something happy) – Played on my scooter in the garden.
Blue (something sad) – Being told off by Mummy.
Orange (a good choice) – Picking Teen Titans over the Loud House to watch on TV.
Brown (something you didn’t feel you did well and how you could have done it differently) – Not letting Freddie go first when we play games and knowing that’s it’s kind to take turns.
Yellow (something fun) – Playing in the garden.
Green (something kind) – Helping Freddie on the slide and letting him take his turn first.
Act of Kindness
Isabelle opted to buy a chocolate bar and leave it in her brothers bedroom for him to find, and as an act of kindness, I did the same for her to make her smile too.
This is such a simple thing to do, and making somebody else smile definitely makes you feel good.
Our Thoughts
Isabelle loves a task to do, so these simple tasks can be completed every day and can take as little or long a time as you like. It’s something that we do ‘just us’ and as she’s getting really frustrated at the moment it’s a good chance for us to talk about anything that’s worrying her. The sweetie one was difficult the first time we did it, as she found it upsetting to say her bad behaviour out loud.
I thought these were a great resource to get Isabelle to talk about how she’s feeling. She’s been doing a lot of shouting these last couple of weeks as well as storming off and door slamming. She’s not alone in this either. I feel like I’m with the kids 24/7 and it’s not a healthy combination. We’ve watched far more TV than usual as well as phones and tablets. Being out in the garden seems to be our happy place at the moment.
A new normal is needed. We need to get back into a little bit of a structured routine with some school work, craft and play time. We also need to get out of the house. We have some lovely places to go around us, but they do get really busy which is difficult to social distancing, but maybe we need to get up and out of the house earlier to set us up for the day.
We’re going to use the Can-Do tasks regularly and will hopefully be creating Happier more Mindful Children, particularly on tough days as a reminder to be kind to each other!
Lisa x
*We were sent a Can-Do Can for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.