A Day of Babysitting

For the past few years, my 13 year old cousin and I have been entrusted with periodically babysitting her little sisters, ages 4 and 6. We have both taken a class on babysitting. Usually we will just go to the park, do puzzles, draw, or watch movies with them. This Sunday however, she had the idea of having all the activities of the day follow the theme of the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin. We began planning the activities the day before.

When they all arrived at my house, we got right to work by reading the story to them and asking them what animals were in it. We made instruments by stapling plates together with rice on the inside and decorating them as one of the animals in the book. Some pretty cute bear, cat, and duck instruments were crafted. As a follow-up to this activity, we sang the words of the book to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." By this time, we were all hungry for lunch. We used animal cookie cutters to shape their grilled cheese sandwiches as animals such as squirrels, bunnies, and dinosaurs. Some coloring followed, using animal coloring sheets of course. They then used index cards to match the picture with the color or word. Keeping the book in mind, they made rock pets out of backyard rocks and construction paper. This was definitely the little girls' favorite part of the day as they kept insisting on feeding their pets every few minutes and gave them cute names like Sylvie and Clover. After this, they made their own 'Brown Bears' by gluing construction paper body parts together. Towards the end of the day, we made cut-out sugar cookies in the shapes of animals before nap-time.

My cousin and I had a great time planning the activities and we could tell that the girls enjoyed partaking in them. Keeping them busy made the seven or so hours that we were watching them pass very quickly. While babysitting it is always a good idea to have a plan. I had a really fun day with my cousins!