The Secret to Living Abroad with a Three-year Old

People are often surprised that Sam and I aren’t traveling around the country every day seeing historical sites or spending loads of time in London. One reason for that is that we value spending our time in the U.K. as temporary residents and not as tourists. Another reason is that Sam is three (three and a half, Mom!) and my three-and-a-half year-old needs plenty of time to play and to just hang out at home.

So this is a post about what Sam does in a typical week in Brighton, besides going to Mini Music classes on Fridays and “Salut les petits” French classes on Wednesdays, and eating chips and peas at the pub on Sundays.

Playgrounds

We go to a lot of playgrounds. Last fall I thought we’d been to every one, but thanks to Mini Music in Hove, we’ve discovered one more (Stoneham Park). This time around Sam’s favorite playground is St. Ann’s Well Gardens. Here she is coming down the “big zippy slide:”

And this is her first ever ride on the zip line:

Arts and Crafts

This is our “craft table” in the flat:

We spend time here nearly every day, listening to music and working on some art project that I’ve managed to dream up using available (and cheap or free materials).

Painted Beach Pebbles:

Sam paints “A Girl in the Rain”

We cut out shapes and glued them onto cereal box cardboard to make the various trains from “The Little Engine That Could.” This is Sam’s favorite: the wheazy and greasy one. She made this one pretty much on her own.

And here is Sam executing her own “art project.” I think it was a swing for one of her bears. It involved gluing a cotton ball to a piece of paper and then threading some string through holes she made with her butterfly hole punch:

Finally, there were the shoe lace projects. Hands down this was the cheapest and the most useful craft material I purchased here. 20 pence for a pack of 12 shoe laces from a £ Shop that was going out of business. I figured I’d make Sam a lacing board with some cardboard, and I did. But she then:

1. Declared the laces spaghetti and dumped them in a bowl to feed to Molly Bear.
2. Laid them out to be railroad tracks for our reenactment of “The Little Engine that Could.”
3. Used one to string a painted “ornament” she made with a paper plate. (She is now insisting that we save this for the Christmas tree.)

4. Asked me to tie the laces across two wooden chairs to make an indoor volleyball net (which I did and then we played volleyball with a balloon for an hour).
5. Used them to make alphabet shapes on the floor. Pictured below are B, C, X, Y, H and L:

We have three days left here in Brighton and we’ll probably come up with three more things to do with these laces. Best purchase ever.

If anyone ever asks me what the secret is to living abroad with a three-year old, I’ll say “shoe laces,” and smile enigmatically.