Note: Please be sure to read my follow-up post Bean Dirt, Part 2 wherein young Wyatt shoves one of the beans I discuss here up his nose.Â
The other day, Wyatt and I went outside to play with his matchbox cars in the abandoned flower bed in front of our house. We had a great time digging holes and pushing dirt around. Such a great time, in fact, that when he woke up the next morning, Wyatt wanted to go out to the flower bed again first thing. I wasn’t up for perching on a stepping stone in the middle of a pile of dirt with no caffeine at 7:15 a.m. so I told him no.
Then, just as the whining was starting, I had a great idea (if I do say so myself). I pulled a cookie sheet out of the cupboard and dumped a couple of half bags of dried beans into it. (Let’s face it — we’re never actually going to soak them and cook them. They’ve been in the cupboard since we moved into this place…) I put a dump truck and a bulldozer in the tray along with a couple of other little vehicles and Wyatt immediately got the concept of the “bean dirt”.
We had a great time playing with the beans. Some of the things we did: filled and dumped the dump truck, made roads, made mountains, and buried the ambulance. We also had fun just running our hands through the beans and pouring them over each other’s hands.
This kept Wyatt occupied for hours. When I came home from work at the end of the day, Zach told me that he’d only put the beans away a little while before and the only reason he’d done that was because he’d started dropping beans down the heat registers. Even now, several days later, this is the activity of choice. It’s a wonderful option to pull out now that the rain is starting up again.
Note: Please be sure to read my follow-up post Bean Dirt, Part 2 wherein young Wyatt shoves one of the beans I discuss here up his nose.
