Babysitting Night

This activity was super simple to put together but still lots of fun. It was nice because I had most of the things I needed around the house. Even though our girls are younger, we have the 8 and 9 year olds, I know they love kids. Most of them have siblings that they help with or nieces and nephews. So to start out we had the girls leave the room. We hadn't even told them what we were doing that day. While they were out of the room, I quickly set up a bunch of items around that could be potential dangers for a child. Some things were really obvious, but others were a bit tricky.

Here are a few of the things I put out. I even dumped some of the medicine out on the floor, but had the knife just on the edge of the table.

After I put the items out I had my mom send the girls in one by one. They were told to look around the room in ten seconds. They didn't know what they were looking for but they needed to remember what they saw. At this point they were very confused!

Once they all had gone through I quickly hid the stuff and had them come back in. I told them that today's activity was about babysitting and they needed to get with a partner and remember all the dangerous things they saw that a child could get into. Then in their partners, I had them tell me. Most of the girls got the main things like the knife, but some didn't even notice the cleaner. So after we talked about each item and why it might be dangerous and what to do if a child got into some of it.

The next part of the activity was child care. I taught them how to feed a baby. I did this by bringing some baby food. I told them what they needed and how to do it. Then I had them practice on each other, bib and all. It was lots of fun and they each got to be the baby and the feeder.

After feeding the baby, it is important to learn how to change its diaper. I first showed them with a doll and some Hershey's Syrup. The girls all thought this was disgusting! After showing them the right way I split them into two teams. Then we did a relay. Each girl had to run down, change the dirty (chocolate filled) diaper and put a new one on their doll. I went a little crazy with the syrup but it was so funny to watch the girls gross out!

After all the fun I thought it might be good review to do a jeopardy game going over the things the girls learned. I just wrote questions on 3 x 5 cards and taped them up on the chalk board. The girls then were put in teams and took turns trying to answer. They did great and learned a ton!