Advice For Mothers On Wet-Day Amusements

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27368, 5 June 1954, Page 6

Advice For Mothers On Wet-Day Amusements

The mother of young children need have no more anxieties about keeping her charges amused during sthe long wet days winter is sure to bring, if she has the time, skill, money, and patience required to follow a programme suggested by the Department of Health in a “health education newsletter” issued in Christchurch.

The department says the favourite occupation of small children at all times is helping adults to do real jobs. Small brooms, brushes and dustpans, dusters and cloths for wiping tables and the floor could be provided, and hung at a convenient height for the children. Then if- a flower vase is knocked over, the child will rush to fetch a cloth. This suggestion by the department, undoubtedly a good one in theory, is not always of very great practical value. Some parents have learned from bitter experience that to provide the counter to minor domestic mishaps is to ensure a succession of disasters. The policy of encouraging the children in their wish to help with adult tasks also has its limitations. For instance, cleaning shoes together is not recommended. The department then says that young children need creative play every day, and calls on the parent to provide a sort of second-hand goods yard—sand, water, paint, clay, plasticine, bricks, jugs, bottles, colanders, kettles, tins (with holes), wooden spoons and wooden rakes, jelly moulds, small basins, poster paints, brushes, and really large sheets of paper. Also required is a dressing-up box, containing old scarves, sashes, hats—the department wisely recommends that men’s Should be used especially—cardboard crowns painted gold, long skirts and shawls, long strips of material such as curtains, with lengths of coloured braid sewn to one end, artificial flowers and jewels. This is an admirable list, and is no doubt compiled from the treasures.a good many chil-

dren requisition for themselves in the normal course of events. The mother is then invited to make a house from an old clothes horse with hessian fixed on with drawing pins, with a little window cut out, and a bell for visitors. The department, says: “There is no need to tackle all these ideas at once.”

Developing the theme, the department next suggests the provision of an aquarium, which it says need not be expensive and gives endless interest all the year round. It also hints that birds can be watched if there is some way of attracting them* just outside the window. Very young children, the bulletin says, get great pleasure from taking oddments out of a saucepan, putting them back, and banging on the lid again. “If you can stand the racket,” the department adds with becoming candour. Singing and telling stories as the mother mends or knits is recommended, and children can be promised such things as tea in a train—the table being the engine with a biscuit tin, an upturned basin, and on that a candlestick with a lighted candle. “So dull days can have an air of mystery and fun,” the newsletter says. “Unless it is extremely wet. children who are suitably-dressed enjoy walks in the rain. We only hope you do. too.” It would seem that this plea comes a little late in the programme. The next step by the department may well be the publication of a further newsletter* advising mothers who have spent the day making trains and houses, feeding the birds and fish, singing songs and telling stories, how to persuade their hungry husbands that the provision of a substantial meal is unimportant.