Ever since my son turned three, we have chosen a Letter of the Month to help us stay creative about our adventures. We do all sorts of activities, listen to music, eat food, pick colors, all around the letter we pick. I thought it might be fun, but it has turned out to be my best parenting idea ever. Here's why:

1. It keeps our daily focus on what we DO not what we HAVE. I am trying to raise minimalist kids by putting my energy into experiences, not things, because toys are just going to be a burden of waste for them as adults. 

2. It reinforces letters and sounds without banging them over the head. We are playing with words in a game-like way, that I hope will help with literacy when it's more developmentally appropriate.

3.  It keeps me from getting bored. Stay at home parenting can be an exercise in stamina when you do the same monotonous tasks every single day. It is way too easy to get complacent, let your boredom take over, spend hours on screen time, etc. I feel like this motivates me to stay creative.

4. It's really fun. Can I sell anything as exciting if it starts with the letter of the month? Do we make chores and errands into adventures? Oh hell yes. We have a great time!

W Foods

Adventures Inspired by W

Warhol. We headed to our local art museum to look at a Warhol and a visiting, very fancy, Basquiat. I like taking my kids to art museums, and I find the key is to only see a few objects and then head to the kids' space. Most museums have something (SAM has a great, but mostly hidden one). For the record, my child did not like this painting or the look of that Elvis guy.


Wet Walks in the Woods. I recently read How to Raise a Wild Child. I loved it, and I highly recommend it for parents anywhere, but the big spoiler alert is that our kids need to spend more time outside (surprise!). And that there are outdoor spaces that are well-tamed by man, but we need to be sure to get our kids in wild spaces too. My general goal is one hour outdoors a day, but we try to go play in puddles in big parks too. It rains a LOT in Seattle in the Spring, but we went out and played in the rain and cold every week anyway, and we had a blast. If you would like to try getting outside more, but you aren't sure what the heck to do out there,


Weeding. Yes, we weed together, and they weirdly love it, especially my older son. For W month, we put all of our weeds out on the steps so we could compare their roots. It felt really satisfying and fun, and I love sharing this simple work with them.



World. For Earth Day, we took our kids to beach clean ups on the coast of Washington (more W!) with some of their friends. I hope it becomes a tradition, because we had so much fun and modeled for our kids how important it is to take care of the environment. Since we were already East, we drove up to the Olympics to look at the snow. We talked about water in different forms, but also just tried to focus on how beautifully made our world is and how important it is that we take care of it.



Water. We went to the aquarium to look at all sorts of things that live in the water. Ours has a big dome, so you are just surrounded by water, and the kids had a great time just breathing in the setting.

Making Things with W

W Books

Other Ideas for W Month