Diaper Changing Activities.

As you probably know, I work at a center based child-care facility as the teacher over 18months to 24 months. I am the only teacher over 6 children and the most difficult time of my day is diaper changing times! 3 of my kids are still in diapers, 1 is in the midst of being potty trained which requires supervision in the bathroom on my part, and 2 in underwear. The 3 who sit on the potty go every half hour, and those times usually go pretty quickly and I'm able to leave the other 3 out to play freely with no problems. The problems arise once an hour when I have to get 3 kids to go potty, and change 3 diapers at the same time. I have had days when all heck breaks loose in my room during this time because I just can't entertain, change a diaper, and supervise toilet sitting all at once! Too often these times would turn into a half an hour ordeal of chaos and crying kids.

I had resorted to sitting the more feisty children next to me while I changed diapers, but I did not like doing that because I did not want them to feel punished when they had not done anything wrong [yet] but I also couldn't stop if they decided to push another kid and take their toy while I was in the middle of changing diapers. I discussed the dilemma I was having with one of the moms. She understood where I was coming from because she is an elementary school teacher, and offered to bring in some sticker books that her daughter loved from home to help during these times. From our discussion, it occurred to me that part of the chaos was because they play with the same toys week after week, and though we try to rotate the toys as much as possible, there's only so long you can do that and the children were getting bored.

It was from this that the idea of Diaper Changing Activities was born! I decided that I would come up with some new activities that I could set out for them to explore while changing diapers. Something that was clean, inexpensive, no set-up required, that I could give to each child to encourage exploration and play during these times instead of fighting and mischief.

The first diaper changing activity I gave was stickers. Imade a little booklet of 4 page protectors clipped together and put some sticker sheets in side, and foam stickers on the outside. I handed these out before getting ready to start changing them, and their interest was piqued - just the response I was hoping for. They enjoyed exploring the stickers and moving them around, putting them around the classroom, and I was able to clean everyone up without a hitch. SUCCESS! What a relief it has been to have happy playing children when I am unable to give them my full supervision.

 Here are the 6 booklets I made, real easy and inexpensive and I'll use the booklets for other activities to come. See the dry erase markers? Ya that's another activity that we did...

Having lots of fun putting foam stickers on her arm!

 Checking out the sticker sheets. 

Vivien enjoyed pulling apart the stickers than putting them back on the page.

I can't even express the relief I have experienced since I've come up with this simple solution. I cannot believe it took me as long as it did to think of this. Now at least once weekly I rotate a new diaper changing activity into the mix so they have new things to explore, and do not get bored with the same things over and over. This can easily be applied to trying to cook dinner, clean, or car trips.
Until next time, hope you can find a use for these activities to help make your life a little more healthy.

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