Whats Mine is Mine and Whats Yours is Mine

Anyone who has kids under 5 understands that one of the hardest concepts for kids to understand is sharing. And for those of us lucky enough to have two kids under 5, well it is just twice as fun. I spend a great deal of time refereeing over everything - from who has the Tom and Jerry milk glass to who gets to get out of the car first when we get to school.

When the kids were first old enough to get into the sharing squabbles, I tried to solve the problem by getting two of a lot of things. Unfortunately I made the rookie mistake of getting things that were not identical. Clearly the purple sippy cup was far superior to the red one and I don't even want to talk about the legendary fights over the green crayon. So obviously my second solution was to buy things that were exactly the same. Not surprisingly, that strategy also failed miserably. Somehow, it always seemed that whatever toy one had the other thought that one was vastly superior, even though they the held the duplicate in their hands. So what's a Mom to do?? (Other than the obvious of teaching my kids how to share better).

Today was my stab at solution number three. The kids for awhile have needed new buckets to play in the dirt and so today I bought them each one. But I also bought them some stickers to go along with it - in particular letter stickers. The kids really enjoyed using the stickers to put their own names on their buckets (and a good spelling lesson too as well as fine motor) and I got them other stickers to help decorate them. Voila...

We played outside for a good hour or so and their was not one argument of whose bucket was whose and when Raif got home from work they couldn't wait to show him what they made.

I think I need to invest in a lot more letter stickers....