The home page of the Do-N-Slide website had me intrigued. Want to stop wasting time repeating yourself, nagging, and feeling frustrated? yes! Do you feel like your children aren’t listening? yes! Would you like your child to participate in new and existing routines? Yes!
The concept behind the Do-N-Slide is pretty simple. Children, by nature, are visual learners. Since they can’t read from a very young age, they depend on us to show them how to do things. Once they are able to communicate verbally, they still depend on visual clues to help them get through their day. That is why board books with very few words are so popular! It’s so much easier to tell a story with visual aides than it is to read aloud a story that young children have a hard time comprehending.
The Do-N-Slide uses this fundamental principle of early learning to help children organize their daily activities and accomplish them in a way that is less stressful for everyone involved (mom most importantly!)
Made from die-cut cardboard (just like those board books we love to read to our children), the Do-N-Slide has two columns and a header column (to put in the day of the week, if needed). One side is the To Do side and the other is the All Done side. It seems so basic, yet the results are quite remarkable.
Parents know how much toddlers, from about the age of 2 onward, have a strong desire to be in control. Getting a child between the ages of 2-4 to do something depends on how you state the request, how much they actually want to do the task, and of course most importantly for them, “What’s in it for me?” I play this game with my son (4 years old) a lot. I manage to convince him that cleaning up, for example, was somehow his idea, and he’s more than willing to do it then. When using the Do-N-Slide system, you can incorporate my ‘idea trick’ into it by laying out the cards of tasks you would like to have done that day, and allowing your child to choose what order to do them in. The child thinks HE has decided how his day will go (“haha, take that mommy!”) yet in the end, your child has accomplished all the tasks you wanted.
There are 3 different packs that are available with the Do-N-Slide: Help Around The House, Potty Training, and Toddler’s Day. The Help Around the House pack has 20 pre-printed cards and 6 blank cards that you can personalize however you wish (either with a pen or with a sticker or whatever you come up with). Also, for more personalization you can use the backs of the pre-printed cards as well to write on.
Right now, if you order the Do-N-Slide Help Around The House pack for $24.99 you can get one of the other two sets of your choice free.
We were able to sample all 3 packs and while Nevaeh is way too young for this set right now, the Potty Training one and Toddler’s Day will be great! Elijah and I used the Help Around The House set. He is really big on charts and organization (wonder where he gets that from hmmmm?) and informed me daily that we needed to put “the sliders in the chart” and he got a real kick out of sliding the card from “To Do” to “All Done”. Like me, he gets a big sense of satisfaction out of seeing his day’s work completed.
We have been using the Do-N-Slide for over 2 weeks now and it’s been a great addition to our household routine. There are days when it gets too busy and “the sliders” don’t get put in for the day, but for those days when we are at home all day long this is a real lifesaver! “I know you want to play DS Elijah and you don’t want to clean up your toys but…it’s on the slider chart!” (Mommy 1, Elijah 0)
The one suggestion I have for the creators of Do-N-Slide is to add magnets to it so that I could post it on my fridge. Right now, it rests on top of my dishwasher or on my counter and while it’s easy for my son to reach, it adds to the mountain of ‘stuff’ I have there.
Are YOU tired of nagging, feeling like the kids are not listening, looking to establish routines the kids will follow? Our Kids to Yours, the creators of the Do-N-Slide, would like to offer 1 reader the opportunity to win their very own!
To enter, check out the Do-N-Slide site. Read the reasons why the Do-N-Slide is beneficial here and comment here with which package you think would help your family the most.
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Please ensure your profile is public or leave me your email address in your comment. This giveaway will end on February 11th at 10:00pm CT. I will use Random.org to choose the winner, email the winner, and post the win here. Giveaway is open to Canadian and US addresses.
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