Little Man's Kitchen Corner

I spend a good amount of time in our kitchen every day.  Cooking and washing dishes, mostly, but those two things take up a large amount of time (remember, we still don't have a dishwasher).  Little Man loves to be wherever I am, but with such a small floor plan in that room, there's only so much space for toys and clutter.  Hence the reason I set up this little corner just for him.  

A dear friend of ours from church had several boxes of picture frames in a storage unit that she didn't want.  Would I like to come look at them and pick out as many as I want?  Yes, please!  (More on all of that in a later post.)  In the boxes were several clear acrylic frames with magnets on the back (eleven, to be precise).  We have a set of flashcards with letters, words, pictures, and colors on them that Little Man enjoys "playing."  He loves to play cards.  We tend to stick with the ones with the letters the most so I grabbed eleven of the picture cards that he doesn't know the words for yet and placed those in the frames. After using the ABC cards as much as we do, he now knows and recognizes all 26 letters of the alphabet, so here's hoping we'll pick up a few more vocab words.  Once he gets comfortable with these, I'll switch them out for new ones.  Eventually, I'll probably wind up using numbers or shapes.  

In addition to his picture cards there's a photo of him with his cousin and some small magnets he likes to tote around the house.  I'm actually pretty particular about the amount of junk that clutters up the fridge, which is why the front of ours is completely clean.  This keeps him occupied for long periods of time, though, so I'm learning to overlook it.

Directly across from the fridge is this shelf (hence the reason I can call it "Little Man's Kitchen Corner"), and it has two cubby holes dedicated exclusively to him.  My brother and his wife sent Little Man a set of play food and dishes for his birthday.  Big.  Hit.  First of all, anything from "Matt" is solid gold, which is why you see that apron hanging in the corner.  That was Matt's way-back-when, and Little Man adores it.  He spent an entire afternoon walking around in the kitchen wearing it over a pair of big boy underwear.  He likes to pretend that the stool in the above photo is a stove and spread his dishes and food out all over that while saying, "Stir, stir, stir" and "Mmmm...Yummy!"

If you have littles in your house, I highly recommend setting up a space in your kitchen that is just for them.  They will love it, and you will love the time it gives you to get supper on the table without forty thousand interruptions.  Not to mention the fact that it's super-cute to see them standing in the middle of the floor wearing an apron and big boy undies.