How to (Try to) Keep a Two-Year-Old Busy

I didn't know best how to answer your question, Sarah, to be sure you would read it, so I will just make a post on the topic.

Keeping Anna busy during our school work is probably my biggest challenge as well. She absolutely does not ever nap, so I always have to find a way to work with her as well.

Anna also would prefer to do what Scott is doing. My plan is to photocopy his worksheet pages so she can have the same page to color on. My printer is out of ink, so I haven't done this yet. I think that will help a lot. So far, this is what is working now:

When I purchased school supplies on sale at Walmart and on clearance at Target, I got everything for Anna as well. Crayons and markers were so cheap that I bought about 8 packages of each. But I made a pencil box for Anna, just like Scott's. I filled it with crayons, pencils, erasers, a calculator (just for fun), a glue stick, and safety scissors (these are ONLY out at school time now after last year's barber shop incident!). For now, I have just been giving her coloring books and construction paper to draw on or cut and glue. If she has noticed that it's not the same as Scott's, I try to find a picture that is similar to what he is doing.

For example, the other day he was coloring a rainbow and we were learning about the specific order of colors on a rainbow. She asked for a rainbow picture too. Since we had a Noah's Ark coloring book, I was easily able to find her a rainbow. If he is busy working on something for a minutes, I will help her color or write some words for her.

When we work on phonics or math, she totally believes she is doing the work too because she sits there and shouts out any letters or numbers she can think of.

In the end, I think that giving her photocopies of Scott's pages will help with her last bit of impatience. She enjoys sitting with us right now though, and "playing school" is her favorite time of day. As soon as she eats breakfast, she begins asking me if it's time to play school yet.