craft ideas for an OCD 4 year old

a reply to: TinySickTears

Yeah, the doodle board, that's what I should have called it, rather than magnetic board. My kid takes it everywhere. We have a big one and a small one.

a reply to: Biigs
That sounds familiar and made me chuckle ^^.
You know what, just for fun I´ll tape my dB-meter while searching something in the lego box, tomorrow. Any bets on the noise level? I predict at least 90 dB.

When you hear rumbles and noises, and the water tap at 3am, you know it´s your daughter rearanging the room, starting to clean the surfaces first. When you hear that, you know it´s at least two hours until she´s finished. No way in stopping her, she would not sleep but stay awake in her bed (because that kept her from sleeping before) then start all over with the first sunrays. She would move her bed and the other furniture. She was intelligent though. After the first times when I ordered her to bed again, she would use rags and towels to make the furniture slide stealthy.

That´s when she was a bit older though, from 6-8, quarter yearly. I suspect it had to do with the seasons.. new bedware, new alignement.

a reply to: TinySickTears

If she´s allowed to play videogames, games like Anno 1602 will both challenge satisfy her managing skills, but I think for that she needs to get a bit older. My daughter was into effectiveness, she even concluded most of the formulas when she was just having basic math (+,-,*) in school, by trial.
she had tables for her production chains, not the actual formulas at hand...

I have two ideas.
A slingshot and a bag full of ball bearings.

Or a can of snuff and a sharp knife.

That ought to keep her busy.

My kids love me.

a reply to: butcherguy

I wish you were my daddy.

originally posted by: kosmicjack
a reply to: TinySickTears

Put her to work helping around the house. Not kidding. My 4 year old loves to help clean. Making beds, folding laundry, etc. Win/Win.

This. Our younger kid (7) has always been OCD with organization. Every thing has it's place & every place has it's thing. Don't argue it, lol. She's also very happy to help make something extremely tidy, she'll even clean the slats on the heat vent with Q-tips to get allll the dust off as best possible. Want to reorganize a box in the basement? She'll out-tetris the grown-ups doing it.

Also, construction toys are a big deal. The kid has more legos & k'nex than I know what to do with. When she gets to building something, it's ALWAYS pre-sorted by type, then size, then color for easy grabs. Yours may do the same.

I would say anything that would let her design and use patterns.

So jewelry making with beads or woven laces. You could attempt to teach her simple finger crochet, the interplay of the yarn in its loops and plaits might intrigue her.

Simple paint or color by number intended for children.

You can get all kinds of colored tiles and make mosaic with simple plaster of paris caste bases - again, let her plan out her designs beforehand.

These go over well with my OCD kid:

Video games - Harvest Moon, Create, and Disney Infinity

Board games - Monopoly (jr works too), lego games (especially minotaurus, & memory card games)

Puzzles - any

Crafts - I don't know what they are called, but they are colorful loops that you can loop together to make potholders and bracelets and headbands and such. My daughter makes stuff and sells at farmer's market on saturdays.

a reply to: TinySickTears

My grand daughter loves to play with those little foam pieces. They have a million different kinds, shapes and colors. She glues them on things to make projects. You can make cards, pictures just about anything. It's not messy. Also molding clay is another neat thing to make and create things.

Look on youtube for kids crafts. I bet you find things there.

Spirograph

Jigsaw puzzles - I had a 3D jigsaw of the Sistine Chapel which was way too difficult for me. Your little girl might well be up to the challenge

Let's see, I was a bit like that and in my time, the 60's, my Mom pulled out boxes of family photos and I sorted through them for the best photos, best memories, prank photos, etc and I would put them in photo albums for her. Nowadays it's all digital so I'm not sure if it would be the same working from a screen.

Also planning Spring gardens and sorting through all the seed packets figuring out the distance between seeds, the depth they are planted, the amount of water they need and mixing in some flowers that attract bees and butterflies. You have to envision it grown to full size with just a seed in your hand.

Now, at my age I can put together a potager garden easily and make it look amazing too. She's too young now, but it sounds like she'd be a good helper next Spring and start learning how it all works.

She sounds adorable!

STM