Preschool Pointers - 17: How to Hide Presents

Problem:

You went out shopping for your kids' Christmas presents, and you think, man, they'll never check here! (At four, my kids aren't looking for presents specifically. They're into the Santa thing, hook, line and sinker.) But they will check there, and everywhere. Because they just find stuff. They just do. So, what to do?


Solution:

Use the goldfish attention span to your advantage. Have most of the presents in bags, slightly harder to see. This will, hopefully, be enough. Leave two more boring presents out in front. Hopefully, in the two seconds between them finding the stash and you hearing them find the stash, they are distracted by your decoy and don't go farther. Then shove them out of the room, and tell them that those are presents for them from you, but not to look anymore because they're only for Christmas day.

Now, this won't work for every child, and hopefully your hiding is better than mine. But it somehow magically worked for mine. They know they're getting a Rapunzel comforter from ME. And they didn't see all the other gifts...only three more days to go, right?