No TV Tuesday

Today marks one month since I implemented 'No TV Tuesday'  - to be fair this applies (currently) only to my children.   I still typically watch something during nap time or after they go to bed.    Although I am sure I could benefit from an entire day sans television as well.       

I implemented No TV Tuesday because my son (and every rare once in a while my little girl, nooo!) had started to get sucked in and would just watch way too much tv nearly every morning.   Now before you start screaming evil anti-tv messages at me - most of what he watches are the PBS shows that promote reading, learning, and he has mastered his alphabet as a result of these shows. Yes, I am fully in control of the remote so I simply could turn it off, but some many days the tv will go on, I'll get busy around the house or with Mae - and the tv remains on.   To be fair he doesn't often stay glued to it indefinitely, but there are some days he does.  

Tuesday was chosen because it is usually a day that we are home most of the day. I did not want to choose Monday, that just sounded cruel to me. Mondays are already well... Mondays.  I wanted to have it be a day where he'd have to find alternatives to the television for entertainment.  Whether that was to go outside or to play with his plethora of toy options indoors.   He does a fairly good job - mostly on Tuesdays he simply asks WHY can't the tv be on, but otherwise he finds ways to entertain himself.

To be honest, I have woken on a couple of these Tuesdays and have seriously thought about lying about what day of the week it was.   Half way through last week's Tuesday morning I almost caved due to severe sleep deprivation.   I've held my ground and Tuesdays have now for the last four weeks been TV free.   It's gone so well we might even expand to Thursdays (we'll see!)

In general due to the fact we've been doing school a little bit each day the tv has been off more and more.  We're finding alternatives to the boob-tube and ways to help Ace find entertainment aside from the television.    In fact the main alternative during No TV Tuesdays is the fact that it is Music Day.    This is where I get out Ace's instruments (a growing collection) and we play various types of music.    Pandora has been helping me out some and we've been focusing on Classical music lately.

Ace like Music Days when he gets to play his recorder,  his guitar, or other things that we turn into instruments.   He's learned a little bit about various composers and types of music - all because we turned off the TV.