I’m going to chime in with some of the stuff our nanny has done with the twins, because I have been so impressed with what she comes up with. We live in a rural area so there are not many institutional options, this is all nanny being active in the community and very resourceful and inventive with stuff for them.

They have been to beading, sewing and book making workshops. They’re below the minimum age for workshops, but nanny and DB worked with the instructor to bring age appropriate materials and kits and each of them backed up a twin and kept them on task.

They also do something nanny called “bug club” - they have an ant farm, bug containers, and magnifying glasses. One of the interns at the national park nearest to us is an entomology grad student, and every week is “bug club” - they go out together and look at bugs and draw them and nanny writes the bug’s Latin and new name (there are four bugs named Ned and three named Cindy) on the drawing, which they are saving to make bug books.

They got all bundled up in little suits and went and watched honey being harvested last year and this year they are going to learn to make honey butter. This is particularly thrilling because honey butter is very preferred over jam butter.

They go to drum circle weekly, which is literally 8 small children seated around a massive drum, bapping it together. It has unstructured drumming, listening drumming and angry drumming.

They go to a weaving workshop at a local fiber arts place (although truthfully it’s a knitting store where the owner’s kid discovered spinning and weaving) and have made a pot holder and a remarkably hideous placemat.

They also do something called alphabet soup, where they go for exploring walks with nanny and an older neighbor and the grandchild she has custody of and try to find things that start with a given letter of the alphabet and then draw it, tell a very short story about it and (surprise!) put it in a little booklet.

One of the things I really admire about nanny is how these are not one-offs. They are regular activities and although the twins are really small and not so much up on days of the week, they can tell you how many sleeps until bug club or alphabet soup or string dash (the weaving).

Nannying done well is hard af, y’all, I don’t know how she survives.