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• Painters' Tape Balance Beams
• Homemade Finger Paints
• Paper Airplanes
• Dora Backpack Game
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Painters' Tape Balance Beams
Using masking or painters tape make a line on the carpet or floor.*
Have child walk across the line as if it were a balance beam. You can also make shapes on the ground with the tape. It is a great opportunity to teach shapes and prepositions and just for them to get moving and let some energy out. For example you could give instructions such as:
"Jump in the circle, stand between the square and triangle, do a dance inside the rectangle, walk backwards on the line, etc..."
And the clean up is a breeze.
*You can also do this activity outside using sidewalk chalk.
-mom of 1 ½ yr old
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Homemade Finger Paints
What you'll need:
1/2 cup boiling water
2 tbsp. cornstarch
6 tbsp. cold water
Food coloring
Preparation:
Dissolve cornstarch in cold water in a cup. Add
mixture to boiling water. Stir constantly. Heat
mixture until it becomes glossy. Add food coloring.
Cool completely before using.
-mom of 1 ½ yr old
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Paper Airplanes
Line up a few pieces of 8x10" paper end to end to make a runway. Make a bunch of paper airplanes in different sizes using everything from construction paper to the little subscription cards you tear out of magazines. The goal is to try to get one or all of them to land on the "runway". The game can be expanded from there by building a "hanger" out of Legos or blocks for the planes to fly into at the end of the runway. Great for target practice!
-mom of 3 yr old
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Dora Backpack Game
I played this game a lot when I was pregnant with the twins as I was basically immobile after lunchtime. I figured it might come in handy with several people being pregnant and it getting warmer where it really is hard to be active when you are so big and uncomfortable.
I would say something like "Dora needs to collect 6 pieces of treasure." My daughter would take a backpack and go around the house collecting things and putting it in the backpack. She would bring it back to me once she had the set number of things to collect. I would close my eyes, reach my hand into the bag and try to guess what each piece of treasure was. She then would put the treasure back and go about collecting new treasure. It made it more fun for her when I made outlandish guesses or if she stumped me, but it would keep her entertained for a while, and would allow for me to just sit and stay off of my feet.
-mom of 4 yr old and 1 ½ yr old twins
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