Bowling Boxes

Objective

To help my daughter with the skills of rolling a ball to a specific place (Gross Motor) and problem solving (Cognitive) by helping to balance boxes on top of each other

Materials

• cardboard boxes
• plastic cups
• take away containers

(basically anything from your recycling bin that is light enough to be toppled over by a rolling ball)

Today we had yet another extreme cold weather advisory so Bean and I stuck to playing indoors.  As mentioned in a previous post, she adores throwing and (attempting) to catch balls so I thought it would be good to use those same balls but for indoor bowling. We do not have one of those plastic bowling sets with the pins, but we do have tons and tons of cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes.  I stacked the boxes up into a tower and placed cups and smaller baskets near the top then asked Bean to roll the ball to the tower to knock it down.  I demonstrated first and she smiled and got excited and of course wanted to try her hand at it.  I began building again, but she was at my side, so I included her in building.  She did not really help, but it was my attempt to at least get her thinking about balancing all of these items to construct a tower. This activity is open ended as there is no right way to do it and there are so many possible configurations that could be built.

Have you tried this at home?  Do you have ideas for other material that could be used as stacking toys (blocks)?

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Basket and Balls

Objective

To encourage the gross motor skill of throwing which helps toddler's coordination

Materials

• Basket
• An assortment of balls

I really think that the outdoors is the best place for Bean to explore her physical abilities and develop her gross motor skills. The last couple of weeks have been really cold, so Bean and I have not been spending as much time outside as we would like.   I know that my daughter loves to throw a ball, she especially enjoys playing catch with her Uncle.  He says she has quite the arm already!  Since I already knew that she enjoyed throwing, I decided to add a basket the last time she wanted to play catch.  Instead of throwing the ball to me, I put a basket on its side and threw balls in it to see if Bean would do as I did.  My hope was that she would be able to increase her coordination skills by aiming the ball to go into the basket.  She did manage to, but only because she stood right beside it when she threw the balls! haha! It was a really fun activity for her and I am sure that we will try it again.   Maybe we will even move back a little bit the next time and learn to throw from a bit of a distance, or not!

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