They had to be fresh to keep youngins interesting, so for a very long time i've been trolling Pinterest (💜!!!) for ideas.
They also had to be easy-ish to assemble and clean up. I know me, and lots of hands on prep isn't going to happen at this juncture, so simplicity was key.
When ordering Christmas presents, I also ordered items that would be used for these activities, which often helped me reach the "free shipping" goal from various sites, and saved me from running all around town looking for the elements I needed. Clearly, this was long before my third trimester brain appeared. 😉
A mirror for mirror play - using the rainbow arch is just one way to explore the gazillion options with mirror play. Leif loves this one, too.
The Matching Block Shapes are miniature blocks that I traced onto cardstock. I only did 4 different blocks to start with so as not to overwhelm little brains.
The Rubberband Block makes me a little nervous with rubberbands snapping and such. The point is to remove all the rubber bands, and then put them all on again. I once had a ponytail band snap while I was putting it into my hair. It went right into my eye, leaving me almost blind in that eye for over a week, so I'm VERY wary of rubberbands and toddlers!
I'll give it a few tries myself, then try it with stretched out potholder loom loops, and see if they work as well. If so, I'll switch to them.
The Lacing Beads are just standard lacing beads, but I limited the amount to one bead of each color, since James has not seemed interested in them as a whole before. We'll see how he likes this new simplified version!
The color matching activity I made for Leif long ago. I simplified it for a younger babe (it had gotten very difficult with all the additional similar colors - even I had a hard time with it!) with just a few distinct color choices.
The White on Black Drawing activity is a Pinterest find. Most people use a white marker, but all I had was this white china marker from either my high school yearbook days, or my sister's (so, um, OLD). It works wonderfully and makes for neat art.
I'm a big fan of not only using what I have on hand, but also using items that can be used for multiple purposes, not just schooling. For instance, many of my trays and bowls are also used for entertaining. Other smaller containers and utensils are used in both the play kitchen inside and the mud kitchen outside (as well as my kitchen!). Items used in the treasure basket can easily be repurposed later (a natural sponge for sensory exploration now is used for water transfer later, then sponge painting after that!)
Those are just some of the activities I pulled together today (easy, like I said!)
I made lots of others that unfortunately, I don't have trays for right now, so am packaging them up to swap out with these activities.
Happy Days!
