Planned Play Activities

Part of my April goals was to spend some time researching and picking out planned play activities for Max. With my new job and busy to-do list I don't have a ton of extra time so I wanted them to be easy to execute. Thanks to Pinterest I found some great sites that have play activities by age. 

These are the sites I'm using:  

I Can Teach My Child

Play Create Explore

Productive Parenting

The first activity we tried was a Sensory Bin with noodles, rice and shapes. Now I know you are thinking that these are dangerous things for a small baby who tries to eat everything. You are right, but with careful watching or a pacci in place this is a really fun activity. They get to see all the different colors, feel all the different textures and hear the different sounds when they push around the shapes and noodles.

It was such a nice weekend so we brought the sensory bin outside since we knew it might make a mess.

Max had fun playing with everything. It only held his attention for 10 minutes or so because we were outside and he'd rather pick up sticks, but he kept going back to it.

This was literally right before I decided to take him to go get his haircut. Poor little guy couldn't even see.

I love how I could save our bin and put the lid on our glass container. David only let me keep it until the next day, but it was nice to just take it out and let him play with it again.

The second one we tried is called Cheerio Challenge and it's VERY easy to do, it has a problem solving aspect to it. All you need is an empty, dry water bottle and Cheerios. Put a couple of Cheerios in the water bottle and see if your child can get the Cheerios out. 

He got frustrated at first.

Then he tried to drink it like he would a regular water bottle.

He also tried to hand it to us to help him (which we nicely handed it back and explained that he needed to try).

David filled it with a lot of Cheerios to make the noise louder and it seemed to increase his motivation to get them out.

Then all the sudden he tipped it over and they came out! He was surprised by it and was able to do it over and over. We were impressed and proud. I am looking forward to picking out a few more for this weekend.