This week we’ve been going through the Independent Play activity challenge. We received five activities via email, to add to our collection of ideas to do. Honestly like any “challenge” this one had it’s ups and downs.
Toy washing Station:
The first activity was a bit of a let down. It was just a kids toy wash station. Jamie gave ideas like using tooth brushes for small toys, etc. etc. While we did try this one out with some of my daughter’s new Easter toys, it wasn’t really an “independent activity” I feel like anytime kids are playing around the bathtub, or in our case in the bath tub, they should be watched a little more! Anyhow, my daughter still had fun cleaning her barbie puppies! Click here to see the fun toys we used.
Line Trace:
The second activity was a basic line trace. I set out the cute buttons and drew some fun lines on a piece of construction paper. I told my daughter I had a fun activity planned for her, and she was pretty excited…until she sat down and I showed her the picture of the activity (as seen below) and gave a little demo of how you just put the buttons on the line. She picked up the three buttons I had laid down, and put them back in the pile. She told me that activity was boring. Maybe some kids like it, not mine though.
Cheerios Bracelets
This activity was a hit. Jamie recommended doing a whole sensory bin worth of cheerios, but to me that just seemed a little wasteful because we wouldn’t eat them after my daughter had touched all over them. Instead we got a little bowl and strung the cheerios on pipe cleaners. we made some fun bracelets and a necklace. The cheerio-pipe cleaner jewelry is something we would do again!
Toilet Paper Building
We haven’t tried this activity yet. We have so many different kinds of blocks and such things that digging out all of the toilet paper rolls really didn’t sound appealing to me this week. It sounded like an activity that I would have a lot of clean up for and wouldn’t get much “independent time” out of it. Maybe someday when we will get around to testing it out on a week I’m not so busy. Rereading that paragraph makes me wonder if it sounds bad, but honestly I’m not really a play with toilet paper kind of person, and my daughter (and her puppy sister) just shed it. Sorry on this one, let me know if it worked for you guys!
Stacking Cups
This was our little minute to win it challenge after coming home from the park today. Basically you take a bunch of random plastic cups out of your cabinet and have your kid stack them in different towers and such. It went pretty well. As for an independent play activity, it only lasted five minutes and my daughter wanted me with her.
Overall Review:
Our favorite and the most time consuming activity was the cheerio bracelets. The second runner up would have been the stacking cups, and in third place was the the toy washing station.
I hope you guys enjoyed this post, and as always let me know in the comments which activities you tried out of this challenge.
Have a great weekend,
Brie
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