Day 8 Montessori-inspired Christmas Activity With Your Toddler

We talked about gross motor skills in brief in the post for activity on Day 7 of the Christmas series. Activity for Day 8 will again focus on gross motor skills.

AGE GROUP – 18 months onwards

MATERIALS NEEDED

• Print out of this printable with Christmas stuff. We had used the same printable in Day 6 and Day 7 activities as well. You can reuse those laminated cards for this activity.
• Lamination pouches, cotton handkerchief, scissors and iron – if you want to laminate the print outs at home. You can follow the DIY Home Lamination procedure HERE

• Access to lamination facility if you do not want to do it at home
• Bubble wraps – I had saved some bubble wraps from Amazon packagings and used it happily

TIME REQUIRED FOR ACTIVITY PREPARATION – 15-30 minutes depending upon whether you are laminating the cards at home or not

HOW and WHAT TO DO

• From the printout of this printable, cut individual pictures and laminate them separately.
• Tell the names of all the items on this sheet to your child.
• Put these cards spread out on the floor.
• Cover them with bubble wrap and tape the wrap on the floor.
• Ask your child to run and jump on a particular card, say bells card. The sounds from the bubble wrap while jumping is so much fun. Not to forget the sensory exposure child is getting from jumping on the bubble wrap.
• Let it be a free play after some time. Let your child go and jump on any of the cards. You can ask in between, on which card are you jumping to encourage language building.

SKILLS DEVELOPED

• Gross motor skills
• Sensory experience of bubble wrap
• Language building – explore and talk about names and characteristics of the card items

CAN SOME MATERIALS BE REPLACED?

If you do not want to laminate the printables, you can paste them on a cardboard and still use it for activities. But I prefer lamination because it makes the stuff durable, more so because I will be using them in multiple activities and  would want to preserve them for next year Christmas as well.

HOW TO TWEAK FOR YOUNGER KIDS

• For babies who are in the crawling stage, you can encourage them to crawl over the bubble wrap, it is a great experience for them as well. They will enjoy the sounds when the bubbles burst while they crawl.

HOW TO TWEAK FOR OLDER KIDS

• This activity can be enjoyed by everyone, from younger toddlers to older kids to adults as well.

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