shape hunt

This was a completely last-minute, thrown-together idea that M ended up loving.  I can't say I'm 100% surprised since sometimes I'll put a lot of effort into things he spends 5 minutes doing.  Funny how that works....

We've been trying to keep M busy in this very cold weather we've been having.  The other night I spent 20 minutes playing a game M kind of created himself that was a cross between chase and hide-and-seek.  Anyway, M took a rest the other day and woke up about an hour before dinner time.  Sometimes that can be the longest hour of the day.  We needed something novel...

I quickly cut up some paper into shapes (circles, squares, and triangles) and colored them.  During the Christmas season M loved finding our elf each morning so I thought a "scavenger hunt" of sorts would be fun for him.  I hid the shapes (we did the circles, then the squares, etc.).  He loved searching for them and collecting them as he found them.  M knows those three shape names but still occasionally mixes them up so it was a great reinforcement for IDing those shapes.  Really, you could do this with anything (shapes, letters, numbers, words, etc.)  You could even add some kind of sorting element after they're all found.

Our version ended up being quick, easy, and filled up about a half hour!

As always, some photos...

shapes-

found one-

hidden triangle-

obstacle course

M loves to run, jump, and play. Something we're working on at two and a half is following directions. Those two things made an obstacle course a pretty great morning activity on a rainy Monday. 

You could set this up any way with whatever you have around your house. It took me about 5 minutes to get it ready for M.  Our course included:

- crawl under the blanket covered table

- step over the golf clubs on blocks

- throw the frisbee into the box

- go through the tunnel

- hop on the colored circles down the hall

M loved this and did it several times. It also gave me some ideas for future activities (I loved the colored spot hopping). Another key piece was that some things were either new or a little hard for M. The frisbee part was hard but he tried again and again with a smile on his face. We will definitely do this again with different variations on the obstacles.