Tag Archives: gross motor skills

Spider Web Spelling

Last week, a friend of mine posted about a spelling activity she did with her three year old. I loved it so much, I had to do it with Buddy too. We went trick or treating for letters while walking on a spider web!

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

To set up this activity, I used painters tape to make a spider web on the floor. Then I made some Halloween spelling cards. I originally was going to print out some words, but I decided to just use some Halloween stickers on index cards. I wanted to use words that had few letters, and I wanted a picture so Buddy could “read” the word before he spelled it.

Buddy is better at identifying capital letters, so I decided to make this activity a lowercase letter activity. Fortunately, our magnetic letter set has both upper and lowercase letters to choose from. After I wrote the words, I pulled out the letters. Some letters I had multiples of in the set, but I chose just to do one of every letter that was needed.Once I had the words and letters set, I put one letter on each intersection of the spider web. I put the extras at the top vertex of the web.

I told Buddy he needed to pick a word, and then he would go trick or treating for the letters. To make this a little more challenging, I told Buddy he could only walk on the line when he was going through the spider web. Buddy did a good job of remembering the letters he was looking for, but sometimes he wanted to bring the card with him in the spider web. 

Once Buddy found the letters, we took them to our front door. I used a magnetic chip clip to hold up the word card, and then Buddy spelled his word underneath. Before we started each new word, we looked to see what letters were needed, and which ones he’d already found. 

I was surprised that Buddy liked the longer words. When I was making the word cards, I almost skipped pumpkin because I thought it would be too long for him. But Buddy liked having a lot of letters to find, and he was really proud when he was done. 

Buddy had a lot of fun with this activity. When we had picked up all of the letters, he put them back down on the spider web. It did take a little bit of time to set up and pick up, but it was worth it. It was such a fun way to practice letters and work on gross motor skills.

Do you have any other ideas for activities with magnetic letters? Please share in the comments.

Laundry Basketball

Happy New Year! My resolution for 2017 was to blog every Monday of the year, and I’m thrilled to say I was able to keep it! I hope to maintain that goal for 2018 as well. Thanks so much to everyone who has read this blog in 2017. Your comments and pins mean so much to me.

Buddy and I made up the game of laundry basketball a few weeks ago. It is so easy, and so much fun, that I had to share.

Usually, when I fold Buddy’s laundry, he’s always in my way. Sometimes he wants to help put away things like washcloths and small blankets. But often, he wants to either dump everything out of the basket or put a bunch of stuffed animals in it. (Read here about our laundry basket stuffed animal activity.) Both make it difficult for me to get the laundry folded and put away.

Buddy has a beach ball in his room, which we throw around a lot. On this day, Buddy decided to try to throw it in the laundry basket. This game was the perfect activity for the two of us while I folded laundry! Much of the time, he missed the basket, so nothing affected my folding. When he missed, he happily ran after the beach ball to try again. Sometimes, the ball came into the basket when I was pulling out clothes. When this happened, I batted the ball away, and he didn’t get a basket. Buddy thought this was hilarious! And sometimes, he was able to get a basket when my hands were busy folding or putting things away.

When I got around to taking pictures, my laundry basket was mostly empty. But when we started our game, it was completely full!

This game was the perfect activity for the two of us. Buddy got some practice with his gross motor skills, and he had a ton of fun.  I was able to fold laundry and have fun at the same time. Best of all, there was nothing to clean up when we were done. Laundry basketball will definitely be a regular game in our house for a long time.

Do you have any ideas for other easy games? Please share in the comment section!

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25 Fun and Free Printables for Toddlers

I love when I find easy activities to print and use with Buddy. There are so many mom blogs with awesome activities ready to use! This week, I wanted to feature my favorite printables that I’ve tried with Buddy, as well as some that I’m looking forward to using. Almost all of the ones I’ve used have been laminated with my Scotch laminator, which I love! It makes it easy to save these activities to use again and again.

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

Matching Activities

Buddy loves matching activities! We tried this truck one from Royal Baloo’s blog, and Buddy loved it! There were a lot of cards and many similar ones (several different police cars, fire trucks, etc.), so the second time through I edited it down to one of each type of car. He’s so into cars right now, so this was perfect for him.

Other matching printables:

Scavenger Hunts

I blogged about our nature scavenger hunt earlier this summer (read about it here.) The printable we used was from Life With My Little’s blog. Her pictures made it really easy for Buddy to know exactly what we were looking for. And we both had so much fun finding the things on this list.

Other scavenger hunt printables:

Games

I loved this shape board game from Simple Fun for Kids’ blog. Buddy and I tried it out on one of our Time to Read Tuesdays after reading a shape book. We used shape buttons to be our markers. The shape die got a little crumpled, but the game was a lot of fun. This was Buddy’s first board game, and he really liked it.

Other toddler game printables:

Movement Activities

These construction movement cards are another amazing printable from Royal Baloo. Buddy had a lot of fun picking up one card at a time and moving like that construction vehicle. It was a great way for Buddy to work on his gross motor skills in a fun way.

Other movement printables:

Book Activities

Since I’m a teacher, I get really happy when I find great activities that go along with a book. It’s so important to read, and the activities make it extra fun. 1+1+1=1’s blog has so many great book related printables, including these ones that we used with the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (affiliate link)

Other book printables:

Duplo Activities

Buddy loves Duplos, so I put together a Duplo Busy Bag for our summer plane trips. I took pictures of many different small Duplo scenes that could be made from the blocks in the bag. He really loved picking out a picture to make, and then putting it together himself.

Other Duplo activities:

After looking back through my Pinterest boards to find these printables, I’m reminded of a lot of new fun ideas to try with Buddy. Hopefully you found something that was helpful for you too! Please comment if you have any other great printable links for toddlers.

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Move Like the Animals: A Gross Motor Skills Game

Buddy was a very late walker, and he works with a physical therapist once a week. As a result, I’m always looking for fun ways to build his gross motor skills at home. Last week, Buddy’s physical therapist mentioned that they had been imitating different animals in their session. I thought that sounded like an idea that would be fun to do at home as well.

*Disclaimer- This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

Buddy received a set of Fisher-Price Little People Zoo Animals for Easter. I thought they would be fun to incorporate into our animal movement game. To play the game, Buddy chose an animal from the tub. Then, we would try to move like that animal. Some of the animals were easier to think of movements for than others, but it was fun trying to make up movements for all of them.

When we first started, Buddy spent a lot of time looking through the animals and deciding which one to pick.

Once he picked an animal, we both got up and moved like it. For the zebra, we did high marching kicks. For the panda, we pretended to climb up bamboo. We swung around like a monkey, waddled like a penguin, hopped like a kangaroo, and snapped our arms like an alligator’s mouth. We crouched and crawled and roared for both the lion and the tiger. The seal was the weirdest one movement wise; we just waddled around and barked like a seal. Both of us had so much fun!

Marching like a zebra

Climbing bamboo like a panda

Moving like animals is so much fun!

After a little while, Buddy wanted to just play with the animals and the container, which was fine. He had a lot of fun just lining up all of the animals and then saying their names.

It was a really fun activity for both of us, and it was great for practicing some of his gross motor skills. We have played this game several times so far, and I’m sure we’ll play it again soon. If you have any other ideas for fun gross motor activities, please share in the comments.