Celebrating the festive season remotely with family
As the year ends, people of all faiths are preparing for a variety of festivals […]
Read moreTransport tunnel
What you need
- A tunnel (or create one by using a table to crawl under)
- Some small balls or some balled up socks
- Two containers/baskets to keep them in
Benefits
A great physical workout for your child, and a good way to encourage crawling for younger babies. Older more mobile children can still benefit greatly from crawling, as a way to strengthen their arms and shoulders.
This experience will also provide your child with an opportunity to use their transporting schema (a pattern of behaviour whereby children have the need to transport items from one place to another – something which many young children do, often to adult’s frustration! So this is a great way to provide a structured opportunity for this behaviour).
The experience
Set up your tunnel or remove chairs from around a table (possibly adding a sheet or blanket over the table to make it more inviting).
Set up a box or basket with some of the small balls at one end of the tunnel, encouraging your child to pick up a ball/s and crawl through to place them at the other end.
Older children could do this to a timer – see if you can pick up all the balls and move them across in one minute! Or could complete this several times to see which is their quickest time.
If your baby is not yet crawling, you could offer two baskets and some balls in front of them for tummy time, and encourage them to explore and move from one basket to another.