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Bean Bags


After seeing a few bean-bag activity ideas on various blogs, I decided we needed some.  Have you looked into buying bean bags?  They seemed awfully expensive to me, even on Amazon, given the simplicity of the object.  So, I called my local sew-er (that is, my mother-in-law) and respectfully made my request.  A week later, she stopped by with six denim bean bags, complete with personalized stitching thanks to her fancy machine!  (Don't tell her she left "t" out of the alphabet on two of them.)

Levi and I have used them for two activities so far.  The first is the one that got me wanting bean bags in the first place, but I've looked everywhere and can't find the original blog post.  (If this activity was your idea, please let me know!)  I simply used masking tape to outline some shapes on the floor and had him throw the bag to the shape I called.  He knows his shapes just fine; I was hoping for a gross motor activity, but he'd just walk up to the shape and drop the bean bag.  Oh well.

(Don't mind the mess behind him. Owen is REALLY into dumping puzzles right now.)

We've also thrown the bean bags to various letters on our letter rug, specifically working on identifying vowels.  (Yes, I realize that Levi doesn't need to know about vowels yet.  But at the time, one of the bean bags was missing, and I thought, "5 bean bags, 5 vowels . . . why not?")  He's a little more willing to throw from a distance when aiming for a letter or number.  Still, gross motor skills continue to be my "we need to do more of this" area!

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