Kids Activities and Adventures
Insects sensory bin 🐞🦗🐝
Today we discovered many insects and bugs in our sensory bin. JJ thoroughly analyzed them with a magnifying glass 🕵️♂️, while Eli played with the dirt (aka threw the beans all over the balcony 😂).
After that we checked each of the insects and read interesting facts about them… did you know that bees have 5 eyes?!? 😅
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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This was thought as a painting activity to draw circles… but as most of our other art activities…
It was all about mixing those colors 🤪.
More creative, right? 😅
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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Egg pattern matching puzzle 🐣
JJ is not a big fan of puzzles, but he enjoyed this activity 😍.
Some of the egg patterns are similar, increasing the difficulty level 🧐, but having only 6 made the challenge attainable 🎯
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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When in lockdown… grow some salad 🥬✅
This is day 5 of total lockdown in Shanghai (not allowed to go outside the apartment/ no deliveries)…
We found some salad seeds from last year and decided it was a great time to plant them. The best time would have been a month and a half ago 😂.
JJ loved to dig the dirt and water the seeds and wants now a bigger garden 👨🏻🌾. Let’s see about that 😅.
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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An activity that JJ enjoyed: collage / vision board 😆
First he cut some pictures from a magazine, then he picked the ones he liked the most and glued them to a piece of paper. Of course he also wrote his name and I helped him write CAR 💯.
We spent a good 20 minutes on it and considering how little he usually concentrates in crafts/arts/painting activities… this was a super long timeframe 💪🏼.
What is your kid’s favorite sit down activity? 🤔
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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Baby puzzle time! 🧩
All the peg puzzles that we have are for bigger kids… so we created our own 💪🏼. Made from cardboard and some pom poms (for easier grip), it was a good excercise for those little fingers 🤏🏼🧐.
More practice is needed, but was fun 😁.
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Eli is 11 months here
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A quick “save the toys” activity 🤩
Easy to set up ✅
Interesting for toddlers to explore ✅
Great for fine motor skills exercise ✅
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Eli is 11 months old here
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🏴☠️ The good pirates’ ship 🏴☠️
We are in pirate mode these days.
Today we built from Duplo one pirate ship and a normal ship. JJ is very found of the idea of pirates but doesn’t like that they are actually bad guys and they are stealing 😂
So in our game, after the pirates stole the gold, they invited the poor guys over for a coffee and a hang out 😂
JJ, you kind soul ❤️
Throwing colored cotton balls on a paper?!? 🤩
This is JJ’s type of process art ✅
👉It’s a fun and energetic way to encourage kids to try art.
Which art activity does your kid like the most? 🤔
This morning I’ve received 3 “mărțișoare” from my 3 boys 🥰.
Mărțișor is celebrated in Romania on the 1st of March. It’s name comes from the Romanian word for March: Martie.
The mărțișoare are the white and read silk threads tied into a bow, from which little trinkets, mostly symbols of spring or good luck are tied.
The mărțisor is received by women or girls from family or friends and are worn onto clothes (attached with a pin) in the first week of March, to bring luck, health and prosperity for the following year.
This is one of the Romanian traditions I love the most. ❤️
La mulți ani de Mărțișor!!!
Also… where is my husband hiding his stash of mărțișoare?!? 🧐
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Enjoy it! 😊
Eli’s first basketball practice aka ball posting activity for babies 😁🏀⛹🏼♂️
Babies/toddlers looove posting activities 😍. Here is one appropriate for the littlest of babies, as the balls are light and easy to grab, making it a perfect practice for gross and fine motor skills ✋.
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Eli is 9 months here
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Negative printing of door decorations for Chinese New Year🏮
We are one week away from Chinese New Year! Shanghai is already beaming in red decorations, so it was time we also had our door decorations done 😊.
For CNY, people usually decorate the sides of the doors with couplets, good wishes for the next year. This was our attempt of the traditional black writing on the red paper.
To make this activity kids friendly, I’ve cut out the characters from pieces of paper, then I’ve fixed with sticky tape the cut out paper on top of our red craft paper. Using a wide brush, JJ helped paint the characters 👨🏻🎨 (he did almost one 🥳).
After the paint dried out, I’ve removed the white paper and… success! ☺️ our new year wishes are on the door 🤩
Year of the Tiger bring it on! 🐯
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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12 animals of the Chinese zodiac - Rescue 🐉
Taping the 12 animals to a wardrobe door: baby activity done ✅ 😊.
Eli was very interested grabbing the animals from the door, but even more interested in the tape 😅.
This is a great activity to practice concentration, attention and gross and fine motor skills.
➡️ Both fun and easy to set up 👍🏻
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Eli is 9 months here
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# toddlerplayideas
We were learning and playing with the arctic animals today 🐻❄️🧊
Inspired by the book Arctic Animals written by Jill McDonald, I’ve set up a little sensory play with rocks, play dough, ice water… and animals of course!
The ice water was the big hit and JJ showed me how all animals like to swim. Then he also brought a 🐠 for the puffin to eat. Next we did paw prints 🐾 in the play dough… and then even more animals joined our ice pool!
Eli also came over and was very excited about the ice water ❄️ 🥶 I am sure he would have jumped in given the opportunity 🤿.
This is a glimpse of our afternoon. How was yours?
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JJ is 3 and a half here
Eli is 9 months
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Snowy day today! ☃️
Living in Shanghai one must do her own snow 💪🏼😊.
We used baking soda and body lotion to make some fluffy snow 😍: perfect for building little snowmen, excavating it, or just driving through it. We combined about 3 cups of baking soda to 1 cup of lotion ➡️ Just try it out and mix it to desire consistency (ok for snowballs 😄).
JJ enjoyed playing with it and Eli wanted to join too… but he is too little for it 😅.
Don’t forget to:
❤️ if you like it
📌 save it for later
🚀 share it with friends
Is it snowing at your place?
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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First time ice skating for JJ!!! ❄️
This year we will probably not see any snow…but we found some ice! 😍
This was first time ice skating for JJ and he did awesome. Like always, he needs more time to get familiar with new things (cautious is his middle name) so we pushed him around for the first half an hour or so. Afterwards he went for a couple of rounds with us and towards the end he was confident to skate / walk alone a bit 😊.
Great fun it was!
If you are in Shanghai I can totally recommend the ice rink at the Sinar Mama Plaza (right next to the W Hotel): lovely atmosphere and great views 🏙
Check out our (/my) cute Christmas tree decoration 🎄!
To create this Xmas tree you need a popsicle stick, strips of green paper, glue and some string to hang it. To decorate it, you can use stickers and glitter (like we did) or paint 🙂.
It works pretty good if the paper strips are in 3 different sizes (long, medium & small) and you stick them a bit diagonally to get the tree shape.
While I was showing JJ how to do this craft, he got himself a plain paper and wanted to just stick strips of the green paper on it 😒. He later join me in applying the “decorations” aka round stickers. 🥳
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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Cutting Santa’s beard ✂️🎅😜
JJ’s cutting skills are getting better lately (partially from cutting open the chocolate snacks he got from St. Nicholas 🤪)… so I thought he would have fun with this activity 😊.
I was
😑Partially wrong… because he was not excited to cut
😬 Partially right… because he figured out that he could use the scissors as chopsticks (?), pulling away the paper strips… and had a lot of fun doing that
🥲Partially proud… as he “got the job done” in a creative way and had fun with it.
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JJ is 3 and a half here.
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When you can’t have enough kids painted aka brown ornaments 😅
I never learn… when JJ sees that we are about to paint, he gets super excited about the colors and wants to open all of them, if possible… I get excited because we do an art activity… And then he just takes the brush and mix the colors… resulting (in most cases) a 💩 color 🤣.
Please remind me next time to just use one / two colors and hide the others 🙃.
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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The Christmas tree is up! 🎄
💪🏼JJ worked hard to put Christmas decorations on the right side of the tree (exclusively)
Eli was taking them down at the bottom 😅
Very happy with his work, JJ asked for the phone to take some pictures 😄.
So we are almost done, just missing the lights… Totally forgot to order them 🙃.
Fingers crossed the tree it’s not needling away before 🎅.
Did you already get a tree?
Today’s adventure was building a fort ⛺️ and reading Christmas books 🎄 📖.
This morning JJ opened the 2nd Advent Calendar box and was super excited to build a cozy home 🏡. When he got back from the kindergarten, that’s all he wanted to do. So for the next two hours we built the fort and read Christmas books. ❤️
La mulți ani România! 🇹🇩🥳
Happy Romanian National Day! 🇹🇩❤️
Proud Romanian over here 🥰
Today is Romanian Day and we did a little play activity in the shape of the Romanian map. Play dough and beans… always a success 🤪.
➡️ swipe to see how we did it 😊
Have you ever been to Romania? 🙋🏻♀️
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JJ is 3 years and a half here.
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Inspired by our recent trip to the farm (check highlights), I set up a feed-the-animals activity 🥕🐰.
Retrospectively, we should have done this before we went to the farm, so that JJ is not so afraid of little lambs 😂.
For the set up I lined the inside of our Ikea Flisat box with green play dough (self made half a year back 😅), plus some brown and blue play doh. Then I added the animals which we have seen at the farm and drew on little cardboard squares food for the animals (🥕, 🥬, 🌽, …).
I invited JJ to feed the animals and we talked about what the animals are usually eating. Then JJ brought the T-Rex 🦖 and Eli joined in on the fun 👶🏼.
How was your day? 😊
Rice autumn activity 🍂
Colored rice is a wonderful sensory tray base and so much more 🥰. Today we “colored” with rice some autumn leaves.
JJ practiced fine motor skills, filling the leaves shapes and had fun trying NOT to match the colors 🤪 kids…
Do you also enjoy playing with colored rice? 🍙
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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Baby sensory bottles 👶🏼▶️
Small plastic bottles filled with interesting and/or sound-making things ➡️ perfect baby play.
Our three bottles currently have:
1️⃣ black cereals & cotton balls
2️⃣ a pink ribbon & a blue bow
3️⃣ beans & some twine
The small plastic bottles are easy to hold and fun to play with.
Eli’s favorite is the beans one (because of the sound 🎶). He likes to stand up and shake it vigorously 😊.
Did you try sensory bottles?
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Eli is 6 months here
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Color parking garage! 🟣🟡🟢🔵
Practicing colors with cars, it’s a simple activity that JJ enjoyed a lot… because of the cars of course!
I just offered the parking board and he went to look for different cars. He was running back and forward between the box of cars and the board, matching the cars’ colors. We also had a nice discussion about colors and… car brands 🤪.
Vroom vroom 🏎!
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JJ is 3 and a half here
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via .app
Today we were drawing with playdoh! 👨🏻🎨
As it’s getting colder now in Shanghai, it is a perfect moment to start discussing about the weather and the seasons. ☀️🍁❄️🌷
For this activity I drew on a cardboard a tree going through the changes of each seasons. Then I covered the cardboard with a wide tape and we painted with playdoh 🎨
For JJ’s age I found the drawings a bit too complicated for using playdoh… but we had a nice discussion about the weather and he did get involved 👍🏻.
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JJ is 3 years old here
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Sticky contact paper and some wooden puzzle pieces: perfect baby workout! 🏋🏼
Little Eli is 7 months now and interested in standing up and grabbing everything 🤪
He is very active and attentive so we are doing more and more baby activities around here 😍
Fun all around!
Ready to learn more about bugs?!? 🐞🐜🐝
I prepared the bugs books and set up a simple sensory tray (with play dough, lentils and insects) to get the conversation started.
JJ checked with interest the book about bugs, we talked for a couple of minutes about some of them and after that he was focused on the bee… he insisted on showing me the honey bottle and then he wanted to have some with Yoghurt.
So yeah, that was out activity of the day 🤣.
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JJ is 3 Yrs and 4 Mo here
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Eli grew so much lately and he is now sitting confidently…. Perfect time for a little activity 🤏🏼
A couple of minutes of set up and a good practice for fine motor skills.
He was super concentrated to grab the pipe cleaners, take them out and throw them on the ground 😅
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Eli is 5 months here.
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Making art is fun! 👨🏻🎨
Today we tried the good old folded paper paint craft for the first time. JJ was very excited about how it turned out, as you can see from the picture 😆.
When we started, I asked JJ to pick to colors and he picked pink and “green” (still confusing green and blue 😅).
Then I folded first the paper in half and explained him to put some paint only on one side. Of course that I blinked and there was a puddle of paint on the paper 🙄.
For our last step we folded the paper, pressed it a little bit (the extra paint came out 🙃) and we opened it 🤩.
It was easy, fun and… very symmetric ❤️
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JJ is 3 years old here
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Anything, but with cars - should be the motto in our home 😆
This is a process art activity using markers attached to… wait for it… cars! 🚗✏️😍
It was very interesting guiding the cars and seeing the markings on the paper. JJ raced the cars, parked them… even had a couple of crashes 🙃
And in the end we had a cool art piece ☺️
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JJ is 3 years old here
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I never thought that glass and children would mix so well 😅… until we visited The Glass Museum in Shanghai ❤️
I heard about The Glass Museum for a while now, but hesitated to go there because I didn’t think it would be something that JJ would appreciate. As it is super hot in Shanghai right now and we need more indoor activities, I thought that it was finally time I give it a try.
When we arrived (after a 45 minutes drive) we got entry tickets for 3 out of 5 exhibition halls: the main exhibition, the children museum and the maze 😁.
We started with the kids museums and it was great. At the entrance we got a little booklet with the letters of the alphabet and the kids would color the letters as they see the corresponding installations. We didn’t really use it because JJ was not interested, but many kids were running around excited to discover more letters. The displays were very fun and at the kids height. There were many interactive exhibits, videos, fun facts and even a room to play.
The next stop was the main exhibition, which offered a more comprehensive view into the history of glass, manufacturing, its uses and of course glass art. Even this exhibition I found to be very entertaining for kids.
After we had a quick lunch at the restaurant of the museum we went for The Maze: a maze of mirrors with dim lighting 😁. At the entrance we got a card with 8 symbols and we had to find all of them and stamp the card, before exiting. That was also a lot of fun!
I was very surprised by this museum and it was really an overall amazing experience. I recommend seeing it when you are in Shanghai with kids 👌
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JJ is 3 years old
Eli is 3 months old
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Temperature sensitive sicker ❤️
JJ received for his bday this year a set of experiments and this was one of them.
So fun to see his reaction to the sticker changing colors 😍.
Did you ever try this?🤔
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JJ is 3 Years old here
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What are clouds? 🌧
Going through a lot of rain and storms the last weeks, I thought it is time to learn more about clouds. We got a cool book about how clouds are formed, how 🌧, ❄️ & 🌈 happen and much more.
We paired the book with a rain experiment, which was fun, but in our case it was waaaay more work than I would have thought… because I didn’t get the right shaving cream 😂
When I bought the shaving cream I didn’t check it and ours has a blue gel inside 🤨 It should be amazing for your skin, but for our play… it’s not as fluffy and not as white 😅 good that I didn’t get a pack of three! Haha. I did 🤪
➡️ To make the cloud in the glass of water, usually you can just put the shaving cream from the tube straight into the glass of water. The water will be a little cloudy at first, but it would clear out soon. After that you could drop some colored water on top of the cloud and it would slowly go through the shaving cream to create the rain effect.
❌ With our super shaving cream, when I tried to spray it straight into the glass of water, the water turned blue (from the blue gel in the shaving cream). Additionally, the consistency of our cloud was super thick and the colored water didn’t go through it, but to the sides 😒
It still looked cool though 😄, we had fun and we learned a lot about clouds… and shaving creams 🤣.
Did you try something like this before? Did it work for you? 🤔
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JJ is 3 Years here
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Mixing some colors away 👨🏻🎨
It looks like just some scribbles on the paper, but it is sooo much more than that.
As JJ was painting we discussed a lot about the colors: which are the primary colors and how you can mix them and get new colors…He was very interested 😊.
It’s a basic activity, but taking the time to talk with your kid about it makes all the difference ❤️
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JJ is 3 years old here.
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I am leaving on a jetplane… ✈️
Haha. Not really, still stuck in China 🙃
We had the kindergarten yearly celebration and the theme was recycling… and how JJ loves airplanes…
For his costume I used a big cardboard box to make the wings and a champagne box (🤪) for the body. Plus two strings so that he can wear it as a backpack…
So here it is Mr. Airplane ❤️
Have you ever yelled at your kid that he should stop yelling? 😅
That is exactly what this post is NOT about.
This is about showing respect, kindness and understanding at the time when your kids need it most: when they are “naughty”.
Every difficult situation is a great opportunity to show your kids the proper way to handle it. Use it wisely 😊.
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This was thought as a painting activity to draw circles… but as most of our other art activities… It was all about mixing those colors 🤪. More creative, right? 😅 ___ JJ is 3 and a half here ___ #activitaticopii #kidsactivities #shanghailockdown2022 #happyplayfulkid #kidspainting #kidspaintingactivities #toddlerlife #artactivityforkids #kidsartactivities #learningthroughplay #learningathome #playfullearning #momofboys
Baby puzzle time! 🧩 All the peg puzzles that we have are for bigger kids… so we created our own 💪🏼. Made from cardboard and some pom poms (for easier grip), it was a good excercise for those little fingers 🤏🏼🧐. More practice is needed, but was fun 😁. ___ Eli is 11 months here ___ #activitaticopii #kidsactivities #babyplay #babyactivities #diybabyplay #diybabytoys #happyplayfulkid #learningthroughplay #finemotorskills #finemotoractivity #shanghaifamily #shanghaikids #cardboardtoys #recyclecreateplay #recycleandplay
A quick “save the toys” activity 🤩 Easy to set up ✅ Interesting for toddlers to explore ✅ Great for fine motor skills exercise ✅ ___ Eli is 11 months old here ___ #kidsactivities #activitaticopii #toddleractivities #11monthsbabyplay #babyplay #invitationtoplay #finemotor #finemotoractivity #babyplayideas #happyplayfulkid #shanghaifamily #shanghaikids
Throwing colored cotton balls on a paper?!? 🤩 This is JJ’s type of process art ✅ 👉It’s a fun and energetic way to encourage kids to try art. Which art activity does your kid like the most? 🤔 . . . #kidsart #activitaticopii #activitatimontessori #activitatipentrucopii #kidsactivities #toddleractivities #montessoriactivity #invitationtocreate #happyplayfulkid #playbasedlearning #learningthroughplay #artforkids #artactivity #artactivityforkids
Eli’s first basketball practice aka ball posting activity for babies 😁🏀⛹🏼♂️ Babies/toddlers looove posting activities 😍. Here is one appropriate for the littlest of babies, as the balls are light and easy to grab, making it a perfect practice for gross and fine motor skills ✋. ___ Eli is 9 months here ___ #babyplay #babyactivity #finemotorskills #finemotoractivity #grossmotorskills #grossmotoractivity #babybasketball #basketballforbabies #happyplayfulkid #playfulday #invitationtoplay #playallday #playfullearning #shanghaikids
12 animals of the Chinese zodiac - Rescue 🐉 Taping the 12 animals to a wardrobe door: baby activity done ✅ 😊. Eli was very interested grabbing the animals from the door, but even more interested in the tape 😅. This is a great activity to practice concentration, attention and gross and fine motor skills. ➡️ Both fun and easy to set up 👍🏻 ___ Eli is 9 months here ___ . . . #happyplayfulkid #babyactivities #babyplayideas #babyplay #babyplayhacks #toddleractivities # toddlerplayideas #learningthroughplay #animalrescueplay #animalplayideas #grossmotoractivity #grossmotorskills #finemotorskills #finemotoractivity #invitationtoplay #playlearngrow
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