I think that we can count this activity as our first "not very successful" activity. I won't go so far as to say it failed, as nothing major went wrong, and Isabelle didn't have a melt down or anything....she just wasn't interested!The idea of this activity had been to allow Isabelle to develop her motor skills, concentration and hand eye coordination by stacking the 'cups' of an egg box on top of one another. I also had the rest of an egg carton for her to practice fine motor skills and relocation with her pompoms - this is actually something we did last week and she seemed to enjoy it.
The first thing Isabelle did when she saw the egg carton was to shot "Pom poms!" and run away to get her bottle of pompoms. She then immediately threw them on top, before sitting down to start moving some. I got the buttons out for her as well, and this is where the activity started to lose it's way. She initially did spend some time putting the buttons into the egg carton...but then decided that she would much rather play with (read: eat!) the buttons by themselves. She was happy enough running her hands through them, so I left her to it.
Before I knew it, she was up and off into the kitchen. I think a big problem today was that she wasn't in the right mood and, to be honest,
I wasn't really either. She was tired after having just one nap today and couldn't concentrate on anything, and I was tired after work.
After an interlude (in which we played on the sofa, wheeled her walker about, patted the dogs, talked to daddy), we returned to the playroom and she got some playdoh out. She played pretty happily with this until tea time. After tea, I brought another egg box out (we had omelettes for tea you see!) and she enjoyed putting her playdoh into that for a while, before again losing concentration.
Only right at the end of playtime, just as I told her it was time for bed, did she start to stack the egg cups. She preferred to stack them onto the egg carton rather than in a pile of their own, and she played at that for a few minutes before bed.
Overall, not a huge success. I probably should have just left it today and sat down to read some stories instead of trying to give her an activity when she was in a 'flighty' mood. I do think this activity has scope though, so we may revisit it at some point before the end of the challenge.
