Active Fun At Home plus Some Science: Sticky Tape Spider Web.

I have a preschooler, and he needs his active fun every day. Our "witching hour" is right after dinner before bath time and subsequently bed time. This is when he wants to play, run, jump and burn his energy, enjoy the moments before sleep.

We play soccer, bowling, golf, basketball (using a cardboard box as a basket). Sometimes Santino just runs in circles or jumps on the little trampoline we have set up in his room. Today we set up a "spider web" and threw "flies" into it.

 

I found this idea a while ago on the Hands On as We Grow blog. Back when I found it, Santino was still too little for this activity, we tried it with no success. Today, though, it worked!

 

Well, the idea worked, that is. The spider web didn't work at first. We really tried, threw clumped balls of paper from various distances, but they wouldn't stick to the tape. I admit, the tape I used wasn't much of a tape, some cheap dollar store stuff. I guess, in this case a quality tape would have worked better.

After Santino ran back and forth for a while, throwing and picking up paper, coming back and throwing it again; we switched to another activity. This one was more of a scientific experiment: "What will stick?"

 

We tried all kinds of little and big objects: paper, pencils, big cars and little cars, Santino's dinosaur floss (he uses them as toys, big mistake for buying!), even me and Santino himself!

 

We found out that heavier objects will fall and lighter objects will stick and hang longer. I encouraged Santino to predict, which object will stick or fall.  I explained several times the weight words like "heavy" and "light" in both English and Russian.

I asked Santino, if beige and yellow pencils stick, would a different color stick as well? His answer was grabbing several handfuls of my pencils and sticking them all to our "web". They all stuck! (Not shown here, in all excitement I forgot to take a picture.)

I love our little physical activity sessions. I think Santino learns best while moving (if he cares to listen). I've tried giving Santino worksheets, but at this time they are not as much of a success, he prefers videos, books, songs and practical usage like counting jumps, hands-on experimenting, and repeating new words.

Next time I will try with a better tape, Santino already asked for it!