It is raining, and freezing (winter) and apparently the weather thinks that Johannesburg is actually Cape Town. Oh yes, and the kids are bored.
Now, I am all up for the kids watching a bit of tv when the weather is miserable but I don’t want them to spend all day there and so I consulted my favourite online friend (Pinterest) for some indoor active play ideas and came across the passageway maze. I have to admit that it actually reminded me of that movie Entrapment with Catherine Zeta Jones when she was training to manipulate her body over and under the security beams and while I am definitely no Catherine Zeta Jones I thought it would be a fun activity to do with the kids.
My little helper, very curious about what mom is up to.
What you need
• Prestick
• Some streamers/string/wool (anything to string up to the walls really)
• A passage
I had some coloured streamers left over from one of the girl’s birthday parties and so I settled on using that.
I cut various lengths of streamer and stuck them up in criss cross patterns in the passage, and while curious hands pulled down the first few the kids soon saw what I was doing and decided to help rather than destroy.
Very excited to get going.
I was rather proud of my efforts.
The kids had a lot of fun trying to get through the maze although my youngest took a tumble or two when she tried to use some of the streamers to lean on and then discovered that paper and prestick don’t in fact support body weight.
Please excuse the blurry action shots, it turns out that little people move VERY fast.
And just before you think that all you are doing is killing some time, this activity is great for teaching your kids body space awareness. They have to understand the amount of space that their bodies take up and how that space changes depending on which way they bend or turn or whether they are crawling or reaching.
By the end though our maze lay in tatters on the floor, which actually made clean up very easy.
The kids were at it for over an hour and so I will definitely keep this in mind for another cold and rainy day activity idea. Oh yes, and after trying some of the maze myself, it turns out that I should not try to dodge any security beams any time soon 😉