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Hello everyone! There are so many things we love to do with our kids and being outside is one of them. One activity we’ve been doing is going on scavenger hunts! One of our favourite things to find or pick up = rocks!

Why rocks? I have no idea. It started about a month ago and we haven’t looked back. Every ravine walk we go on yields us a ton of prolonged fun. The kids like to pick different rocks. Sometimes we pick big, heavy rock and sometimes, the little (baby) rocks are the choice of the day.

As you know…. at Mobi we LOVE toys and activities that disguise learning and make it fun, right?! Open-ended, developmental play is the name of the game! Rocks are no different. There is no wrong way to play with them. Well, I take that back. Throwing rocks at someone is not a good idea and as you can imagine with two littles, we’ve had to have that conversation. Throwing at your sibling aside (!!), there is no wrong way to play with rocks! One of our favourite things to do with the rocks has been to paint them!

Painting rocks!

This is a great calm down activity after a day out. The kids love it and love having something beautiful to physically show after all their effort of “hunting for rocks!” seems to really excite them!

There are so many benefits that come from painting and I’ll hit on a few below:

The Brain:

Creative activities like painting exercise a different part of the brain than reading or math. The right side of the brain is often called our creative half. It is responsible for visual skills and understanding what we see with our eyes. Painting and creative play help exercise your child’s right brain.

Motor Control:

Squeezing the paint tubes into little containers, holding the fine paint brush and the act of painting ….we are working both fine and gross motor skills here. The bigger the canvas (if conventional and using paper ;) ) the more gross motor work at play.

Sensory Experience:

Painting on any surface is a beautiful sensory experience. With rocks, this is slightly heightened because there are so many edges, curves and textures. 

Cause and Effect:

We are big advocates of cause and effect play at Möbi. It is huge for development and we have tried to incorporate this into all our infant/toddler products. With painting …. kids are also working on this! For example, when a child starts out with yellow paint but mixes blue in ….. they will be able to see that that one action creates blue!

Verbal Language Skills:

As a parent you can ask open-ended questions like “what are you painting?” or “would you tell me about your painting”? As you can imagine, in our household we can some crazy answers! Rocks have become ninjas, dragons and rainbows.  Asking open-ended questions, just like open-ended play, allows your child to stretch and grow his/her thinking and verbal skills. 

Confidence:

Whether your child’s rainbow comes out looking like a rainbow or a brown clump …. They will take pride in their painting and will see in your eyes that you do too.

We would never have thought that collecting rocks would be as fun for our family as it has turned out to be. We’ve been asked if we will hang our kids’ rocks on the fridge with their other artwork! Instead we are forming a rock garden!!

What are you guys doing to keep creative? We’d love to hear from you!

Homemade Marble Run

Hello everyone! We are getting creative these days and making toys from things we have around the house. Our son is aware that we make toys for a living and continues to come up with some great ideas. Today he thought of making his own maze. We thought it was a great idea! Now what would we make a maze out of??

• Cardboard/or cardboard box.
• Popsicle Sticks
• Ball/Bell

You will also need scissors and adult supervision for those scissors!

• Okay so first is first. Determine the size and how many sticks you will need. You could also probably use sticks from outside as long as they are somewhat straight or even pipe cleaners!

• Next you have to decide what you want the maze to look like. We suggest drawing this out on paper to practice or in pencil on the cardboard before cutting.

• Get your maze on! Cut along the areas you are going to put the popsicle sticks and insert the popsicle sticks. We made a hole at the end of our maze that the ball had to go through.

Building a maze was a great family activity. We got to talk about where the ball would go, how it would move, where to put sticks. We had a little engineer on our hands. Super cute. Along with all this great family time, there are a lot of development benefits of this maze….and you know that at Mobi we LOVE toys that disguise learning and make it fun, right?! Open-ended, developmental play is where it’s at!

Here's a video of our marble run!

Developmental Benefits of Maze Building!

Fine Motor Skills: Guiding those sticks into the slits cut for them is a great example of fine motor play. As your little moves the ball through the maze, they also have to work on fine motor as little moves can move the ball a lot…so your kids have to work on controlled movement.

Visual Tracking Skills: Following where the ball goes and where you want the ball to go is great for visual tracking.

Cause and Effect: The way your little one moves the maze dictates where the ball goes. Tons of cause and effect in play!

Coordination: Just like above, as described in cause and effect … coordination is big here. Two hands on the maze, moving a little ball through a course is supreme coordination.

Concentration and Focus: Although it seems all fun and games…there is quite a bit of concentration and focus required to move the ball through the maze and into the hole. We were actually surprised at how much we as adults had to concentrate. The speed of the ball plays into this and of course how the maze is designed…but we were very impressed with our 6 year old and how he handled himself by channeling his focus on being able to get through the maze! 

As you can see, building a maze provides hours of fun and also tons of developmental opportunities.