Last time I cleaned out and reorganised our medicine cupboard I discovered we had a heap of really old homebrand bandaids at the back of the cupboard. They'd obviously been there for a while and had started to lose stickiness, but instead of simply throwing them out, I decided to use them for a fun fine motor activity.
My girls are obsessed with bandaids and always say they've hurt themselves purely so they have an excuse to get a bandaid, because they know they're special and only get them if they're really hurt. So I decided to put together a quick doctor themed invitation to play using their two favourite things, a baby doll and bandaids. This baby doll shape matching activity was a fun way to reuse the old bandaids and I snuck a fair bit of learning in too.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
- Plastic bandaids
- A Washable marker
- A plastic body baby doll
This activity works best with a plastic body doll as there'll be more surface area to draw on. It's important to make sure you're using a washable marker so it'll rub or wash off after they've finished playing. You don't want dolly having permanent boo boos! We used a cheap Kmart doll for this activity, but we now have a few miniland dolls and love them because they're anatomically correct and look super realistic. I've also found that the more plastic style bandaids {plasters} are easier for kids to peel on and off rather than the thicker fabric ones, but you can do this activity with any type of bandaid.
It only took about five minutes to set up and that included the time it took me to find her baby doll {why are toys never in their correct spot!}. I drew a circle, square, triangle, heart, star and moon onto the dolls body in spots where it would be relatively easy to stick a bandaid and then I drew matching shapes onto 6 bandaids. I left the bandaids sitting beside the doll so she had to peel off the backing paper and stick them onto the correct spot.
Peeling off the backing paper was a fine motor workout in itself then she had to find the matching shape and stick them in the right spot. Some of the bandaids like the chest and head were easy to stick down and others on the arms and legs needed more manipulation to get the bandaids to stick the whole way around. It was also good for hand strengthening as they had to be pushed down to stick {especially ours as they were losing a bit of their stickiness because they were so old}.
My big girl loved this activity so much that she peeled the bandaids back off the doll and stuck them down again for about twenty minutes. It was a really simple and creative way for her to practice and reinforce shapes. You could include trickier shapes like a hexagon, octagon, pentagon or oval if your kids already know basic shapes. Once the bandaids stopped sticking to the doll properly we wiped off the marks on its body with baby wipes and then gave it a bath to make sure it was really clean.
This is a great activity that combines imaginary play, fine motor skills and shape recognition into the one process. Including items she normally wouldn't get to play with meant my daughter was focused a lot longer than she would be with a traditional learning activity or worksheet. The same doll bandaid activity can also be done to help learn colours, letters and numbers instead of shapes.
OTHER FUN FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR TODDLERS
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