Purchasing or making a play mat or rug for your child will help her learn and enjoy herself at the same time. Babies and younger children can enjoy touch-and-feel activities and older kids can learn the alphabet, the geography of the United States or play games. The possibilities are nearly endless with the lessons you can teach kids with play mats.
Instructions
1. Buy a touch-and-feel play mat that includes rings for babies to pull on, animals that they can touch and different textures that babies and toddlers can feel. You can also make your own by sewing baby toys, felt and fuzzy animals and rings kids can pull on to a heavy blanket.
2. Make a teaching play mat by using a piece of carpet, butcher paper and extra large binder clips. Cut the butcher paper to roughly the same size as the piece of carpet. Draw a map of the United States that includes all the states and clip it to the carpet with the binder clips. Your child can now hop from Arkansas to Texas. Use the butcher paper to draw up any learning lesson you choose. Write the alphabet in block letter. Number from one to 20. Put Spanish words with English translations on your learning play mat. Change your mat as often as you wish. There are many learning play mats available for sale, also.
3. Make your child's room into a game room by taping a piece of butcher paper to the floor and drawing a hopscotch board, a marble-throwing board or a checker board. Have your child draw their own maze on butcher paper. You can also use the butcher paper simply as a drawing space to help your child expand their artistic talents. If your child has one favorite game, consider a commercial play mat that will last much longer than a paper mat.
Tags: butcher paper, your child, binder clips, learning play, piece carpet, play mats, play that