Have you ever spent hours on Pinterest trying to find the perfect craft for your child, only to find that they were more interested in playing with the glue or the box? In this post, I share ideas to engage your child with a no-prep household item: masking tape!
Any kind of tape can work, but if you choose to utilize some of my ideas below, a roll of masking tape may work best!
When using a roll of tape to play with your child, try to think of creative ways to use it to target your goals for your child! Below are some examples of how to use tape to target gross and fine motor skills, speech, body awareness, and social skills.
Motor Skills
To target fine motor skills, you can show your child how to rip pieces of the tape or write their name on the tape. You could have them practice cutting with safety scissors. You could draw a shape on the tape and have them trace it or cut it out depending on their age.
To target gross motor skills, you can roll the tape to your child and have them roll it back. You could tape a straight line, zig zag, or other shaped line on the floor and have your child walk across the line or jump over it. You could tape a hop scotch board on the floor and have them practice hopping on 1 foot or jumping from 2 feet to 2 feet.
Speech
To target your child’s language, you could label the tape and model words such as circle, rip, roll, sticky, etc. you could give your child a little piece at a time and encourage them to communicate for more. You could sing a song together such as head shoulders knees and toes and move the roll of tape through the body parts. You could tape a maze on the floor and move a toy figure through the maze while working on words such as right, left, forward, and backward.
Body awareness
You could rip a small piece of tape and put it on your knee and ask ‘where’s the tape?’. You
could repeat this by putting it on your shoe, shoulder, nose, etc., and try allowing your child to choose where to put the tape! You could ask your child to lay down on the floor and tape an outline of their body to show them how big they’re getting.
Play
There are so many opportunities to follow your child’s play schemes with a roll of tape! If your child loves cars, you could tape a track and have races together. If your child is interested in letters, you could tape the ABCs or their name on the floor. If your child loves a certain tv show, you could work those characters into your play! You could tape a house with a door on the floor and engage in pretend play with a stuffed animal.
Social Skills
The most important thing your child will gain from your time together using the tape will be their relationship with you. Regardless of what goals you are targeting for your child, they will benefit endlessly from time playing with you! As a movement psychotherapist, I aim to meet a child where they are and build skills in relationship with them. That means if I want to target their ability to make eye contact and I know that they love shapes, I will sit on the floor with them and hold up my hands in the shape of a triangle or square. This helps me to gain their attention and make the interaction fun for them while i’m still able to work on specific goals.
Don’t be discouraged if your child isn’t interested in drawing on the tape or rolling a car on the tape like you may have planned; follow their lead whenever possible! Maybe they want to have a catch with the tape, or put the roll on your head as a hat! When you’re attuned to your child and allow them to lead, you are both more likely to feel successful and enjoy playing together.
I hope this post inspires you to utilize tape or other household items to spend time in play with your child without spending money or time preparing!
Comments