Friday Fun-day: Indoor Obstacle Course

Sometimes I get tired of playing with the water table and don't want to go outside. One of my favorite activities on those days is to make an obstacle course in our home. This helps my daughter to keep growing in her gross motor skills and her agility (haha). She loves to take her babies through the course with her and have them do the tasks as well. We played together on the course pictured below for 1 hour and then did a demonstration once dad got home from work. 

How to make an obstacle course: 

1. Start with a basic course with a few elements
2. Have a clear starting and ending point 
3. Model how to do each element first, either by doing it yourself, or having a favorite toy do it 
4. Add on or change elements once your child has mastered the basic course

Our most recent course: 

1. Crawl under the slide
2. Climb on couch in between blocks
3. Crawl across entire couch to slide
4. Slide down 

5. Rock in the rocking chair three times
6. Build a block tower with six blocks and then knock it down


7. Throw ball into block box
8. Sit down in the chair 

Baby Lucy was really tired out at the end of it : ) 

Other Elements to Incorporate: 

1. Rolling: Put a blanket on the ground and have your child roll across it one or more times.
2. Vaulting (toddler style): If you have a bench or footstool, you can teach your child how to put his arms down on the bench first and then climb up, swing legs over to the other side and then take arms down. 
3. Older children will be able to do more elements like skipping, hopping, and jumping variations. 

Have fun!