Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue

Upcycling an old toy animal puzzle tape rescue hack for babies and toddlers to spark new interest and promote fine motor control and hand-eye coordination.

This baby toddler play hack is a must-try! Have you wished that your baby plays with the same toy for longer than a single day? Are you tired of purchasing new puzzles only to find that your toddler’s interest winds as soon as the puzzle is completed? Well, the tape hack is to the rescue to upcylce an old toy and give your animal puzzle a new life! Besides, this activity is super easy to set up and you will be using tape and toys you have! (The idea is to UPcycle, so please do not purchase more of anything! Lol)

Upcycle An Old Toy Hack | Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue

With the Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue, the idea to upcycle an old toy is simple! All you need is tape to get little ones working on developing motor control while sustaining attention for longer than a second! Children love tape! Something in the stickiness of the tape makes them mesmerized! For example, have you noticed your baby pulling the tape, then sticking it back ~ pulling and then sticking it back again! (Well till the glue lasts!) So, trust me, tape rescue is a perfect hack for them, and it is easy to keep them entertained.

YOU’LL NEED for Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue

• a puzzle (similar here but without a board or try a chunky alphabet puzzle with a board)
• painters tape
• I used silicone popsicle molds (perfect for freezing small objects too) ~ however, you can also use a muffin pan

Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue Skills

Getting the tape pulled, rescuing animals off the tape, and getting the tape off the little fingers requires multi-step analytical thinking! Trust me, that is a lot for little people but they can do it! Also, in the process a child is developing the following skills:

• hand-eye coordination ~ when brain and hands work together ~  that is the ability to coordinate the information received through the eyes to control, guide, and direct the hands in the accomplishment of a given task
• fine motor skills ~ often defined as the coordination of small muscle movements that enable us to perform a variety of important tasks
• vocabulary as you clearly enunciate the name of the animal and the first sound of the animal’s name
• decision making ~ such as which animal to rescue next?
• cognition and problem-solving ~ how to get the tape off the animal and the hands

Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue

Taped toys are a fun and easy-to-set-up play idea for babies and toddlers to work on fine motor skills!  Besides, it is a perfect solution if you find that your little one is losing interest in a toy! TAPE it to the refrigerator, the door, the child’s closet, or a snack table! You can stick the tape onto cars, puzzle pieces, or animal figures, and invite your little one to pull the tape back up. Most importantly, tape rescue is fun, it is mess-free, and it is amazing for developing fine motor control!

Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue Fine Motor & Sensory Development

Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue is also a splendid sensorial activity! Just offer to tape a variety of textured toys like wooden, metal, plastic or textile, etc, and you are giving your child an added tactile learning element. Most little people love getting sticky! But if you swiftly wipe the honey off their fingers, they generally do not get to experience the stickiness! So the Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue gives them that special tactile sensation!

 This simple to set up Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue activity will offer your child lots of sensory refinement and fine motor experience. Fine motor skills are very important as they are a precursor for skills such as grasping, transferring, and eventually drawing and writing. Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue is an effective and fun activity since the pinching and pulling of the tape stimulated small muscles of the hands that are responsible for the fine motor refinement

AGE: 18 M + Always supervise your child! Small items are choking hazards! 

OTHER FUN WAYS TO USE TAPE RESCUE

• Tabletop animal tape rescue ~ rip off small sections of tape and use them to tape animal figures to the table (you can re-use tape for something else)
• Under the table tape pull rescue ~ tape objects under the table/chairs, or on the table legs (crawl under the table and rescuing animals from the tape is the amazing gross motor exercise).
• Vertical tape rescue ~ such as from a closet, wall, window or fridge.

VARIATIONS TO Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue Hack

• Learn letter sounds ~ ask a child to rescue, for example, “An animal that starts with B.”
• Use various toys or blocks and ask your child to find and collect all the objects of a specific color.
• Count objects in each category (i.e. dinosaurs) and have your child rescue all the dinosaurs before starting to rescue a different category from tape.
• Play hide-and-seek by hiding toys all over a room/house.

Have you tried the Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue hack? Rescuing toy animals, figures or puzzle pieces by pulling tape is a fun and simple fine motor activity that is perfect for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers! Hope you will give it a try! Leave a comment if you did!

---

Why Hands-On Learning?

It allows little people to engage in kinesthetic learning by doing! ’Hands-on learning’ is the common name for ‘Experiential Learning’ – the philosophical term behind the method of immersing oneself in a process in order to learn it. Experiential Learning has been around since 350 BCE, when Aristotle wrote, “for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

Most importantly, hands-on learning is uniquely positioned to support or elevate any type of learner! Best of all, research has proven that children who learn using hands-on methods with manipulatives, outperform those who are not. What are manipulatives? They are physical tools engaging children visually and physically with objects such as puzzle pieces, tongs, droppers, figurines, blocks, loose items, etc. The use of manipulatives is constructive because children are actively engaged in discovery by TOUCHING, TRANSFERRING & MANIPULATING during the learning process. So, give a Animal Puzzle Tape Rescue activity a try and keep the little hands busy!

---

eBOOK | THE BASICS Bringing Montessori Home

“Our work is not to teach, but to HELP the absorbent mind in its work of development. How marvelous it would be if by our help, if by an intelligent treatment of the child, if by understanding the needs of his physical life and by feeding his intellect, we could prolong the period of functioning of the absorbent mind!”

Montessori MADE EASY MEMBERSHIP

Also, in case you are exhausted from swimming in the vast ocean of irrelevant information and saving activities you never get to! JOIN Montessori MADE-EASY membership! And if you do, the eBook THE BASICS is included in the membership amongst MANY other perks!

I am here to help! WE CAN DO THIS TOGETHER!

♡ Enriching the Mind one Heart at a time ♡

FIND US on Instagram ♡ Facebook ♡ Pinterest ♡