Halloween activity bar

Sophie and I had a little time alone today while her dad and Lucas went swimming so I thought it would be fun to put together a Halloween activity playbar for her.  Sophie has used these types of playbars for many years, usually in the child life room at her therapy centre. However I also taught the daycare how to make them.  I supplied them with seasonal items and they would add to it from there.  They had rainforest themes, Christmas, Halloween, butterflies, etc.

So since Halloween is just around the corner I pulled out some items I had purchased for this activity.  I had bought the spider lights (which I also used for her sensory mirror) as well as some pumpkin bells and a few reflective patches.  There is also a glowstick pumpkin necklace.  Once it was all rigged up it looked pretty great.

 

The light or glow aspect is one that I always try to incorporate into Sophie's play, because of her CVI (cortical vision impairment) it is helpful to have the mirrors or lights to catch her visual attention.

 

 The full glow effect

The wonderful thing about this kind of activity is that it doesn't have to cost alot.  I bought everything, right down to the elastic to hang everything, at the dollar store.  Luckily the daycare didn't need the activity bar when Sophie graduated so they donated it to us.  So thoughtful!

I was able to raise or lower the bar depending on what Sophie seemed interested in.  When she was making lots of arm movements I lowered the bar so that she would hit the bells to make some noise.  I raised it back up a bit when she was more interested in the webbing on the tray.

hitting the bells when she moves her arm

I added in some spiderweb and a flashing spider onto her tray at the end and Sophie had a ball getting her hands all over the web.

This is such a great activity for Active Learning, a philosophy I have talked about on the blog before and one that is so important to us.  Sophie is able to play at her pace and make everything work without any assistance. 

Halloween is just around the corner, we have found Lucas and Sophie's costumes so now it is just a waiting game until the big night!