Over the summer, we used a long rope simply as a boredom buster, and games with it filled almost an entire morning. Today I tailored rope play specifically to my toddler while big brother was in school. Any jump rope will work for this activity, or even just a long piece of regular rope.

First, I wanted to see if it she could walk across it like a balance beam. Easy-peasy!

But could she follow the rope if we made it zigzag? This was definitely more of a challenge, but Veronika worked hard to get one foot in front of the other along the twists.

Next, I challenged her to cross the rope using her body in different ways. She could hop over it, step across it, or even crawl on it.

From here, she found her own ways to play with the rope. She thought the handles looked like microphones and wanted to sing into them.

Then she began dragging the rope around like a snake or a puppy leash. When it tangled at her feet, she gave a jump over it, almost a precursor to jumping rope!

She also loved holding both ends and pretending she was a butterfly, fluttering the strands in each hand.

I loved that she came up with her own gross motor ways to use a rope, including some I never imagined!