Do you have an alphabet foam mat in your child's playroom? My guess is, if you own one, it is used primarily for one of two things: a play mat or a puzzle. Ours initially did too. However, ours hasn't been assembled as a play mat for many, many months. Instead, the pieces are stacked in a corner of our playroom, just waiting to be something more.
Here is just a sample of the ways in which we have used the foam mat in the past...
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| Hopscotch |
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| Building towers and houses |
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| A costume |
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| As part of a fort |
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| As part of an obstacle course |
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| A playhouse |
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| A really large box to play in (I think F originally built this as a cat house for a stuffed cat) |
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A maze
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Triangle hurtles, rectangle boats, an intricate tunnel, and an adult-sized robot costume (my husband would definitely not approve of me posting that picture) are some of the other things we have built. J and K also love playing with the individual letters and numbers as a hands on way to learn the alphabet and numbers.
So it turns out that a simple foam mat can be so much more than just a play mat or puzzle. It can be a great open-ended toy for building large scale objects with, while opening up a child's (or adult's) imagination.
