January 19 is Tin Can Day. It was also a day of trial and error for me to get our activity off the ground.
I knew that I wanted Jude to play with the tin cans. There's so much you can do with them -- stack them, play music with them, use magnets on them. It seemed like the perfect play activity. My hold up was that Jude is a baby that loves to chew on things, and while the edges were smooth, I wanted to be extra certain he didn't hurt himself.
I started the process by getting cans from our recycling bin and cleaning them thoroughly. I used a little bit of goo gone to get the sticky part off of the can. This part went well.
I moved on to my initial plan for sealing the rims by putting hot glue around the inside and top of the rim. After hot gluing each can, I did a pull test and the rings of hot glue popped right off. I peeled each of the rings off and went back to the drawing board.
I realized that cloth and rubber bands would provide that extra barrier that I was looking for, so I used what I had on hand (washcloths and hair ties). They provided an adequate barrier, so we started to play! I put magnetic letters on top of the cans to get Jude interested. He went right for the letters and started grabbing them and knocking the can over.
Jude played around with the cans for a little bit. He chewed them, dropped them, and banged them together. After, we pulled out the measuring spoons and played a little music. Jude was enamored by the music that Jay was playing. He could have sat forever chewing on spoons and listened to Jay play.
Jude tried his hand at copying Jay and playing some music. His dexterity isn't quite at the point where he made contact each time, but he tried his best to play his tin can drums.
We moved on to using the tin cans like blocks to make towers. There was a lot of building and knocking down. Knocking down towers is one of Jude's new pastimes.
We finished our play session with dumping dry beans between two containers and listening to the sounds. It was a briefly lived activity because Jude threw his first ever tantrum after I wouldn't let him hold the cans.
Overall, this was one of our more fun and versatile holiday activities. It was quick, easy, and best of all, it was free!
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