It feels good to put some of that excess styrofoam from toys and packages to good use.  This invitation to play is simple and effective.  Great for fine motor, color sorting, balancing, vocabulary building, so many things.  Plus it’s super fun and pretty.  You can add hammers and let the kids hammer in the golf tees.  We’ll probably do that next and then work our way to nails and screws.  I got these tees at a flea market for 2 dollars.  We’re going through a nice poking phase, which I’m trying to stretch out as long as possible to get the most out of it.  Another tip I learned from the amazing Jeannette Prince at Aspirations School of Learning. We’ve been working with branches, skewers, flags, tees and toothpicks so far.  I’m sure there are some other pointy things out there waiting to be discovered.  I keep changing out the styrofoam to to add interest.  I think eventually we’ll glue a few together.  We painted one but Gigi wasn’t so into it after we painted it.  We’ll try again soon.  We used beads for the balancing but you can use bouncy balls, marbles, pebbles, pinecones, all kinds of things.  Really fun and cheap!