Isn’t it funny that some play activities you can spend ages preparing and your child doesn’t get overly excited by it, whereas other times you can put together an activity in less than a minute and it is a huge hit. That is what happened with our letter M activity for the A-Z Fine Motor Play series. Our Money Balance Game had my son captivated for ages and meant I could cook tea in peace!
Setting up the activity couldn’t have been easier. The only resources I gathered together was an empty plastic drink bottle, a recycled circle lid from a cylinder packing tube and some coins.
From an early age my son has loved playing with money. As a result we purchased some large pirate coins that have been regularly played with for years. The large plastic coins are stored in a pirate chest money box that my son enjoys slotting the money in at the top.
I placed the plastic bottle on the table and then carefully positioned the plastic lid on top. This tested my own fine motor skills to get the lid to balance. I then asked my son to see how many coins he could place on top of the circle.
I had assumed that my son would position the coins around the lid. However, he decided to stack the coins instead. He had to concentrate so that his fingers would not slip and make the lid topple over. At first he managed eight coins, before the lid fell off of the bottle. He was determined to beat the score.
After several attempts of using a mixture of actual money and pirate money, he realised that the real money was making the activity harder. As the real money was smaller and different sizes it didn’t balance as well. He started to only use the pirate coins and soon beat his score.
In the end his record was nineteen pirate coins balanced on top of the lid. I love that this activity can be placed in a Busy Bag and be used time and time again. I wonder if he will beat his score of nineteen in the future.

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