Wrapping Presents Playtime

As I am not the most organised person, I generally leave wrapping presents to the last minute. It then becomes such a chore, as it has to be done quickly and well. Darling Him loves doing it, so he generally has the pleasure of wrapping for both of us (well, I do wrap his, to keep it a surprise). When we wrote down "wrapping presents" as one of our countdown to Christmas activities, I wasn't actually intending Ju to wrap all my presents for me. The aim was to playfully experiment with matching different sizes of paper with different object sizes, to develop coordination with sticking sticky tape while holding paper, and generally discuss the point of wrapping presents at all. Also, did I mention Ju loves folding paper at the moment?

This is what I gathered for today's playful activity:

• jam jar lids
• several packaging boxes of different sizes: small cosmetic box, light bulb box,...
• pieces of wrapping paper of different sizes (use recycled paper from previous years/gifts)
• scissors
• small strips of sellotape (lots!)
• last year's Christmas card, main picture cut into small squares
• hole punch
• pieces of wool

Ju chose a jam jar lid to wrap first, and he folded it up inside some paper. He stuck sellotape, not necessarily on the bits that needed to be stuck together, but more on top of the paper. This allowed us to discuss the point of sellotape in closing any "gaps" and fixing the folds onto the main bit of the present wrap.

Wrapping a jam jar lid

He then cut some paper with his scissors and realised that it was too small for the box he had originally intended to wrap, so he chose one of the smaller boxes.

Ju cuts paper to wrap this box but then realises that the piece of paper is too small

Wrapping paper absorbed him for quite a while and he didn't really get frustrated until the fourth wrap. 

Holding the folded paper while putting the sellotape on is tricky

He then punched one hole in each of the tags and set about threading the wool into the hole to make the tag attachment.

Punching holes through the tags

Threading wool through the tag

Present ready: " I will put it under the tree now"