What is a tape rescue?

One-year-olds are not the easiest group to entertain. I know that. I’m a three-time veteran and I’ve learned a few things: they lick everything, they have butterfly attention spans, and they love tape… which is why tape rescue is perfect for them.

It’s an easy way to give them something to do, focus their energy and attention, and give you a little break (little is more than nothing – which is the benchmark for one-year-olds).

I first heard about tape rescue or rescue-the-toy type activities from Laughing Kids Learn and Mama.Papa.Bubba (two of my all-time favorite blogs).

The idea is simple – use tape as an activity base. The tape alone or the tape with toys makes for one awesome way to get tabies working, focused, and sitting still for half a second.

RELATED: Looking for more activities for tabies? Check out my list of 30+ easy activities for one-year-olds.

What is a taby?

I use the term “taby” interchangeably with one-year-old so let’s define this word.

A taby is my silly little word for “not quite a toddler,” but definitely not a baby. I call them “tabies” and boy are they a fun group to hang around with.

Tabies have all the hopes, dreams, and desires of toddlers… but don’t quite have the motor skills or planning to make their ideas come to life. Baby stuff is too young from them. Toddler stuff is too old.

“Taby” is a small window in childhood but it’s an important one to honor. We can’t hold them back in babyhood, but we also don’t need to rush them into toddler life.

Materials

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This is not a difficult activity to find supplies for. Use toys you have. Use the tape you have. Don’t overthink this. Activities don’t have to be fancy to be effective.

The how-to

Rip the tape and affix the toys to the cookie sheet. That’s the “recipe” here.

The goal is for the taby to remove all the animals and the tape. It’s a hard job and a tall order for little fingers to do that kind of work.

Getting the tape pulled up, getting the animal off the tape, and getting the tape off their fingers – it’s a lot of steps for a little one and focuses their attention and energy. It can also kick start them into playing with the toys they are trying to pull up.

Other ideas for a tape rescue

This is a GREAT activity for babies AND tabies for airplane rides. Set up the activity on the tray table – just pack some tape and animals with you.

It’s also a great activity on a high chair tray. It’s a way to focus their attention and keep them occupied, while keeping them contained. If you need to make dinner without a screaming taby at your feet: tape rescue to the rescue (see what I did there?).

What do tabies learn with a tape rescue?

It looks like such a simple activity – it’s tape and toys! – but it’s so much more. Here’s everything my taby is working on with this activity:

• Hand eye coordination – working on grabbing the tape and toys
• Find motor skills – look at the pincer grasp grow
• Vocabulary – consider using words like “rip” and “pull” during this activity
• Planning and decision making – making plans for how to rescue each toy
• Problem solving – the tape gets stuck to their fingers… and they have to figure out what to day.

Just because an activity doesn’t look like much, doesn’t mean it isn’t full of great learning opportunities. Tape rescue is a perfect example of learning through play.

Susie Allison, M. Ed

Owner, Creator

Susie Allison is the creator of Busy Toddler and has more than 2.3 million followers on Instagram. A former teacher and early childhood education advocate, Susie’s parenting book “Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting” is available on Amazon.