Y is for Yo Yo

• Yo Yo Guessing Game
  1. Place a real yo yo in a bowl and cover with a cloth.
  2. Let the kids put their hand in the bowl and describe one thing they feel … maybe it’s hard, or round, or they feel a string. Can they describe what we do with this object?
  3. OPTIONAL: try this with a few other objects or toys first and save the yo yo for last.

• Play with real yo yos.
• NOTE: my kids had a hard time getting the real yo yos to work, but the dollar store had the kind that retract by themselves that were much more fun for them.

• Yo Yo Counting
  1. Cut out large numbers 1-5 from colorful paper and pin them to the wall.
  2. Have the kids write the letter Y on several dot stickers (we called them yo yo stickers!)
  3. Then, I yo-yo-ed (um, probably not a real word!) and had the kids count how many times the yo yo went down.
  4. Whatever number they counted, they ran over and stuck one of their yo yo dot stickers to the matching number cutout.
  5. Repeat!

 

• Make water balloon yo yos … this was the best part of the day. Even I had fun playing with these!
  1. Fill a small balloon with water and tie. I didn’t fill it very full, then blew a little bit of air inside.
  2. Attach a rubber band handle (just cut a large rubber band to make a long elastic and tie to the balloon)
  3. Bounce it up and down like a yo yo!

 

Yo Yo

• Make a Paper Yo Yo
  1. Draw or trace a circle on a piece of yellow (or whatever color) paper.
  2. Let your preschooler practice cutting it out.
  3. Practice writing the letters Y-O-Y-O on the circle. My 3-year-old loves to trace dot letters right now, so that’s what we did.
  4. Tape a length of string on the back and hang up your Yo Yo!
• Play with Yo Yos
  1. I picked up a couple different yo yos at the dollar store.
  2. One was a light-up yo yo and the other was a bouncy yo yo. It would bounce down, then retract the string all by itself. Much better for young kids!
  3. We had fun trying them out and even more fun when they broke … go figure with dollar store toys … and we got to take them apart to see what was inside!