Gross Motor Skills:Trampoline

We finally took the plunge and invested in a  6ft trampoline to fit in our postage stamp sized garden.  (Ours was from Amazon.co.uk.)We bought ours because it is good fun and in moving back to the UK we have moved away from both a fantastic park but also a massive soft-play place which is in a converted factory  in Hengelo NL and had its own trampolines.
Did you know that trampolining is also great for exercising the eye muscles?  Two of our friends got theirs after it was suggested as helping "lazy-eyes" because the eyes have to constantly minutely adjust as you bounce up and down.  Horse-riding is also good for the same reason.  It is so good that one of our friends was told the only hope for her son was an operation by one consultant and when she got a second opinion and tried the trampoline for a year the improvement was such that he doesn't need the op anymore.
Took an afternoon to fit together and is a huge hit.

Fine Motor Skills and Gross Motor Skills:Bubble Wrap

Is there any kid in the entire world who doesn't like popping the bubbles in bubble wrap.  We bought a new oven this weekend (pizza on the menu again after 6 weeks waiting! Yey!) and of course it was swathed in bubble wrap.
A, R and B all wanted to get hold of it and pop the bubbles but it was B who got to play with it longest in the end.  He tried popping the bubbles by squeezing them between his fingers but this didn't work too well.  His preferred technique found from empirical observation was to place it on a flat surface (like the floor) and press down.
All good fine motor stuff but gross motor?  If you have a big enough roll of bubble wrap put on the floor and walk, run, jump, hop,skip, dance, crawl and anything else you can think of to burst the bubbles, no fingers allowed. Even better if you have more than 1 piece then you can make it a contest.  Manic but fun!