Motor Skills Activities with No Setup Time

I'd love to have the time to create beautiful Montessori-style trays which the kids can use to practice certain skills, but in the meantime I have to come up with fun activities on the fly.  I want to share two activities that the girls enjoyed immensely, both of which took mere seconds to set up..

Scarf Pull - Homemade Baby Game

Using a $1 plastic bag dispenser (from Target), I made Baby H (8 months old) a new game.  I filled the dispenser with silk scarves and invited him to pull them out of the holes.  H found this very entertaining, especially when I showed him how to keep pulling and pulling the longer ones.  L and E (almost 3 years old) also had a good time with the scarves.  Here are some of the games we played...

Paint Exploration

What do we do when my mess-averse husband is away all morning?  We paint!  The girls and I had fun exploring different ways to paint, from golf-ball painting, to painting with cars, to making bubble-wrap prints.  It wasn't so much about the final product, but the experience of exploring this medium in different ways...