What do you put on the floor for the crawling babies ? Where can I find a suitable rug/carpet ?

[Summerfruit]

Hi,

I have a massive carpet in the living room but it is not in very condition anymore so I'm going to change it. One of the parents I'm minding for, asked me to get a carpet suitable for crawling baby..I'm all ok for that but I also need to find something easy to maintain...dont know what to get !!

Could you get some spongy floor mat like this as a temporary solution? There are lots on Amazon but that's the best picture.

Wow thats an even better idea !!!! Thanks !!

Welcome! You can cover a huge area with it and OFSTED will love it it's educational.

yes you are completely right and it is cheaper than the rug I was considering buying...and it will have been a nightmare maintening it and probably would have been ruined after 3 monthhs, thank frakkin !

I think something like that is on offer at ELC at the moment (in their outdoor toys section) - worth looking at.

I've got one of those Summerfruit and I bought it for when my dd was crawling and it was perfect. And now we use it for her to learn letters! Very useful. And you can dismantle is at the end of each day and put away in the bag it comes in.

adding my vote for the mats, easy and soft to crawl on, nice and colourful and EASY TO CLEAN!!!

How do you get a crawling baby to stay on the mat?I mind dgs[nearly 1]one day a week and spand a lot of time following him from one room to another,up and down the tiled hallway.He gets upset if confined and even the biggest of those mats isnt room size.I have a hopscotch one and an alphabet one.

I have laminate all over downstairs, but in the baby/toddler room I have those big foam mat things, I got from Hope Education when I started nearly 5yrs ago, they last well, easy to clean and are great for crawlers and toddlers. The set I got cost about £60. its quite large and covers a good portion of the floor, it also has edging borders on it so looks nice and neat, on the rest of the floor I have some of those big car/road scence rugs so a mixture of surfaces and textures.

I think its important to remember that we are trying to provide an environment similar to home, so yes safety is an issue but so is learning to crawl /walk on all kinds of flooring, as I'm sure at home the house isn't covered in foam mats. when the little ones start walking we provide indoor sandshoes so plenty of grip as they bomb around the place.

The big car mats are in B&Q and Argos cost about £10 each, easy to clean too. foam backed so grip well and the kids love to play cars on them too.

I'm not a CM, but have a crawling/ cruising baby, we have the foam letter mats on a laminate floor, they are a good soft floor, they also make sitting on the floor warmer, and D has found they can be a good chew toy when she wants as well. If you let the children eat on them, you just need to take them up regularly to clean as the crumbs get stuck in the cracks. We got ours from Tesco.

By the way what are indoor sandshoes?

You get lots of the mat and you cover evverywhere - that way you dont have to keep them on it! But agree learning to crawl/move around on different textures is important so I wouldn't advise covering the whole house in it.

They have sets of those number mats on sale in tesco by us at the moment for about £1.50. There's 9 in a pack

I had those mats and hated them, they used to get pulled up and thrown around more often than crawled on. I now have 2x6' by 4ft crash mats, like used on a bouncy castle, I love them. Hth