Blindfold Rope Path Walk
Your child follows a rope laid along the floor with her eyes closed, finding the turns with her feet while your voice tells her what is coming.
- Age
- 3 to 5, best at 4
- Setup
- 2 min
- Play
- 5 to 10 min
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- None
- You
- Lead it
Activity KG-A027
What you need
The rope and the floor are the whole activity. The blindfold is optional and always has been, which is worth saying out loud to the child before it appears.
- Soft rope, 3 to 5 mx1 Or: a skipping rope. Or a length of washing line. Or two dressing gown cords knotted together. Around 8 to 12 mm thick is what a foot can feel through a sock. Thin string vanishes underfoot and gets stepped over without the child knowing, which turns the walk into guesswork.
- Masking tapea few strips Or: any tape that lifts off your floor cleanly. Tape the rope at each bend and at both ends. An untaped rope travels with the foot, so the path quietly unmakes itself by the third walk and nobody can tell why it got harder.
- A scarf, folded tea towel or sleep maskx1 Or: nothing at all. Eyes closed is the same activity. A folded tea towel rests on the bridge of the nose without pressing on the eyes. Something tight, or anything that has to be tied hard to stay put, is the usual reason a four year old says no to the whole thing.
- A cushion or a chair as a landmarkx2 Or: a rolled towel. Or a shoe. Something to touch halfway and something to reach at the end give the walk a shape. A rope that simply stops leaves nothing to arrive at, and arriving is what makes a four year old want to go again.
How to set it up
- Push the furniture back to the walls and take everything off the floor along the whole path, including whatever is under the table.1 min
- Lay the rope in a long S with three or four wide turns, leaving a clear stride of floor on both sides of it.30 sec
- Tape the rope down at every bend and at both ends, and put a cushion where it finishes.20 sec
- Walk the whole path together with your eyes open, at her pace, so she knows where it goes before she cannot see it.30 sec
What to say and what to do
Say
Slide your foot along it. Do not lift it.
Turn coming, to your left, in two steps.
- Ask before anything goes near the eyes, every time. Eyes closed is the same walk, and plenty of four year olds pick it.
Do
- Walk at her shoulder and keep talking. Your voice is the second rope, and a silence of more than a few seconds is what makes a child with her eyes shut stop moving.
- Say each turn before it arrives rather than as she hits it. Left in two steps is usable; left said at the corner is already too late.
- Hand him the blindfold to take off himself, and let him put it back on when he wants it.
Let be
- Hands down on the floor, following the rope on all fours. That is a four year old solving the problem, and the feet come back on the next walk.
- The blindfold coming off halfway along. Finishing the path with eyes open still counts as walking the path.
- A pace much slower than you expected. Slow is what careful looks like at four.
What it looks like when it is working
- The feet start sliding along the rope instead of lifting off it and hunting for it again.
- She stops asking where you are.
- He takes the bend before you name it, because his foot found the curve first.
- She wants to walk it backwards, or wants you to put the blindfold on and have a go.
What to expect at each age
At three
Follows the rope with eyes open and will close them for two or three steps at a time. Wants a hand to hold for the whole path, and lets go of it at the turns by accident rather than on purpose.
Walking the whole path with the eyes covered comes later. At three the rope itself is most of the interest, and following it by foot is the real work.
Lasts 3 to 5 minutes
At four
Walks the whole path with eyes closed or covered, feeling the rope with the inside of the foot, and acts on one instruction at a time. Asks how far is left.
Two instructions held in a row, and a path he has not seen first, arrive around five.
Lasts 5 to 10 minutes
At five
Walks it fast, asks for things to step over, and wants to be the one giving the directions while you wear the blindfold.
This is where the rope becomes a route around a room with obstacles on it, and the directions turn into a pair of instructions held in mind at once.
Lasts 10 to 15 minutes
When it goes sideways
Each of these is the walk telling you something about its level, and each has a change you can make in about thirty seconds.
He will not have the blindfold on
A cloth over the eyes takes away more than sight, and a lot of four year olds want to keep the option of looking.
Run it with eyes closed instead, and say out loud that he can open them whenever he likes. The feet and the listening are doing exactly the same work either way, and most children close their eyes for longer when nobody is holding them shut.
She steps off the rope every few paces
The rope is either too thin to feel through a sock, or the turns are sharper than a foot can follow without seeing them.
Bare feet, and open the bends out into long curves. A skipping rope on a wooden floor under a bare foot is about as findable as it gets.
He rushes and it turns into crashing about
Speed is how a four year old handles not being able to see, and the path is not giving him enough to do slowly.
Put a cushion halfway along for him to find and touch. Something to arrive at turns the run into a search, and a search happens at walking pace.
It is over in a minute
The path is short, and one walk down a straight rope is one walk.
Lay it twice as long, with a turn that brings it back so it finishes where it started. Five metres of rope walked carefully is five minutes.
Making it harder
Four rungs on the same rope. Each one takes away a little more of what the eyes were doing, and puts it onto the feet and the ears.
The rope with eyes open
- Ready when
- This is where everybody starts.
- What changes
- The rope taped to the floor, walked foot over foot at her own pace.
- What is new
- Finding the line with the feet, which is most of the job long before the eyes ever close.
Eyes closed, hand in yours
- Ready when
- She can walk the whole path while looking at it.
- What changes
- Eyes closed, your hand held the whole way, and each turn said aloud as it comes.
- What is new
- Trusting the foot over the eye, with a hand there as the line back.
Covered eyes, voice only
- Ready when
- He lets go of your hand and keeps his eyes shut anyway.
- What changes
- No hand. You walk beside him and name each turn two steps before it arrives.
- What is new
- Taking an instruction and acting on it while the body is already busy, which is the hardest thing in here.
She gives the directions
- Ready when
- She walks the whole path on her own without a wobble.
- What changes
- You wear the blindfold, she talks you round, and you do exactly what she says and nothing else.
- What is new
- Saying an instruction clearly enough that somebody else can act on it. Much harder than following one, and much funnier.
Stop while she still wants one more walk. Leave the rope taped down until the evening and it usually gets walked again on the way past, which is where most of the practice happens.
How to keep it safe
Almost all of this is the floor, and it is worth doing properly once.
- Clear the whole path to the walls before anything goes near the eyes. Furniture corners, toys, the edge of a rug, the dog bowl, the bag by the door.
- Bare feet, or socks with grip, on a floor without a step or a threshold strip in it.
- Walk within arm's reach the whole way, on the open side of the path.
- Keep it to a room with no stairs, no stove and no glass door. A landing or a kitchen with the oven on is a room for the eyes-open version.
- The blindfold comes off the moment he reaches for it, without him having to ask.
Why this helps
Walking a line you cannot see hands the job to the sense that normally sits in the back seat: knowing where your feet are, how far a step went and which way your body has turned, from the inside rather than by looking. Four year olds have that sense and almost never have to use it alone, because vision answers first. Take the picture away and the feet suddenly have to report.
The other half is listening while something else is going on. A direction arriving mid-step has to be held for a second and then carried out, and there is no chance to check your face for the answer. That is a much harder version of following an instruction than anything that happens at a table, and a rope on a cleared floor makes it safe to get wrong.
Skill practised: body awareness and listening, with the eyes switched off
This is not a trust exercise and it is not a calming activity. A four year old does it because walking with your eyes shut is exciting, and the balance and the listening come along for the ride.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. The shape of the rope and the way a foot slides along it rather than steps on it are both easier to catch in ten seconds of video than in a paragraph.
Opens the profile, not a message. No newsletter, and nothing on this page is held back for followers.
Questions parents ask
My four year old will not wear a blindfold. Is it still worth doing?
Yes, and it works just as well. Eyes closed does the same job, because the balance and the listening do not care whether the dark is coming from a cloth or from eyelids. Say at the start that he can open them whenever he wants, and most children end up keeping them shut for longer than they would with something tied on. The blindfold is a prop, not the activity.
What kind of rope works best?
A skipping rope or an old washing line, around 8 to 12 mm thick, three to five metres long. Thick enough to feel through a sock is the only real requirement. Thin string gets stepped over without being noticed, and anything stretchy moves under the foot. Tape it down at the bends or it will slowly straighten out as it gets walked.
How long should the path be?
Four or five metres, laid in an S, so it fits in a cleared living room. That is about a minute of careful walking, which is roughly one go. A straight three metre rope is finished before it has started, and looping it back on itself so it ends where it began means nobody has to walk back to the start.
Can two children do it together?
One at a time on the rope, and the other one has the better job. Give the watching child the directions to call out and swap over halfway. Saying left in two steps clearly enough that somebody acts on it is harder than hearing it, and children who have just walked the path are unusually good at describing it.