Clean Play - no mess activities

Continuing the collection of weekly posts from our facebook page here is a collection of what I call 'dry' activities. They are a lot easier to clean up and great for indoor play especially in the winter or wet days. Let me know what you think :)

Hand and footprint trails.

Drawing round hands and feet is great fun so we cut out a whole bunch and made trails to where we hid and the others had to find us. This went on for ages and it didn't even matter if we could see each other as it was all about the trail! When they finally tired of this activity we made treasure maps and they stuck stickers along a dotted line I mapped out for them.

Stone pictures.
This activity is not limited to stones and could include anything you have at home. It could even be done using the kids toys say lego, toy cars or beads or something similar. We used stones and did this activity in the garden but again it could be done inside. We used a hoola hoop for a frame and the boys had fun creating stone pictures. Even the little guy got super interested in making areoplane after aeroplane!


Dens.
This activity got such a large response from our facebook fans that it will be one I will elaborate on more in the future. We just love making dens. Any little place to hide out or have a snack in is just brilliant. We used the dining room chairs for this one draping our fairy lights around the top and finally covering the whole thing with a blanket. The boys have actually spent the entire week in there! We have read, built towers, had snacks and snuggled for movie time under there and they really don't want to take it down!!! If you have any inspiration for future dens for us please leave us a comment below or on our fanpage.

Re-usable worksheets.
These are just brilliant and the boys love that they can use big pens to work on them. They were really quick to make up too. If you're not good at drawing then just print off some worksheets online. I have found some really interesting things at www.activityvillage.co.uk I used some old overhead projector slides but laminating sheets would also work well to place over the activity sheet. Then secure it with tape and they are ready for use. Whiteboard markers and a small damp cloth are all the materials needed and they will keep the boys busy for ages.


Sticky back plastic wall work.
This is one of our absolute favorites! Just spreading a large piece of sticky back plastic out and taping in to the wall - sticky side out - makes a great canvas. If you don't want to put it on the wall it can go on a cardboard box too and will work equally well. This time we used our foam letters and numbers and a few of the sight words we are working on and it's amazing how both boys have suddenly got really interested in all things letters and numbers. The little guy can even name a couple of letters and the eldest is learning that putting the letters together make up words. This one gets a 10/10 from us :)

Messy play

I have decided to collect together a weeks posts from our fan page on facebook and write about all our messy play activities so you can find them all in one spot.

Firstly a quick note on sensory play. It has great benefits for young children in allowing them to experience new and different sensations and learn about the world around them. Senses are used to enhance their experience and give unique learning opportunities. Plus, it really is good for the soul to get your hands dirty and enjoy the mess!

We were ecstatic to finally find corn flour here in Brazil. Yeah I really should have been searching harder, it was right under my nose every time I went to the supermarket! So this weeks activities are primarily based on corn flour play :)

It is one of my favourite things to use for sensory play so I guess that's why my boys enjoyed it so much too!

We began with a simple corn flour and water mix. we added a packet of cornflour to a small amount of water mixing continuously until we had a nice textured goop that we could roll into a ball and let drip from our fingers. This activity can be even more fun if you make a couple of batches in different colours and watch them run together!

Our next corn flour fun involved making slimes! Soaked linseed makes a great consistency for adding to cornflour to make textured goopy slime!

The soaked linseed made great sensory beads too. We just added different colours and let the boys free on them (in the safety of the bath to contain the mess)! 

We then went on to make edible paint! We have two types - one is made from yogurt and food colouring which has a great texture (and smell depending on the yogurt you use). My boys actually eat most of it too so not at all waste full. They particularly enjoy licking it off the paper! The second type of safe paint is water with food colouring. Very simple and great for painting walls and paths in the garden! 

Science week

This week we have had a week of science.

Sounds a little sophisticated but really all we have done is played with things like magnets and magnifying glasses and carried out some cool experiments!

So here's how we did it.

I got the boys some simple and cheap magnifying glasses which they both instantly adored! They took them everywhere for two entire days and looked at everything through them. It's been fun and they have definitely learned about magnifying. They especially liked to magnify eyes!!!

I also got a pair of small binoculars but they were not that interested in them! I think it has something to do with the two eye coordination that makes it a harder process to see things. We still used them a few times and I spoke to them about distance and a little about perspective while they watched aeroplanes coming into land.

We looked at magnets. Mainly playing a fishing game I made for them but also talking about the positive and negative forces when they try to connect the wrong ends of the trains. This is an advanced concept which I don't expect them to take on board but it's helping my eldest to be less frustrated when the trains won't connect! So much easier when you can 'blame' science!

We have also done several experiments. Our first was with milk, food colouring and washing up liquid. This was really simple and fast so great for small children. We put a small amount of milk in a dish and added a couple of drops of two different coloured food colouring to the middle of the milk. I chose primary colours so that they would mix to make a different colour and my eldest son loved this as he has just realised how mixing two colours makes another. Finally we added a drop of washing up liquid and watched as the reaction from the milk with the washing up liquid drove the colours in a swirling motion around the dish. They finally mixed together, to the delight of my son, who required us to do the experiment four times before he was finished! Luckily it is a very small amount of milk needed for each go, so not too wasteful. Watch our video below

Our second experiment was a volcano! It was a much longer process to get to the actual experiment but one which was thoroughly enjoyed. First our son was watching a BBC documentary on earth and volcanoes and was really into it, so we decided to make a clay volcano. While it was drying we made grass using a mixture of blue and yellow playdough. We made a river with some of the blue playdough and he put some of his dinosaurs around. All of this was set up on cardboard.

Once the volcano was hard we added bicarbonate of soda, washing up liquid and red and yellow food colouring. Then, camera ready, we added vinegar to make the eruption.....

Watch the video here

Our final experiment was some foaming eggs. This idea came from funathomewithkids.com and although tricky to create, was great fun for the boys to watch. We even added some star sequins to make them sparkly inside! 

Watch our video here

Number week

Sometimes I like to focus our activities around a theme. We have had colour days where we use one colour in as many ways as possible - green paint, playdough, duplo blocks etc. This week I decided to up this idea and have a week completely focused on the number 1-10. It has been lots of fun so far and we're only half way through. And the bonus of this is that my 17 month old is wandering around saying 'two, two' and my 3 year old is learning to recognise all the numbers both in quantities and in figures, and counting 1-10 and 10-1. For me it makes the activities even more interesting as i'm consciously thinking of ways to adapt our routine to include numbers!

So here's how we've been doing it.

On Monday I saw a blog which had number monsters and thought they looked great so we set off to make them. The boys had a great time sticking bits on the monsters and then posting numbers through as I counted. We have progressed to putting odd numbers written on one colour and even numbers on another but there are so many variations we will be able to play with them for a long time.

We had some sponge letters and numbers so our painting this week has involved the number one and seeing if they can identify which number they are using. 

Our baking has incorporated number bread which we formed ourselves. The boys rolled out long sausage shapes and I showed them how to make them into numbers. They were both really happy to able to make number 1 themselves and the eldest did try a few others by folding his sausage shape. Next we moved on to number cookies. I have cake cutter numbers which are a great size to make the little cookies (as they want to eat one of each number). When they were ready I got the eldest to match the cookies with the written number and we counted them. He loved that he could then eat all of them and has asked to repeat this activity again and again (I'm looking into what I can substitute to make this a slightly healthier game). The final number activity we did with food was to cut out the numbers from ham and cheese. In the end they had a plate full of bread ham and cheese numbers and we used sweetcorn and carrot stick to put under each number. The whole lunch was number madness finished off with the cookies!

We have also looked at dice (both with dots and numbers up to 12) playing simple games of how many steps they can take to reach a finish line by throwing the dice. I had some math counters so the eldest enjoyed looking at these and learning about one's, ten's and hundred's although this is just to get him familiar with the material and vocabulary as the concept is much more advanced. He enjoyed building mini towers with them and we did some counting and placing them next to numbers.

I also made some number rods. these are a material used by the Montessori method. Mine were very simply made of cardboard and paint but as a first contact they worked out ok and my son was excited to get the longest ones and leave me the shortest ones. Again he counted the colours and discussed the length so lots of mathematical language happening. There is a tutorial on how to use number rods here.

Overall it's been so much fun and the boys have enjoyed all the activities. My 3 year old even managed to write some numbers using lines for 1's and o for 0's. He was really into doing this and spent a while using different coloured paper and pencils. 

At no point am I forcing them to learn just letting it happen through fun games and activities. Even if they don't learn much it's been a great week and one we are sure to repeat :)

Creativity and time

Just a short post today on creativity and the time needed for it to happen.

So often I see parents take their kids to the park and 20 minutes later are leaving with a screaming toddler who isn't finished. I know life is fast and usually very busy but 20 minutes is not enough time for a young child to get into something - I mean really get into something.

When we go - as we did this morning- I make sure we have 2 hours. We don't always use this much time and sometimes we even run over but as a guide 2 hours is about right for our trip. The first thing to note is that it is not a race to get to the climbing frame. Often the journey is as important as the destination and this runs true for our trips to the park. We are lucky to have small woodland trails to walk down to reach the playground so the boys often spend 20 or 30 mins walk here stumbling over tree roots or collecting hidden treasures. By the time we reach the play area they usually want a drink and to sit in the sand and play with their toy cars or spades. after another 15 - 30 mins they are ready to climb and run around after the pigeons before heading to the pet corner to look at the animals. When that's all been done they have another slide or swing before heading down another path back home. 

In this time I see them experiencing several moments. They have high impact time where they use a lot of energy followed by quiet time where they develop their finer motor skills followed by more interactive time socializing with other children in the park. 

Today my eldest son was playing with a couple of other children with leaves and then it started to rain. As I called him to shelter until the worst passed I saw them all holding leaves over their heads running around shouting 'look my leaf umbrella, mummy!'

Priceless and worth every second of my time. 

Send a Smile

Over the Christmas holidays our almost 3 year old has repeated a phrase that has got me thinking.

After he has been told off for some sort of inappropriate behaviour he has got into the habit of saying ‘be happy’ to us. After I noticed this was a sentence that repeated several times throughout our day I decided to ask him what could be done so that mummy would ‘be happy’. To be honest I was aiming for ‘being a good boy’ or ‘not doing that again’ to be the response but to my surprise he said ‘smile mummy’. So I smiled and said ‘now I’m happy I was just unhappy with what you did’. 

Then I started to think …. When I smile does he seem happier, does it work when I smile at the baby, what about when I smile at my husband? 

YES. 

Every time I smile, I get a smile back and they seem a little happier.

So, I sat down and discussed it with my husband. ‘When I smile at you, do you feel happy?’ Well you can guess the answer…. Yes, of course.

For 2015 we have decided new years resolutions are out and the send a smile movement is born. We are encouraging the boys to smile at people when they talk to them and we are going to smile more at people in public and even more in our family.

We may never change the world but we may make it a slightly happier place to be. 

Because who can resist those cute toothy smiles of a toddler and infectious giggles of a 3 year old?

Happy new year

Why we use reins

The choice to use reins is a controversial issue which comes up repeatedly with people I talk to. Here I explain why we chose to use reins and how they aid us in teaching our children about road and crowd safety.

We live in a village where there are roads without paths. This makes it hard to go for walks with the boys as I am constantly fearing a car will zoom round the corner and not see them. This has to be the main reason we began to use reins with our oldest son. We thought carefully about this decision and decided that it was a better option than him having to hold our hands all the time (although he does have to hold hands to cross the road-always). If you imagine having to walk with your hand up in the air even for 2 or 3 minutes it starts to feel uncomfortable. The blood drains down and you are not free to touch interesting things around you. This is how it is for a small person who must hold their parents hand for any length of time. The reins gave our boy the freedom to walk alone and be in contact with what he discovers on his wanderings, and we feel he is safe.

That´s not to say we put the reins on and forget the import lessons of road safety. When we are on a stretch of road with a path we take the reins off and walk close to him teaching him how to be safe on the path and cross the road holding our hands and looking out for traffic. He knows when there is no path he must put on his reins and he does this happily.

One aspect that has aided this smooth transition has been our choice of reins. We allowed him to choose which animal he would like and he carries his ´treasures´ that he finds in the small pocket at the back. He knows we must hold the ´tail´ and if it drops or is not attached he makes sure we´re aware of it!

Now he is almost 3 and venturing out on his bike. With the baby still in the pushchair we go off for walks along the roads without the reins and he knows to stop at the edge and is learning how to stay close to the curb when there are no paths. His brother has started walking and we will be using the reins with him in the same way so they can both enjoy walks and bike rides in a safe and learning manner.

A note on stranger danger here too. Without scaring our son we have started to try to teach him about strangers and crowds. The reins have been helpful with this too giving a restricted distance from him and us in very crowded places. We have taught him that he must always be able to see one of us and that if we shout stop he must stop immediately because he may not be safe. When we are in public spaces with few people and easy visibility we leave the reins off and instruct him on the distance he can go from us. This way he is learning how to play alone but in a way we all feel safe.

Of course our situation is perhaps unique and there are of course plenty of cons to using reins. I do however feel, that used with well thought through strategies, they can be an important tool to help you to feel safe as a parent while you are teaching your child to independently use roads and paths and become a safe citizen.