WRITING - Wipe clean boards, letter wall and stickers

I want to bring this quick post on how writing has begun in our home over the past weeks. We have made up some materials which have become important tools in our day to day life and with very little adult input our children are beginning to write.

Our first item is our wipe clean activity boards. I made up some of these and have used an early writing skills book to make others. I started with patterns for them to follow, mazes and letters and numbers. This has progressed to the letters of their name, sight words and matching words and pictures. To make these up I used a sheet of A4 paper and some laminating sheets or old overhead projector sheets taped to the A4 paper. Then the boys use white board pens to draw, erase and re-draw and they spend 20-30 minutes at a time on this activity. 

The second activity is the number and letter wall. This was posted in our number week post but has been such a success I will share it with you again. It is simply a sheet of sticky back plastic taped to the wall where the boys can play with their foam number and letters. This has expanded to sight words which i have put on card and placed on the letter wall and the eldest has started identifying the letters in the words and making up the words himself.

The third activity is stickers. It's such a simple activity and with the right type of stickers can bring a lot of letter recognition. My boys have started recognizing the letters in their names and the eldest can make up his name from letter stickers.

So here is last nights 40 minute session:

6.02pm They start using the wipe clean boards

6.09pm Youngest (19m/o) loses focus and starts walking around with pens 

             Eldest continues his work

6.12pm Youngest comes back to the table to continue then comes and goes with my guidence. Eldest continues focused on his work.

6.20pm Eldest starts to loose interest in the activity and draw erratically!

6.22pm I end the activityand both boys run off to the letter and number wall and start placing letters on.

6.26pm both start throwing letters around so I end the activity calling them to the table to the new sticker activity.

6.42pm They finish the stickers and put the rubbish in the bin.

It was exactly 40 minutes of activities and not once did I have to discipline them or get very involved in what they were doing. My role was to provide the next step and guide the youngest when he lost interest and obviously praise them both when they showed me their work or answer questions about the letters and numbers. When my eldest is focused so well I try to guide my youngest more telling him the name of the letters and show him the letters in his name. This helps him to maintain focus and give him the input he needs to begin his literacy journey. This type of activity occurs in our house most days where for just under an hour they have writing and reading opportunities in a series of pre-prepared activities and I can honestly say it's really paying off!

Glow in the dark activities and facing fears

The Black-
light torch we used

My greatest discovery so far... tonic water glows under a black light! Over the past few weeks we have been doing some glow in the dark activities. Here I will show the ones that have worked and let you know the ones that have failed! I wasn't very interested in chemistry at school but I sure am now. Learning with the boys is amazing.

I was so thrilled to find out that something so simple could bring a new edge to our activities. And, even more so as it would be something that helped my youngest feel more comfortable in the dark. My eldest has always voiced his fears loud and overcome them quickly but my youngest seems more concerned about things and not so quick to adapt (poor guy hardly has a chance with his big brother around)! The dark was starting to be an issue I was going to have to address and these activities have helped my son to feel confident and enjoy the dark. At first he was quite reluctant but once his brother was set up I was able to work slowly encouraging him to enjoy the moment - and now - no stopping him!

Here are our activities:

First we tried just pouring and enjoying the glow! This was a great starting point as it glows brightly and the boys were able to splash it about in the bath with little concern for cleaning up. They had a variety of containers, jugs and funnels and spent quite a while transferring the liquid from one place to another. And yes, a few drops were consumed but neither were keen on the taste!

Next we tried cornflour and tonic water. This was another super glowey one. The white in the cornflour helped to keep the vivid glow and the boys had a great if messy time playing with this old favorite!

Then, I tried to be a bit more adventurous and made playdough. Big fail! I think the flour and salt are too dense to allow the tonic water to glow so we had to turn the lights on for this one! I also tried letting them draw white crayon pictures and letters but again these didn't really glow. Perhaps a white marker pen on black paper would work but we haven't tried that yet. 

So back to something that worked. Cornflour and tonic water in food bags to do drawing and writing (thick consistency and strong food bags)! We made up some sensory bottles using cooking oil, food colouring and tonic water. I made up several to explore colour and the reaction between the oil and water then decided to try with tonic water to see if it worked under the black light. It did and it was nice clean fun watching the bubbles go back and fourth in the bottle. 

Finally, and probably the most impressive, was Tapioca or Sagu seeds and tonic water. Tapioca is a popular food here and these are known as sagu here. But I see they are available from health food shops. I soaked the sagu in the tonic water for a couple of hours then added more water so they were 'swimming' around. They glowed so bright and they got quite sticky so the boys could press handfuls together. The next night I didn't add extra tonic water and the stickiness intensified so they could make really big 'snowballs'. Then I left the tapioca pearls to dry out. The next day they were able to have  dry play session in the dark and this was really great too as they threw up handfuls and searched to see where it landed!

Sagu seeds

This has been such a brilliant discovery, made even better as it helped my youngest son overcome a fear. We have had so much fun with it and will definitely be repeating these activities in the future. As always I will add a quick conscience note on food use and let you know that the quantities we use are minimal and all in the name of safe play for the littlies. 

If you have any ideas of ways to use our black light further please let us know as we just love it :) 



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Purposeful Play - our first Kindle book is live today!

Today sees our first ever book for Kindle go live. It has been a year in the making and we are proud to announce it is finally here! Read on to hear more about the book and find links to several Amazon sites at the bottom of this post. Please let us know what you think below as any feedback is always greatly received. And a big thank you to all our readers for your continued support of the blog.

The Book

'Purposeful Play' contains a selection of activities to carry out with children aged between 0-6 years. The book is sub-divided into sections according to the type of activity and each activity is photographed to show how the activity can be implemented. 

The aim of the book is to give parents some insight into the benefits of these simple tasks and to enhance home life by getting children involved in simple everyday tasks around the home. There is a section on cooking which brings some of our successful recipes, many of which are sugar free and very simple so that children can be the main participants in carrying them out.

You can get your copy of 'Purposeful Play' from any Amazon site and for your convenience the links follow:

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Amazon Brazil

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 :)