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Match Stick Mini Rafts (Another Simple Wine Cork Craft for Kids)
Match stick mini rafts: What you need: Wine corks Paper Match sticks Elastic bands Cocktail sticks or wooden skewers Ice lolly sticks Blue tack or playdough PVA glue What you do: Attach 3 wine corks together by wrapping 2 elastic bands around the corks ensuring that the lie flat like a raft. (I had to do this for my kids) Cover the top of the raft in PVA glue Place an ice lolly stick on top of the raft, press down to ensure that it sticks. Now, cover the lolly stick in PVA glue Stick the matchsticks close together across the length of the lolly stick Leave to dry Cut…
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Halloween Playdough – A Ghoulish Invitation to Play and Create!
Playdough provides children with endless possibilities to play and create as well as developing all sorts of physical and cognitive skills. As Halloween is not a million miles off, I thought it was time to make some Halloween inspired playdough and invite my little munchkins to get creepily creative!!!!!! After Christmas, Halloween is my favourite holiday! Mind you, I love to celebrate and decorate for every holiday and festival throughout the year!!!! However, being a teacher this is usually the first holiday of the year that we really get to focus on and get creative with and as a result I have built up a tonne of resources and ideas…
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Fizzy Glittery Playdough / Gloop – Super Sensory Fun!
A group of fantastic bloggers from the Kid Blogger Network (of which I am a member) are running a year long linky called “12 Months of Sensory Dough”. Each month there is a theme for the dough and bloggers are encouraged to experiment with the theme and share their experiences (good and bad). We love sensory play and make a lot of playdough and love to experiment with new recipes. So, as it was raining heavily this morning I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to experiment with fizzy dough, this months theme!!!! The Bloggers hosting this fantastic project are: Lemon Lime Adventures Look! We’re Learning! Glittering Muffins…
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Beach Themed Invitation to Play – Small World Play and Sensory Play
A Beach Themed sensory play activity was on our 100 Days of Summer Bucket List and this week we had we had the opportunity to cross it off our list and have a whole lot of fun doing it! So, what is an invitation to play (you may have seen this term used on this blog and elsewhere before)? Simply, it is arranging an activity in an attractive manner that will encourage a child’s curiosity, allow opportunities for exploration, independent play and participation in a meaningful, purpose and sensory way. It should invite the child to want to play and use their imagination. Of course it should also be age…
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How to Make a Fairy Tale Castle – Outdoor Summer Fun for Kids!
I don’t know about you, but when I was a child I absolutely loved to build houses, tents, dens, castles, clubhouses etc. My two monkeys are exactly the same and when our chickens and their coop arrived last Sunday (more about that later!) they were far more excited about the two huge cardboard boxes the flat pack chicken coop came in than their 3 new feathered friends! Honestly, so was I! I immediately started to conjure up all sorts of ideas for what we could create with the cardboard – I probably should have been more interested in Mr G as he expertly constructed the chicken coop – good job…
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Summer Butterfly Collages: An Invitation to Create – using materials as a stimulus
I love to wander around “Euro” or “Pound” shops looking out for bits and pieces to use in art projects or play activities. On one such trip recently I found these card butterfly cut outs. I’m not a huge fan of using templates and cut outs but I find if they are used in the right way they can be very useful for creative process art projects. Often I use some sort of a stimulus for our art activities – a book, an item, a picture, or even a piece of music. I also use the actual art materials as a stimulus, which is what I did for this…
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Easter Art for Toddlers and Preschoolers
We finally got around to starting our Easter artwork today. I’m sure that we will manage a few more seasonal projects over the next week or so. Today we have 2 to share with you. Potato-print Easter Chicks: These were so much fun to do.. Doodles and Oodles love printing so there was great excitement when I handed them potatoes and Lego/Duplo to print with today. What do you need? Potatoes, cut in half and allowed to dry for a couple of hours Lego or Duplo blocks Paint Paper Instructions: Have fun! We used the bricks to create our grass Our chicks were made by printing with the potatoes. We…
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Doodles’s Book of the Week – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
Doodles’ is my 4 ½ year old boy and a serious book lover. His book of choice this week surprised me a little. Not that it’s not a great book as it truly is but because he loved this book when he was younger but seemed to have grown out of it. However, over the last week or so his preschool class have been working on this book, going on their own bear hunts, creating small worlds, painting and drawing their favourite parts of the story etc. So this probably explains his renewed interest in this book. I’m sure that you are familiar with this book but in case you…
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Our Big Blue Activity Box, aka “The What To Do When I’m Bored Box” – 15 activity ideas
Today, I have decided to share the contents of our “Big Blue Activity Box”. Back in early January I found that both of my children were grouchy and irritable and weren’t playing with toys or anything for that matter. They would not play independently and I was completely worn out plus we were battling colds and sore throats etc. I think they were “hung-over” after the festivities of the Christmas season – toys, gifts, sweets, lots of time with both Mr G and I. At the time I felt that I was spending my days separating the two of them, listening to howls and whinging, dealing with silly behaviour. Off…
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Our Top 5 Messy Play Ideas from Pinterest
When it comes to play in this house, the messier the better! I am constantly for new, fun and MESSY ideas for Doodles and Oodles to try. These are 5 of our favourite most recent finds from Pinterest! Check out my group board – Outdoor Fun and Messy Play ideas on Pinterest, follow it and I’ll send you an invite to pin on it if you want! Baking Soda and Vinegar Eruptions – this is a real favourite with Doodles. He never tires of creating these mini volcanic-like eruptions, great fun, easy to do, requires very little preparation. We got this idea from Live, Play, Imagine, a really brilliant…
