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Marble Painting – More Rainy Day Messy Art Fun!
Another rainy day meant another afternoon of messy art fun! Today we used our marbles to create fantastic works of art and most importantly had a lot of fun doing it! What we used: marbles paint trays (we used a printing tray and a lid of a shoe box – couldn’t find my 2nd printing tray!!!!) card cheap and cheerful frames from Ikea basin of soapy water What we did: We placed a piece of card onto each tray and squirted some paint onto the card Doodles and oodles practiced with one marble first in order to get used to rolling the marble around the tray through the paint. They…
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Bubble Painting with Straws – Indoor Messy Art Fun, Perfect for a Rainy Day
Today we had a really thundery afternoon, with lots of heavy rain downpours – a perfect day for messy art. I had been planning on doing some bubble painting with straws for awhile now as I love to do this in school and I knew that Doodles and Oodles would absolutely love it! Little did I know that we would have the messiest fun we have had in a long time! Originally my planned activity was along the lines of these great activities from Nurture Store and Meet The Dubiens . However, our afternoon of creativity took on a life of it’s own and this is what we got up to!…
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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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Play Dough Tool Kit – Everything You Need For Play Dough Fun!
Doodles (4y.o.) and Oodles(2y.o.) had the play dough out again this afternoon. While they were creating aliens and monsters with lots of bits and pieces, I decided to clean out the crate that we keep all of our play dough tools and toys in. I actually surprised myself with the amount of things we have collected to use with play dough over the last while. We play with play dough a lot and love to try out different recipes such as our recent experiment with super soft colour surprise play dough and our old reliable basic play dough. Anyone who has ever been a primary teacher like me or worked…
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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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Super Soft Colour Surprise Playdough
I love trying out new play dough ideas. Doodles and Oodles love playing with playdough, they play with it most days. I haven’t made it in a number of weeks as the play dough recipe I generally use makes a dough that can be stored in the fridge for weeks and weeks and used over and over again. Recently on Pinterest I spotted this really great idea by Learn Play Imagine for Colour Surprise Playdough – it looked like so much fun, I was completely intrigued by it and have been waiting for the right opportunity to try it. I changed the recipe as I wanted to try out a…
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An Invitation to Play – Compost Tray, Found Objects from Nature and Toys
If you saw our post on Pre-Writing Skills yesterday you may have seen Doodles using a tray full of compost/Peat Moss to practice his writing in. I knew that he would be dying to get his hands on this tray when we had finished our writing activities so I had gathered lots of bits and pieces so that he could have lots of fun. I laid everything out on the table and encouraged him to create a small world with all of the materials. Oodles was anxious to be involved too so I had a smaller tray ready for her too. You may know by now that Doodles is construction…
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Fun Pre Writing Activities – Early Literacy & Fine Motor Skills Development
Over the past few weeks we have been having quite a bit of fun developing our fine motor skills, in particular we have been working of prewriting activities. Doodles is starting school in September and is very eager to do homework at the moment (let’s hope he maintains that enthusiasm in the years to come!!!). Activity 1 – Writing Trays Using a Variety of Materials: Sand Compost/Peat Moss Flour Rice Paint Linseed What do you need: Trays, baking sheets Flour Rice Sand Compost/peat moss Coloured paper/card Paint Paint brushes Lolly pop sticks Pencils Both Doodles and Oodles love this activity and it is so easy to set up. Simply add…
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Doodles’ Book of the Week – Aliens Love Underpants
I haven’t had a chance to do a book post for a week or two! We have been outdoors so much, making the most of the good weather and I was so busy documenting the fun we were having that I forgot to keep up to date with our books of the week. Back to normal routine Monday as the Easter Holidays finish this weekend 🙁 I’ve loved all our little adventures over the past 2 weeks while Doodles was off school. Not to worry, in a few short weeks he’ll be finished preschool forever (aghhhhhh, off to big school in September) and we’ll be off to the South of…
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Messy Play Madness – A Spur of the Moment Messy Play/Sensory Activitiy
At lunchtime today Doodles and Oodles asked me if they could make Gloop. I agreed immediately and started to get out the cornflour and paint etc. (see here for our gloop recipe). They then began shouting out other things that they would like to add to it. So today we are sharing our spur of the moment messy play fun. It was their little experiment to see what types of textures they could make using a variety of materials. What we used: Cornflour/cornstarch Plain flour Olive oil Paint Glitter PVA glue Mini pasta shells Shredded dry noodles Water Animal toys Smurfs Wooden spoons, balloon whisk What we did: I’m…
