Nature safari

There are more insects in the world than there are of any other living species yet apart from bees, butterflies mosquitoes and flies, how many insects can your children recognize? Children are more likely to name sharks, dolphins, native animals, and wild exotic animals they have seen in the zoo or on TV, than the insects that live in their own gardens and local parks. Insects are as amazing as dinosaurs. Why don't you plan a nature safari for your children? Wear hats and take drinks and snacks in your back pack and go into the garden or to a park. A breakfast safari would be fun early one morning as the sun will be catching dew-sprinkled spider webs. Tiny spiders can be found then in leaf curls, the web hung between bushes. Later in the day these webs are not easy to see. With spiders, the idea is to see, not catch.

You will need a clear plastic drink bottle or other plastic container as a bug catcher. Cut the narrow neck off the drink bottle and secure a piece of panty hose or net as a cover, with a rubber band. If possible take a butterfly net too. It is necessary to teach children to look at, rather than touch the insects they see, as many sting or bite. Beetles are particularly interesting and many are robust enough for children to touch if shown how to do so safely.  A magnifying glass helps children to count legs, look at mouth parts, see how the shell is folded over the wings etc. Encourage children from four to eight to draw the creature they have captured before letting it go again. Older children will be able to record their specimens in photos and keep  records of the number and kind of insects, and where they were found.

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Museum Games

1.Dinosaurs fascinate children. Not every child has the opportunity to go to a museum to see real dinosaur bones but it is easy to set up an interactive bone display using equally interesting bones purchased from a butcher, a fisherman or ones found in bushland or even along the roadside. Some weeks ago, on an early morning walk, I saw a dead bird on the roadside.  After some weeks only the fragile bones remained. Children would have been interested in them. If you resort to bones that are still covered with meat, you will need to prepare them for your display by boiling them well. Make sure that no smell lingers either. Teeth come in different sizes and shapes as well as leg bones and are fascinating.

Children can be encouraged to

• place bones on the floor in different arrangements and to name their own dinosaur

• dig for fossils in the sandpit where you have buried bones for them to find

• build a body out of dough to cover the bone of a cuttlefish

• choose a bone and draw the creature they think it belonged to.

2.Clothing In Maisy Goes to the Museum, Maisy dresses as an Egyptian and Cyril as a Knight.  You could improvise capes, gowns, jewels and crowns for Kings and Queens.

3. Toys Many families have toys stored away from their childhood. These would be excellent in museum games e.g. cars, blocks, dolls, marbles. Show children how to handle objects with care.

4. Cupboards Look at the back of the kitchen cupboards, for long forgotten items that will be strange to modern children. E.g. graters, egg poachers, jaffle irons, toasting forks, teapots. These would be good to compare with things currently in use.  Older children can make labels or put numbers on the items.

Once started on a museum theme, games will suggest themselves.

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Make the most of autumn

Where I live, it has been a long, sunny autumn with brilliantly coloured trees this year. I cannot resist the urge to pick up leaves in the street and pin them on the message board in the kitchen. Children love autumn leaves too. Why not put some in your child’s room until they curl up and fall. Encourage children to look for them when going driving or shopping and to pick up some too. Before the weather is too cold water and leaves combine well in outdoor games. Kids will love to:

• float leaves in the bath or dishes of water

• float leaves on creeks, rivers or puddles

• use leaves in cooking games

• rake up leaves

• stick them on paper with paint or glue

• help you put them in the compost heap

• spread them on gardens as mulch

• use them in early mathematics for counting games

• sort them into shapes and sizes

• use them instead of toy animals or people in stories.

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Food memory game

My granddaughter has just discovered the memory game my own children enjoyed so much. She is already very good at remembering the positions of the cards. Memory cards are easy to make so I suggest making a set of fruit and vegetable cards. They must all be the same size and be backed with the same colour of cardboard so that when they are placed face down there are no clues to the pictures on them. Use the internet to find free clip art symbols to print and paste on each pair of cards. If you don’t have a colour printer, get the kids to help colour in the pictures or use instead pictures from magazines.

Players take turns to turn over two pictures. If the cards match, the player keeps those cards and has another turn. If the cards don’t match the next player takes a turn, turning over the same card if he thinks he knows where the matching card is. The winner is the player with the most pairs of cards when play stops.

As the children become familiar with the names of the foods, they will be interested in looking for them in the shops. The next step is buying and tasting them.

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Board games.

Pre-schoolers are ready to play board games but they all want to win. In order to prevent disappointment, tears or anger, the best idea is to find co-operative or team games, or adapt games so that they continue till everyone reaches home. Even snakes and ladders can be adapted. Here is a suggestion for a group game. The dice is thrown by each child in turn around the circle. The object is to build a tower of blocks. For each number thrown, a block is placed to build a tower but when a snake is encountered, two blocks comes off, when a ladder is encountered, two blocks go on. The height of the tower will be a matter of pride to all.

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Craft

I’ve just found a wonderful new website called Kids Craft Weekly. Every two weeks Amber’s newsletter suggests educational, cheap, fun craft activities for children that she has created with her two small children. This week she suggests Advent activities that centre on fun things to do instead of on eating chocolates as in bought Advent calendars. The easy-to-follow instructions she gives are illustrated by photos and you are bound to come up with many of your own ideas once you are started. The simplest idea is to write activity ideas on strips of coloured paper and joint the strips up to make a paper chain. Every day one link is removed and the activity inside is followed. Activities range from going out for a picnic lunch, to placing a gift under a Christmas tree in the local shopping centre, or making cards or twenty other things children like to do as Christmas approaches. Here is the link http://kidscraftweekly.com/

 The website is full of wonderful things to do during the holidays so find the link and explore it.

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Wet weather in the holidays

On 27^th December the rain really set in at my place. Many of the outback towns had already become flood bound and now the coastal towns will be inundated. My town is on the northern highlands of NSW and in town the creek will have cut the town in two. I live 22 klms from town and overnight the dams which were bone dry have filled and the tanks are overflowing. We had 201 mls of rain and it is still drizzling. The road just a kilometre further on, is closed by an overflowing creek and all those families will be cut off from shops.  Kids who got outdoor toys for Christmas will be frustrated but those with indoor ones will give them a work over.

Make a flood game.

This game will fit in with events. Kids can use real water if you are happy for a bit of a mess. Spread plastic first to protect the floor or if you have a verandah area set up there. Make a town scene with bridges that collapse, using paper for the river. A farm scene is lots of fun too with some dishes of water representing dams and plastic animals. Crumple paper to make hills to which animals can be moved as the rain falls and the water level rises. Use blocks for the home and dolls for the family. If you have no dolls, make people from pegs, spoons or cardboard rolls that we usually recycle. Kids can even draw people on paper, cut them out and stand them up using cardboard flaps. Making the game and playing it will take a whole day or more. Perhaps boats or helicopters will have to rescue people from rooftops. Once you start the kids off they’ll use their imaginations to contrive all kinds of situations.

If you live in the northern hemisphere, you could still have a flood game or it may be a snow game. There has been lots on our TVs about the enormous snow falls that have been dumped in cold places. Kids would have wonderful fun using cotton wool bits for their snow. 

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Shops

Kids really love shopping games so why not organise a shopping game that will help you tidy up at home? It is easy to organise the following clothing shops, shoe shops, toy shops, grocery shops, cooking ware/ saucepan shops, book shops.

Give your child permission to take everything out of the cupboards or off the shelves from the selected category. While the storage areas are empty, you can dust them or wipe them down. Children like to sell as well as buy so between you shopping bags will soon be filled. When it is time to put the items away, you’ll find that it doesn’t take long to sort and fold the clothes and put them away in neat fashion. Older children can soon get the idea of putting tins of food into lines on the shelves and stacking saucepans inside each other.

From shopping games children can learn

• counting

• prices

• colours

• weight

• sorting  (sizes and other categories)

• uses

• recycling

• right side/ wrong side

• lots of vocabulary

• shopping etiquette

• organisation skills and much more.

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Messy play

Parents see paint, mud, water, even food, in a different way from their children. A baby given a piece of toast will make a real mess, smearing it all over face, hands, clothes and the high chair. We expect this, but by the time that baby has grown into a pre-schooler, the same behaviour isn’t acceptable. Pre-schoolers still like to explore things through the hands and we should provide them with the chance to get messy. Not everyone can have a sand pit in their home but there are other things right in your kitchen that can be great fun. Put a plastic sheet or some newspaper on the floor so the area will be easy to clean up, or give the child a table that is an appropriate height.

Lentils and dry pasta

Let your child empty a packet of lentils or dry pasta into a baking dish or a bowl. Encourage him/her to let them flow through his/her fingers. Children love to pour lentils and pasta from one container to another. They make a good sound in plastic and in metal containers. Small toys like cars or plastic animals are fun to play with at the same time.

Goop

Empty a packet of cornflour into a bowl or a flat container like a cat litter tray. Let your child pour a jug full of water over it then mix it with the hands. It feels silky and drips off the fingers in a fascinating way.

Cooked potatoes

Boil potatoes, cool them, and cut into quarters. Put them in a bowl and give your child a small jug of milk or water to add, and the masher. The mashed potatoes can be part of your child’s lunch.

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Playing with leaves

With autumn here, there are lots of leaves falling. Leaves are one of the loveliest of nature’s gifts and can be use in so many ways.

Why not set up a shop area at pre-school or at home using leaves? Leaves can be

• sold as plates

• decorations

• wrappings

• small leaves can be used as money. 

Leaves are excellent for teaching colours, counting, and sorting into shapes.

Combine buying and selling leaves with craft activities for your child such as

• threading leaves on lengths of wool

• tracing around leaves

• spattering over them with toothbrush dipped in paint

• pasting onto paper or pressing onto contact paper

• ironing them between pieces of waxed paper.

Children love to rake and sweep too so will be in their element raking up leaves on the lawn or sweeping the steps or patios. Help them to spread the leaves on gardens or put them into the compost.

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Cooking together.

Children love to do things with their parents and cooking together is something that you can do regularly. Cooking with your child doesn’t have to be  time set aside for making a special recipe. There are many jobs in food preparation that children will love helping with such as

• snapping ends off beans

• shelling peas

• washing vegetables

• using the peeler and the grater

• beating eggs

• adding ingredients

• measuring flour and dried fruit.

Older children can slice soft vegies such as zucchinis and cucumber, butter bread, oil or grease the pans.  Reluctant eaters are often encouraged to try new foods when they help with the preparation. If your child has a sweet tooth, balance preparation of special treats with preparing healthy foods. Take some photos of your child helping with the cooking. These can be used as story cards. Take three pictures of the stages of the cooking of lasagne. Take a fourth picture of the family eating it. Ask your child to put the pictures in the right order and tell you what each one is about.

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Sand fun

Sand is a wonderful medium for kids to use. In no time they can make hills and valleys, roads and tunnels, even buildings. They can use it wet or dry and sculpt it in many ways. Here in cold New England, back yards and playgrounds are still mostly bare and brown but the wattle trees are in full bloom and cheer the soul. Blossom trees and spring flowers are weeks away but the sand pit can be used to bring spring early.  Kids can transform it into a miniature garden very easily with sprigs of wattle, gum tree leaves, and other leaves from around the garden.  Coloured snips and scraps from magazines can be used to put colour into the miniature landscape as flowers or butterflies and birds. Let the kids take their plastic farm animals into the sand pit too or help them make clay creatures. Rocks and stones can be added too. Help them to make paddle pop or peg people clothed in bright strips of paper or fabric. These are easy to stand in the sand too. As they make their sandscape, the kids are practising fine motor skills, learning about the qualities of sand, plants and colours, and smelling the different things they are using. These are wonderful learning opportunities.

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Using Music

Music is everywhere nowadays but instead of just having it in the background, use it to promote activities. Choose music to explain feelings to children. for example, a bright piece of music in quick tempo will help you to talk about happiness, or a slower piece of music to talk about more serious things. Here are some other ideas:

• To cheerful music, encourage kids to make bright paint patterns on paper

• Make  arms, hands, fingers dance to the rhythm

• Select calm, quiet music to calm children at the end of the day and talk about how that music makes you feel.

• Help kids to select music that is exciting, stirring, loud, aggressive, unsettling, sad, frightening or frustrating.

• Help kids to express these feeling in drama or mime, dance, painting and clay manipulation.

• Music can also be used for routines such as bathing, hanging out the washing, ironing the clothes and putting away the toys.

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More water

In all the coverage of the floods there was much mention about the floods of 1974 and that reminded me of a Save the Children Fund pre-school I heard about at that time. It was in a small community that was cut off for months. The teacher reported how the children’s games changed to be all about building levees and moving stock to higher ground and using boats to get around. The isolation went on for so long that a helicopter was finally used to take some of the older children to Lightening Ridge for school. As communities have grown so much in the last 37 years a lot more people have been affected by the recent floods, and the amazing spread of water over so many hundreds of kilometres that is still happening.  Television has taken pictures into all our homes and I’m sure that school age children in particular have learnt a lot about the properties of water. Along with the terror and devastation there is the blooming of life in the desert for the second year in a row. Water birds are breeding and stock has an abundance of feed after at least ten years of drought. Children in outback homes have water to swim in. Some of those children had never seen a river or a full dam before. Imagine their excitement. Imagine the new way those kids will be playing.  Perhaps kids in other areas of the country can use clay to sculpt a landscape with dry river beds and animals, then slowly add water to see how the model changes and what will have to be done to keep the homestead dry and the animals safe.

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Bed time

Bed time is a great time to read or to tell a story. I heard a variation of this recently. Each night the parent hid a small item under the child’s pillow for the child to find. The story was then a sharing of the significance of the item. This  variation of show and tell that is so popular at schools and child care centres, is great for bedtime at home. Encourage your child to ask questions about the item and also to contribute ideas about it. For example a train ticket could remind you

• of a family holiday or one you had as a child

• of the time you missed the train

• about a book of trains

• about a train set in a shop window

• the size of freight trains, the noise they make and  where they come from etc.

Another variation would be to have items in a small bag and your child pulls out an item just from feel and then the story is about that item. Model animals or pictures could also be in a bag or a box. The child selects one and then you both use an encyclopedia to increase your knowledge.

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Snails

Children are always fascinated by creatures that are alive. After telling a story about a tadpole recently, I took some tadpoles into the centres for the children to look at. I’d spent quite a lot of time catching them for although there were a number in my pool, they are hard to catch. It was worth the trouble to hear the children talk about them.

Since then, I’ve seen a display of snails set up for children to examine. I’m sure all children are fascinated by these creatures and they are much easier to catch than tadpoles. A fair number of snails were under a transparent dome with fresh leaves on the base for food. This gave children an excellent way of viewing both the underside of the snails as well as their shells. Snails were clinging to the plastic as well as creeping along. There were also good sized pictures of snails displayed near by so encouraging comments about the different sizes and types of snails.

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Start a story

A week of wet weather sends us all looking for ideas to keep children occupied. Here is an idea to start a story. See what the children imagine will happen next. Record their ideas and change the story each day. They could draw pictures for each version too.

Once upon a time there was a King who hated rain. “Everyone stop working, stop playing, and stop eating until the sun comes out again," shouted the king.”  The people got bored and hungry. A clever magician had an idea. He waved his magic wand and turned the king into a duck.  “You will be a duck until you learn to love the rain,” he said.

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Role Play.

Recently I performed in a pantomime for children based on a nursery rhyme. As in traditional pantomimes, the children were involved and what wonderful fun they had. It made me think that more families should use drama within the family. All kinds of situations could be dramatised from shopping, visits to the doctor or hairdresser, to taking the role of a sport’s coach or acting out scenes from favourite books and TV series like Bananas in Pyjamas or cartoon series. As Kids love to dress up, use simple scarves or paper and tape to make props. Get the children to make suitable music for movement with percussion instruments or from CD’s they own. Swap roles too, letting the children take adult roles while adults act the child’s role. Just have fun.

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Making a forest

At many child care centres, there wonderful outdoor play areas that are planted with trees, shrubs flowers and vegetable gardens. Some have dry, stony river beds and even frog habitats. One centre I remember had a forest of silver poplar trees that the children loved. Growing a forest isn’t a quick project and certainly won’t suit every centre or backyard but what about a miniature forest in a sand pit or a vegetable garden?

Children can go on a collecting hunt as you prune bushes in the garden. They could bring in twigs, bark rocks, shells, prunings etc. This morning as I walked, the road was littered with gum leaves and small branches as a result of last night’s storm. These would have made a wonderful addition to any sandpit. Add plastic animals and this forest setting would stimulate play for mornings to come.

I can also imagine a vegetable forest. My silver beet is going to seed and the plants have shot up high. Look at the plants in your vegetable garden. Could your children make a spinach forest or a garlic one with small plastic people searching through it for wild animals that have escaped from the zoo?

At my place the rains have brought spring growth to the weeds and as the mower battery is flat, I haven’t been able to mow yet.  I may even pretend this wilderness is a forest and hide toy animals and people there for my granddaughter to find at the weekend. I’m sure she will have great ideas to extend the game.

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Christmas crafts

Christmas has always been a joyous time for my family with special activities, food, cards, displays to look at in the shops and the long summer holidays. We’d see relatives who lived far away most of the year too and we’d be able to swim and play in the water. Making cards was one of the first Christmas activities and instead of buying ones to send out, we usually made our own. The children really enjoyed this and friends seemed to appreciate them too.  It doesn’t take much effort to provide some good quality paper of the right size, some textas to draw with and some glue and sparkle. The cards will look wonderful. Many people in a child’s life like to receive a gift made by that child. If you have school-age children or one at pre-school, you will already have lots of ideas but every year there are new parents sending their children to some form of early education who may not have a background in craft so here are some ideas.

Wreathes

My daughter loves to make a Christmassy wreath to hang on her front door. She gathers grasses as well as cones, everlasting flowers and feathers and anything else that she thinks looks interesting. Kids can have a great time helping you make a wreathe too.

Paint

• Keep paintings to use as gift paper or to cut into Christmas cards.
• A piece of paper folded while the paint is wet gives a lovely blot or butterfly affect.
• Spattering – dip an old tooth brush in thin paint then brush back and forth on thin wire gauze or a strainer to get tiny spots of paint. Before spattering place plastic animal shapes on the page so that the animals will be left white when the paint dries.
• Cut paintings into thin strips and glue these strips into long streamers to decorate a room or tree.

Grass and leaves

• Send children to look for leaves of different sizes, textures, colours. Very tiny leaves and many different shapes of leaf can be found in the grass e.g.clover. Press the leaves between paper for a few days then ask the children to arrange leaves on paper from a craft paper pad. Put a dab of glue under each leaf.

Clay

In some centres children have been introduced to using potters’ clay and their creations have been glazed and fired. Parents and grandparents value art objects made by their children. Even a two year old can squeeze clay into a shape or pound it flat and when fired that piece can be used as a paper weight.

Photos

Kids love to take photos. Let them take some photos of things that interest them, print the pictures and paste onto craft paper to make cards or to make a scrap-book.

Hammer and nails make modern art.

Kids love to hammer away at pieces of wood. Let them use full sized hammers as ones with large heads are easier to use. Nails with large heads are also recommended. Let the children have control over their creative sculptures. It doesn’t have to be named and can be painted and have fabric and foil stuck or hammered on. It can become a garden ornament or even decorate the bathroom or the patio if it doesn’t match the décor inside.

Decorations

Advent calendars  are fun. Simple ones can be cut from last years Christmas cards.  Cut pieces about 10 cms x 5cms then fold in half. Write an activity in each card and staple shut. Write the numbers for the days to Christmas on the cards and hang up. Children open one card each day and do that activity. Here are some suggestions:

• Make foil balls to put on the tree

• Collect pine cones to paint

•  Make a wreath to hang on the front door

•  Make Christmas cards

•  Learn a Christmas song

•  Find a toy to give away

•  Make paper chains

•  Get out the tree to decorate

•  Help to make Christmas chocolates or biscuits

•  Glue glitter on a small bottle and light a small candle inside it.

• Make paper baskets for sweets to give to the neighbours. 

Cutting and Pasting

I have been reading an interesting article about how children develop fine motor skills. The thumb, index and middle fingers are very important in hand control, and the child needs to be able to make an O shape with those three fingers. Maintaining the O shape while doing finger activities such as bead threading, drawing, pasting and painting is an important skill that is also needed for cutting with scissors. Using a vertical easel instead of working on a flat table top when drawing and painting will help develop the muscles.

Not all children develop fine motor skills at the same age but by three and a half or four years, most children will be ready to start cutting with scissors. They should be shown the correct way right from the start. The Thumb and middle fingers should go through the loops of the scissors and the index finger should go underneath to steady the scissors and direct the hand. The remaining fingers should be curled into the palm of the hand. Always provide scissors with rounded ends for safety and ones of the right size for your child’s hands.

Here are some easy cutting activities for children learning to cut:

Snipping rolls of playdough, snipping drinking straws into pieces Cutting coloured card instead of thin paper, snip narrow strips of card into small pieces. Have a brush and glue ready for using to paste the pieces onto paper or boxes as a fun activity. 

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Turn taking games.

As a storyteller I always have a game for children to play after the story. Most weeks I have three different age groups to plan for – toddlers of two years, a group of three year olds and a separate group of four to five year olds. The toddlers are the hardest to plan for as they have such short attention spans and can’t wait long to take a turn. It is best if I have a number of simple activities so that I can change and give a restless toddler a turn as soon as the action changes. This week my story was about five little bears going on a boat ride with Mum and Dad bear. At the end I had six activities for the children to take turns with.

• Choosing a bear from a bag
• Putting it in a box-boat
• pushing the box while I sang ‘row, row, row your boat…’
• throwing autumn leaves into the air
• using a little fishing rod
• sitting all together to play that we were in a boat.

  All these actions had something to do with the story so reinforced the story concept too and kept the toddlers interested and active.

  The three year olds had a story about pigs. The game involved holding pieces of artificial fruit, listening to a rhyme and running to the Assistant teacher at the right time. Seven children were involved in the game while the rest waited for their turn. Again it wasn’t very long to wait, but one child was upset as he didn’t get to hold the fruit of his choice. It is all a learning process for me as well as the children.

  The older children played pass the parcel as their game following a story about a birthday. Many of them had played this game before and were explaining to the others how they had to sit in a circle. It was a great opportunity for younger ones to learn from older ones. The children learnt to wait for their turn, open the parcel, pass it on, and finally select a sticker from a sheet. All this involved concentration, manipulative skills, self control and ability to follow instructions. Children really do learn through play.

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Bean Bag Fun

It’s a long time since I’ve played with bean bags but they are wonderful for kids of any age. They are cheap and easy to make if you haven’t got any. They are easy to throw and catch and with a bit of imagination they can be used in many games. Here are some ideas:

• Run relays
• Make a circle, kids stand around it and take turns throwing their bean bag into a box or a small hoop in the centre.
• Throw bags at a target.
• Carry a bean bag on your head or shoulder.
• Carry a bean bag under your chin
• Have a potato race using bean bags
• How far can you throw a Bean bag?
• Throw like a discus throw
• How many bean bags can you carry on  each hand, or on a plate without dropping any?

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Fun with mirrors

 It isn’t only girls who like to see themselves in mirrors. I was reminded of playing with mirrors this week when I walked into the indoor play space of one of the centres where I tell stories. A large standing mirror was set up with small lights draped over the top of it. It looked very inviting for children to examine their images, dress up or just to play with the toys nearby and see themselves while playing. This mirror can also be used to examine what else can be seen in the room and what is meant by a mirror image.

I remembered setting up a mirror game on a table years ago so I followed up by searching on the web for games now. There I found the game I’d used before with just two mirrors of about 15 cms square. The mirrors should be stuck to blocks of wood so that they stand up straight on a table. Place them side by side, touching each other with the child sitting in front, his/her chin resting on the table. By moving the mirrors so that the angle in the centre changes with the outside edges brought forward like a book closing, the number of images that the child can see will alter. Change the angle only slightly each time. This is a fascinating game. See www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/mirrorsbz.pdf for more mirror activities some of which are very complicated.

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Paint and water

Three year olds are often at the stage of starting with a number of different colours on the page then mixing them all together so that the finished paining is both murky and very wet. This is an important stage for children to pass through, just as scribble is with markers and they revert to this even though they can make representational shapes.

I have noticed too that three year olds like to wash their brushes in water often and use that watered down paint on their pictures. Unless there is a plentiful supply of paper for small artists, picture making may be only a short activity. Here is an idea to use the paint water for an extension activity. Transfer the coloured water to the home corner or onto a table outside where you can provide cups, plastic glasses, bowls, teapots etc and pouring and mixing games will go on for ages.

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Dough games

I love play dough. As soon as babies become toddlers and stop putting everything in their mouths, dough is an ideal play material.  Its use strengthens little fingers, hands and wrists preparing them for writing, drawing and cutting with scissors. It can be enjoyed by older kids and adults of all ages. Dough can be squeezed, pinched, pulled, rolled, thumped, cut and flattened.

There are other ways to enjoy dough too. I have recently seen pre-schoolers using it to make hills where they hid shells, plastic farm animals, dinosaurs and polished stones. Other children made wonderous sculptures in which they stuck feathers and leaves.

For home use, many people buy coloured play dough but it is easy to make your own in a quantity that will allow your child to have a big lump. Join in to create some wonderful creatures and sculptures with your child. If you don’t have a recipe here is a link.  http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/play-dough-L926.html

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Bed time games

It’s funny how our children usually don’t want to go to bed to sleep, but given some pillows, blankets or rugs of some kind, plus a torch and camping gear they’ll play at going to bed for hours.

Most kids love to play at camping even if they’ve never done the real thing. Use a camping story to set the scene then get kids to think of the things they’d need to sleep out in the bush overnight.

If you haven’t access to a small tent, make one by using an old tarp or large sheet or curtain draped over a line or chairs. Ask the kids

·         what they’ll eat for dinner?

·         how it will be cooked?

·         what they’ll need to eat it, etc.?

·         what noises might they hear in the bush at night?

·         what animals might be out there?

·         how can they stay safe in the bush?

·         What they’ll do if it’s cold or rainy?

A camping theme can go on for days and days with additions like a treasure hunt, catching fish to eat, going hiking and collecting leaves or stones, pretending to be lost and sending out a search party, taking photos and videos, spotting animals (toys) at night and singing around a campfire. Have fun everyone.

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Balls, the perfect toy for kids

Balls are a great way to keep kids active and happy whether they are only a few months old and can just hold one, or whether they can catch, throw, run and kick. They are also great if the child is in a wheelchair.

Balls can be

• tossed through a hoop or into a box
• rolled to a partner
• bounced to a partner
• kicked into a goal
• caught and thrown
• juggled with
• bowled at skittles
• used with paint
• hit with a bat
• used by an individual or by teams
• used on carpet, wood or vinyl flooring, grass, cement, gravel, dirt or in water

 Every child should have some balls of different sizes. They are great for the whole family to play with.

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Kitchen Play Skills

Kids are keen on helping in the kitchen and love to spoon, stir, pour, beat, scrape, spread and of course taste. All these skills improve with practise and to preschoolers practise of this kind is fun. Parents and carers need to take a deep breath and be patient when food is spilt or spattered and try to allow their kids plenty of time when helping. On wet days when play ideas are a bit thin, set up some pouring practise with real foods in a play situation. Search the pantry cupboard for dry ingredients that can be poured as children won’t mess these up too much.

Getting started – Provide the following:

• two or three dry ingredients from this list: rice, pasta, lentils, split peas, Cornflakes and Rice Bubbles.  Even one ingredient will entertain the children for hours.

• some plastic containers like take-away food dishes and some bottles with broad necks like peanut butter jars with unscrewed lids, a cup-sized jug or two.
• desert spoons and teaspoons
• a funnel as well big enough for the split peas or rice to fit through.

The children learn a lot from pouring. They learn about the concepts of full, empty, half full, They notice that different foods pour at different speeds. Weight varies although two bottles the same are filled, the rice will weigh more than the Rice Bubbles. When they come to screw on lids they have to match the right lid to the bottle and the screwing action will exercise hand and finger muscles.

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Water play

Water play means taking extra care to supervise, but kids do love to get wet especially as the warm or hot weather takes over. Try a small wading pool at the foot of the slippery slide. Have just enough water in it to give the kids a splash landing.  If your wading pool isn’t fenced, it must not be left with water in it when you are not there to watch. Help the kids to empty the water onto the grass or the garden when the game is over, as we all need to conserve water. 

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Easter painting ideas

I have seen some easy painting ideas recently. These are ideal to use for decorating wrapping paper or painting the background of cards.

1. mix green paint and let your child make hand prints all over the paper
2. mix yellow paint and let your child make handprints all over the same paper. The result will be like a green and yellow field. Let the paper dry.
3. On the dry paper, show your child how to make rabbits in brown paint or chickens in yellow by using just a finger dipped in paint,. You can both make these all over the paper by making first a thumb print for the body and a dab of paint for the head. Carefully draw ears and legs on your rabbits or beaks on the chickens either in paint or with texta colours.
4. Alternatively make the rabbits or chickens on a separate piece of paper and when dry, cut them out and past onto the hand printed paper or cards.
5. Use the paper or the cards to wish family and friends a happy Easter.

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Dangling balls

Stuff a tennis ball inside the leg of an old pair of pantyhose and hang it from a tree branch or the clothes line. Practise hitting the ball with a bat or a stick. This will strengthen arms and improve eye hand coordination. Experiment with different sized balls and ones of different weights. Or hang a number of balls that way at different heights along the line and encourage kids to hit each one in turn.  It isn’t as easy as it sounds.

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Sequencing games

As preparation for school four-year-olds enjoy sequencing games. These games will help them with both number and literacy. The games involve counting, identifying shapes, colours and sizes, classifying objects in different ways, comparing objects, and putting pictures in the right order to tell a known story.

At preschools many different cards, games, types of equipment and materials are available for the children to play with that help them to improve their skills. At home you can create games at little cost that your children will also enjoy.

Here are some ideas. Use

•  matchbox cars – sort in colour, according to uses, for counting, parking in different positions e.g. under, beside or behind, for estimating how many are in the group before actually counting.
• felt or coloured paper shapes to make repetitive patterns. Make a pattern and ask your child to copy it
• small dolls or animals to count or classify, put in different positions or compare sizes
• play dough and cutters - copy shapes to make patterns, to count or classify in sizes, colours
• stickers
• three simple pictures to illustrate stories or rhymes e.g.

a) eggs, hen on eggs, chickens

b)3 bears, Goldilocks eating porridge, bears looking at Goldilocks asleep

c)boy asleep, boy dressing, boy eating breakfast

It isn’t necessary to be good at drawing to make these pictures. They can be drawn as stick figures as the child watches, or you can trace them, cut them from magazines or use stickers

Enjoy being creative and involve your child in making the games too.

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Map making

Yesterday a friend who was minding my almost five-year-old granddaughter, treated her to a day at the zoo. They came home with a map which she then used to tell me about the animals they had seen. Then she set about making her own map with tiny drawings of animals and a trail linking them. She has been going through a map making phase recently, probably because the playground at her preschool has been redesigned. Construction went on over several weeks with the children taking a great interest in the progress and a plan had been on display. She has made plans of her room and the outside play area. While your children may not have a nearby construction underway, there are often building sites in town where you can watch construction over time and talk about the machines, the soil, the construction materials, look at the plan at the local council etc.

At the end of the zoo visit yesterday, my granddaughter went back to the starting point in the sky lift thus seeing the whole area from a height. While you probably won’t have a sky lift, you can take your children to lookout points over the town or to a tall building to see what landmarks you can pick out from a distance. Then encourage the youngsters to make a map.

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