on May 16th, 2012%

As part of our Kids Art Explorers project this month we are trying out different places to create art. Instead of so often starting out with a small piece of white paper we’re trying out different surfaces. Last week we used a big, flat cardboard box to make an imaginary land. This time we’re using newspaper and turning yesterday’s news into today’s art.
on May 15th, 2012%

Walk to School Week
Did you know next week is Walk to School Week? We walk to school everyday, come rain or shine, and are very lucky to have a tree-lined cycle path that runs almost the whole route from our house to school, giving the children a car-free space to run, skip and scoot. This daily walk brings such an important breathing-space to our morning, a welcome transition after the hustle and bustle of packing lunch bags and locating coats. We’ve also been joining in with Living Streets #mumswalk project this month and creating a Pinterest gallery of our walks to school. I know not everyone is able to walk the school run, but if you’re tempted to give it a try for Walk to School Week, here are some ideas you could use to make the A to B journey that little bit more interesting.
on May 14th, 2012%

Do your kids love Lego? Just manipulating the pieces, snapping them together and pulling them apart is a great work out for fingers, helping to develop fine-motor skills, but Lego is a classic open-ended toy that can be used in so many different ways by creative kids. My girls most often use their Lego to build imaginary buildings or enclosures for their toy animals but recently L has been using them in lot of math games.
on May 8th, 2012%

One of the ideas we had for our Screen-Free Week was to have a rummage around on our craft shelves to see if there were any long-lost art materials that we might like to try. We struck gold with two packs of air drying clay that Father Christmas had brought in the girls’ stockings and which had been put away in a post-Christmas tidy up and forgotten about.
Modelling with air drying clay
Have you used air drying clay before? It’s not too messy and quite easy for young children to use – my 5-year-old had no problem manipulating the clay into the shapes she wanted. The girls had wooden skewers and scissors to use to cut and make marks with but mostly just used their hands. The clay warms to the touch and is a great work out for fine motor skills. Read more »
on April 16th, 2012%

The inspiration for our spring chicken play dough comes from the clutch of ten eggs which have been resident in the girls school for a week. The eggs have been in an incubator in the reception class but every child in the school has been in to visit, to hear the chicks cheeping from inside the shells and to see the eggs wobbling and the first cracks appear. Then, most exciting of all, the chicks hatched, some brown, some yellow but all very fluffy. Great inspiration to talk about spring, bring out our favourite easy play dough recipe for some sensory play and make some chicks of our own.
Yellow play dough recipe for spring chicks Read more »
on April 5th, 2012%

It’s not too late to get the kids in the kitchen and whip up some delicious Easter treats. Try these easy Easter recipes for yummy in a hurry.
Easy Easter recipes
Dying eggs using natural dyes is very easy, using ingredients your are likely to have in you’re store cupboard – try these egg dying recipes Read more »

|
Sign up here for all our play ideas
Sign Up for our Weekly Play Planner
Copyright Information Please feel free to use any of these ideas with your children at home, school or any place you teach and play. You are welcome to pin images from this site onto Pinterest so long as your pin links back to the original article here. If you would like to share a post on a blog or site, you may use one picture so long as you include a link to the original post. Please do not re-post the whole article or distribute printed-out content without written permission from the original author. You can contact me at cathy (at) nurturestore (dot) co (dot) uk. Thank you.
|