NurtureStore

I am taking no credit whatsoever for this idea as it was entirely inspired by Valerie and a post she wrote on her Frugal Family Fun Blog. Ever since I saw her story stones idea I have been dying to try it out as I knew B & L would love them. So making the most of our trip to the beach the girls and I collected a few smallish, flat pebbles to make our own set of story stones when we got home.

We used pencil crayons and felt pens to decorate our stones and used the shape of the stones to suggest some characters.

The illustrated stones have now moved into our fairy garden and the girls have spent a happy afternoon playing out stories with them. Make sure to pop over to the Frugal Family Fun Blog to see how Valerie added some extra play-factor to her set.

Happily shared with…

ABC and 123

*****Have you entered our giveaway to win fantastic Annabel Karmel goodies?*******

Welcome to the third edition of #goplay Twitter Tips. This week we have ideas for getting the most from water play.

#goplay Twitter Tip #1 water play is great for kids of all ages, free, not too messy, and accessible: bucket, bath, water pistol, beach…

#goplay Twitter Tip #2 No children should ever play unsupervised with water. Safety first, then have some fun.

#goplay Twitter Tip #3 Water play is great for exploring maths: add funnels & containers of different size to play with volume & dimension.

#goplay Twitter Tip #4 Explore the science of freezing &melting, treasure hunt objects frozen in ice, make ice lollies.

#goplay Twitter Tip #5 Add in some songs at bathtime to develop language: Row, row, row your boat. 5 Little ducks. Thou Shall Have a Fishy.

#goplay Twitter Tip #6 Add some food colouring to bath water to create a magical water world. (Thanks to A Mother’s Ramblings for this idea.)

#goplay Twitter Tip #7 Bath time is a lovely time to bond esp. if you’ve been apart in the day. A sensory play time to relax before sleep.

#goplay Twitter Tip #8 A tub of water is transformed with props: boats, fishes and rods, shells, pots and pans.

#goplay Twitter Tip #9 Bubbles build brains: make kids think. What seems solid suddenly pops. How does that happen? Have a look at these giant bubbles at the Frugal Family Fun Blog.

#goplay Twitter Tip #10 No such thing as bad weather only the wrong clothes. Seize the day, put on wellies, go #playoutdoors in the puddles!

Catch our #goplay Twitter Tips each Friday at 8.30pm (GMT). Previous tips have looked at Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Playdough and Encouraging Reading and Writing.

Come and join us next week by following @nurturestore on Twitter.

Happily shared with…

I’m off to the Cybermummy conference in London this weekend thanks to great sponsorship from Imperial Leather’s SkinKind. If you’re going too, please come and say hello and ask me for some of the SkinKind goodies.

For those of you at home, the forecast for this weekend is glorious.

Make the most of the sunshine by getting outside to play! Our Outdoor Games archive has lots of ideas to give you some inspiration. You could make a fairy garden,

enjoy some water play

or how about some snail racing?

Whatever you’re up this weekend, have a great time with your kids.

Why not? ….  add some bubbles to your water play today and set up a carwash in the garden?

Include some washing up sponges and scrubbers and get your trikes sparkly and clean.

And how about giving the children a purse with some coins so they can count out and pay for their carwash?

More fun doing maths this way than with a worksheet!

Have some fun with bean bags!

We have four colours of bean bags so we chose four coloured chalks to match.  We drew four different shapes and numbered them 1 to 4. Then it was time to play.

Have a go at colour matching – can you throw the blue bean bag into the blue shape?

Have a go with numbers - can you throw a bean bag onto the number 1? onto the number 2?

Have a go with shapes - can you throw all the bean bags into the circle?

With older children you can let them throw at the targets and add up the scores as you go along.

Have some fun with your maths!

Happily shared with

Works For Me Wednesday and…

We have the great pleasure of having another guest post today. Please welcome Maggie from Red Ted Art with ideas for combining nature and art…

Over at Red Ted Art, my son (Red Ted (2)) and I (Maggy (old)) do lots of crafts projects. Sometimes Pip Squeak (0) joins us. Usually I am inspired by books that we read (the tagline from another crafty mum being – story + art = great stART). This time however, we were Inspired by Nature as well as the Arts! (come visit “Get Crafty” for a host of nature related ideas):

The V&A is running a World Beach Project with artist Sue Lawty. This is a project involving sculptures and pictures made from stones. Check out the V&A website for more info. Here is Sue Lawty’s project.

We couldn’t get to a beach, but still wanted to “take part”, so friends of ours brought us some Brighton Beach stones and we got Inspired by Nature at home… we have 6 BIG stones and lots of pebbles from the garden.

*** PLEASE TAKE CARE WITH THE PEBBLES AND SMALL CHILDREN – DO NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE – CHOKING HAZARD***

This is what we got up to:

Whilst playing with the stones we learnt lots of things:

“Just Feeling” – enjoying nature and playing with the pebbles. They feel nice, don’t they?!

Lots here:

• Big & Little. Which is the biggest? Which is the smallest?
• Counting 1-6.
• Shapes – e.g.  Triangle.
• Heavy. Red Ted told me that some were “heavy”…
• Warm & Cold. He also pointed out to me, that after we had left the m in the garden overnight that they were cold (“Brrrrr, mummy, brrr”) and could I warm them up (beep beep beep – I am ashamed to admit, that that means the microwave).

And finally! Some “artwork” and some playing (Red Ted did the flower pattern when I had turned my back).

Happy & Sad! We made a stone caterpillar with petals for eyes. Turn the stone one way and he is sad (“hungry mummy”), turn the stone the other way and he is happy!

Hurray for Brighton Beach stone (and pebbles from the garden)!

If you enjoyed this post, do pop over to Red Ted Art and see what we get up to on a regular basis – Get Inspired by Nature in Nature Get Crafty or just visit for Wednesday Crafts!! We look forward to meeting you!

Maggy & Red Ted (& sometimes Pip Squeak)

I love child-led learning. When I’m helping a child learn a new skill I try to put them and their interests at the centre of any activity. Little is starting to be very interested in letters and writing and I’m always looking for ways to encourage her to explore these ideas. So when she discovered this beautiful green caterpillar in the garden we used it as a springboard to play.

She was wondering where the caterpillar’s head was and we were talking about the spiral shape it had made as it curled up. We grabbed some outdoor chalks and tried to copy the shape ourselves. It’s great for children to try making all sorts of marks – not just using paper and pencil, and not straightaway trying to write letters.

Then we talked about the word caterpillar and what sound came at the beginning – which lead us on to writing a ‘c’.

And also inspired the next letter for our touchy-feely alphabet: c is for caterpillar.

This week why not get some chalks and see what shapes you can make?

Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be just the most fun. Little asked if she could do the washing up yesterday ‘like a grown-up’. Two minutes to set up, all for free, and it kept her busy for an hour. I think she enjoyed it so much because she was using ‘real’ adult things rather than ‘toys’: washing up liquid, our washing up bowl and one of ‘Mummy’s’ scrubbing pads.

As you can see we set her up outside so there was no need to worry about any splashes. However this has turned out to be so much fun, she’s been playing again today when it’s been rather chilly so she’s been in the kitchen. I put a big bath towel on the floor as a precautionary measure but she’s been very grown up and sensible so there’s hardly any spills.

I only wish I still found doing the dishes so much fun.

For more inspiring ideas come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up.

How are your sunflowers coming along? Ours went out in the garden a couple of weeks ago. The tallest one is up to 45cm on our sunflower height chart and  mostly they’re doing well – working their way up the wall but not yet taller than Little. One however has been munched. The girls were horrified! Who had done such a thing? Pulling some ivy off the wall this weekend we found our answer: 14 snails, sat biding their time, waiting for the feasting to begin.  I am such a hippy, harmony-promoting gardener that I can’t bring myself to squash them, so they are flung over the back wall (into an alleyway, not someone else’s garden!) – which of course only delays the munching.

Before the snails went for the high jump, we put them through their paces in a Snail Race.

On Your Marks....

This gave the girls the opportunity to look at the snails up close and ask lots of questions about their shells, slime and ‘sticky out bits’. Snail World had all the answers. We talked about our responsibilty to animals and both girls were very careful when handling the snails. One thing we did discover was that snails just don’t understand the concept of keeping in your own lane – so if you fancy trying this I’d suggest more of a ‘bull’s eye’ circular race track, starting all the snails in the centre and seeing which makes it to the circumference first.

Victory to Snail #1

What do you do when you find snails, or slugs, in your garden? Have you got any alternative solutions to stop them munching?

Following on from the success of our Dinosaur Garden, this weekend we’ve been working on a Fairy Garden. The film below shows how we made it – now we’re eagerly waiting for the seeds to start growing so the flower fairies can really feel at home.

The music on the film is kindly provided by Anne van Schothorst and is from a piece called A Bird Came Flying.