NurtureStore

Use the linky below to add your post to the Play Academy

Our summer holidays are drawing to a close and my Little is starting school on Monday (oh my!). I feel very strongly that our play should keep going. B is moving up to the Juniors and although her school offers are great curriculum including play, art, music, drama and experiments I think it’s inevitable that her lessons will become more and more about schooling. September always feels like the start of the year to me, so I’m keeping in mind my resolution to make 2010 our Year of Play, and we’ll certainly be limiting our after school clubs and weekend commitments to allow plenty of time for playing. How do you feel about finding a balance between schooling (or home educating) and play?

I’m looking forward to getting even more inspiration from your Play Academy ideas this week – hope you’ll add a link.

1. Add your post to the Linky below. Remember to link to the individual post rather than your homepage. If you are not a blogger please visit the NurtureStore Facebook page and share your photo there.

2. Go and visit some of the other blogs on the Linky. Leave a comment and say hi. Get ideas. Tell them you’re visiting from the Play Academy.

3. Add a link back from your own post to this Play Academy – your readers can then come and get ideas too. You can use the Play Academy badge if you like.(Grab the code from the column on the left.)

4. Come back next Friday and swap some more play ideas. The next Play Academy linky will be Friday 10th September.

Role-play vets

Have you ever seen such a pitiful looking kitten? Good job the vet is on hand with raisin tablets to bring her temperature down.

To make our vets kit we used our doctors’ set and added in some cotton wool, cotton buds, a jar of raisin tablets, some water to go in our syringe to irrigate any wounds, and some bandages made from an old muslin cloth.

Role playing is a great way for children to rehearse everyday situations and try out new experiences. It’s also a really good way for them to develop their language and practise co-operating with others as they play. Do your children enjoy role playing?

I’m looking for fun ways to teach shapes – got any ideas for me?

We started our mission by eating a lunch of circles, easy to make a whole meal of circles once you start looking!

Happily shared with ABCand123
and Weare ThatFamily

Sunday 29th August 2010

Two girls, not a care in the world, playing in the garden and enjoying the sunshine.

Sand, flower pots, matchsticks, shells.

On the same day three mummy bloggers, Sian, Josie and Eva flew to Bangladesh with Save the Children to see what life is like for children living there. Please take a moment to visit the Save the Children site and find out about the campaign.

Makes me think what childhood my girls would be having had they by chance been born somewhere else.

This post is shared with the Gallery at Sticky Fingers which this week is taking a snapshot of life on August 29th 2010

This week’s #goplay Twitter Tips are all about un – toys : the favourite things to play with which you won’t find in the toy shops, the alternative to plastic, battery-operated toys.

#goplay Twitter Tip #1  Consider what makes a great toy: fun, stimulating, open-ended, multi-use, still interesting as the child grows

#goplay Twitter Tip #2 What’s an un-toy? Natural materials & everyday objects: an alternative to plastic, battery-operated, one-purpose toys

#goplay Twitter Tip #3 I find children play longer & with more concentration with un-toys: they’re versatile & offer more play opportunities

#goplay Twitter Tip #4 Some un-toys we love: sticks, boxes, shells, pots & pans, wooden spoons, bottle tops, button, fircones, food packets

#goplay Twitter Tip #5 There’s no ‘right way’ to play with un-toys: let your child’s imagination decide & watch each child play differently

#goplay Twitter Tip #6 Did you know the stick and the cardboard box have both been inducted into the Toy Hall Of Fame? http://www.museumofplay.org/nthof/toys/index.php?toy=cardboard_box

#goplay Twitter Tip #7 A cardboard box can become a train , a story tent or a house

#goplay Twitter Tip #8 How about collecting some pebbles this weekend and making a set of story stones?

#goplay Twitter Tip #9 How about providing some un-toys for dressing up? fabric, scarves, ribbons so children can create their own costumes?

#goplay Twitter Tip #10 Why not try some un-toys & see what your child thinks: have fun, #goplay, go green, be creative, use your imagination!

*These #goplayTwitter Tips are tweeted each Friday at 8.30pm – follow @nurturestore or the #goplay hashtag to share

View the Twitter Tips on playdough, water play,  travelling with kids junk modeling and encouraging reading and writing

Happily shared with…

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

Welcome to the Sunflower Club End of Summer Party

Google tells me that the world’s tallest sunflower grew to over 7 metres tall. So ours aren’t going to break any records but they have reached a very respectable 2m 47 cm. (Did I hear you say ‘wow!’?) They have brought us so much pleasure over the summer and the girls have learned lots of things through growing them. The sunflower height chart we made also revealed that Little isn’t quite as little as she was when we planted our seeds as she has grown 2.5cm too. Although they have grown tall this year the flowers appeared early and have faded now and we’re wondering what to do with the seeds – so if you have any suggestions we would love to hear them.

If you have been growing sunflowers or doing any sunflower linked crafts or activities we would love you to link up with your posts. Please use the linky below to show us how your sunflowers have fared and to give us some craft and activity ideas to use next year.

Thanks for following along in our Sunflower Club – we hope you’ve had fun too.

(You could add a link in your post to here so your readers can come and share all the ideas in the link-up too.)

In our acrchive: all of our sunflower activites.

To make simple flags to deck out a sandcastle: take a rectangle of card, add a design, fold and glue onto a stick.

We’re off to the beach for a few days  – see you when we get back!

Happily shared with…

This week’s #goplay Twitter Tips* are bringing you some junk modelling ideas to inspire you to raid your recycling bin and get creating.

#goplay Twitter Tip #1 Stock a Making Box with left-over boxes wrapping ribbons tubes tinfoil to use for modelling

#goplay Twitter Tip #2 Junk modeling helps children think creatively, problem solve, imagine, play with size, dimension, angles and more

#goplay Twitter Tip #3 How about transforming some milk cartons into a fire station with this idea from @noflashcards?

#goplay Twitter Tip #4 @Childhood101 has a fantastic tutorial  showing you how to make a kitchen from yr junk

#goplay Twitter Tip #5 How about hovercrafts from CDs and hot air balloons from yoghurt pots? http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/2010/07/more-flying-machines/

#goplay Twitter Tip #6 Teacher Tom’s class made an erupting volcano from a fizzy drink bottle and some newspaper!

#goplay Twitter Tip #7 How about making fairy toadstools from a paper bag? @mayamade shows you how

#goplay Twitter Tip #8 Transform a shoe box and some toilet roll tubes into a medieval castle

#goplay Twitter Tip #9 Turn a shoe box into a double decker bus

#goplay Twitter Tip #10 How about transforming a egg box into a fire breathing dragon?

Hope you find inspiration in these ideas – what could you make?

*These #goplayTwitter Tips are tweeted each Friday at 8.30pm – follow @nurturestore or the #goplay hashtag to share

View the Twitter Tips on playdough, water play,  travelling with kids and encouraging reading and writing

Happily shared with WeareThat Family

Have you ever tried writing poetry with children? So far this summer the Sunflower Club has inspired us with measurement, science, art, numbers and biology and today we’re tried out some poems about sunflowers.

We had a go with two different prompts. The first was to take each letter of the word ‘sunflower’ and see if we could find another word beginning with that letter which suited our flowers. This worked well for my 7 year old but didn’t click with my four year old.

For the second prompt we used some starter sentences to brainstorm ideas. For example…

A sunflower is….

The sunflower’s colour is…

A sunflower is tall like…

The petals are like…

We then took the ‘answers’ and combined them to make our poem.  Here’s what we came up with – what do you think?

Sunshine

Up to the sky

Nodding

Fiery

Lovely

Over our heads

Wonderful

Extremely tall

Radiant

*****************************

Bright, beautiful, radiant colour

Like a lion’s mane

Tall as a mountain, up to the sky

Happy and sunny and radiant

And don’t forget you are invitied to our Sunflower Club linky party on August 25th. If you have been growing sunflowers or doing any sunflower activities over the summer please come and share your ideas with us. Whether you’ve a tip for planting, advice for growing giants, sunflower pictures or crafts, please come and link up with us.

Happily shared with…