We’re joined by Christie from Childhood101 today, with a great post about sorting fun. I hope you enjoy her ideas.

“Pleasure in arranging things – whether lining up pebbles or tiny toys in a row, or arranging lines, shapes and colours on a sheet of paper – is part of children’s lives, part of the human desire . . . → Read More: Thinking It Through: Sorting Fun]]>

We’re joined by Christie from Childhood101 today, with a great post about sorting fun. I hope you enjoy her ideas.

“Pleasure in arranging things – whether lining up pebbles or tiny toys in a row, or arranging lines, shapes and colours on a sheet of paper – is part of children’s lives, part of the human desire for visual order.”

~Ursula Kolbe, It’s Not A Bird Yet: The Drama of Drawing (2005)

My daughter loves to sort and organise; from collecting small, natural objects on our daily walks at 18 months of age and sorting strips of fabric two months later, to arranging fairy stones at play or helping to sort the laundry as a three year old. At various times we have sorted by colour, size, texture, shape and number. Always in a spontaneous, fun and playful manner.

Play is the vehicle through which children learn best and the key to successful thinking and reasoning activities for young children is keeping it playful. I often look for ways to invite my daughter to come to these experiences herself, presenting them in a colourful and appealing manner (as an invitation to play) or leaving them ‘strewed‘ for her to discover. This provides her with an element of independence with the activity and me space to observe her thinking processes, her interest, her ideas for the experience. I show interest and answer questions but try to avoid leading or dictating the play, and hence the learning.

There are limitless ways to practice these skills but basing a thinking and reasoning activity around the interests of the individual child helps to engage them, therefore motivating them to learn. A child obsessed with dinosaurs can line them up in a row from biggest to smallest, a child who loves home corner play can sort the types of pretend food to set up a general store, and a child mad about cars can sort her collection by colour or type of car or size. It makes no difference to the learning if dinosaurs or plastic food or cars are used, the skills being developed remain the same.

Keeping it playful IS what makes all the difference.

Christie is a qualified early childhood teacher and the Mum of one very busy preschooler. You’ll find inspiration and information on children playing, learning and growing on Christie’s award winning blog, Childhood 101, and in her recently launched quarterly play-zine, Play Grow Learn.

We always have a well stocked making box ready to create with but it was a bag of colourful marbles that we found in a charity . . . → Read More: Marvellous marbles: how to make a marble run]]> It seems fitting after yesterday’s inauguration of the Junk Model Hall of Fame that today’s post is about how to make a marble run from – you guessed it – junk!

We always have a well stocked making box ready to create with but it was a bag of colourful marbles that we found in a charity shop that were the inspiration for this marble run. It’s all B’s creation and she had to use lots of problem solving and adaptations a she went along, to make a marble run that would be fun to play with. Here’s how she made it.

How to make a junk model marble run

The basic materials B used are cardboard and plastic boxes in various shapes and sizes all stuck together with sticky tape. (Regular readers know my girls will not hang about waiting for glue to dry.) Doors were cut out with scissors and toilet roll tubes uses to create tunnels. B had to do some problem solving and make some adaptations to get her marble run on the right level so the marbles would indeed run, rather than come to a halt half way down. Creating tilted layers was the answer.

She added in some excitement by making it so there were two ways the marble could go – with a toilet roll tube trap sending the marble out of the game into a penalty area.

The egg box at the end is a great way to catch the marbles, so they don’t end up skittering all over the floor and also lets you turn the fun into a game. Allocate a score to each section of the egg box and collect points to see which player becomes Champion of the Marble Run.

What have you been creating from junk this week? Come and join the Junk Model Hall of Fame.

 happily shared with abcand123 and monday madness and  glitter link party and link and learn and sunday showcase and craft schooling sunday and preschool corner and  fun sparks and  for the kids friday and your green resource and it’s playtime

Our tallest is currently 1m 65cm. They got up to 2m 47cm last . . . → Read More: Sunflower Challenge 2011]]>

Today’s the Day!

If you’ve been growing sunflowers with us as part of the Compton Hospice Sunflower Challenge you need to measure your sunflowers today. There are fabulous prizes on offer for the tallest bloom, so measure up and contact Compton with your vital statistics.

Our tallest is currently 1m 65cm. They got up to 2m 47cm last year, so there’s plenty more growing to be done. How tall are yours?

Sunflower Festival

If you’ve been enjoying growing sunflowers (whether you’re joining in the official challenge or not) and have a sunflower-themed play idea to share with us – we would love to see them. Please add a link to the Linky at the end of this post. We’ve shared some ideas for art, science and math in our Sunflower Activities ebook, and here’s one more idea for sunflower fun.

How to make a Sunflower sundial

Sunflowers love sunshine of course and grow best when they’re in full sun (challenge contenders take note!), so why not combine the two with a dash of horology science to make a sunflower sundial.

Materials: a stick, a flowerpot filled with soil (or something else to hold the stick upright), a clock timer, yellow chalk, a patio / driveway /yard and sunshine!

Place your stick in the flowerpot, so it stands upright and then place the pot in a part of the patio or yard which gets the sun all day.

This stick will be the gnomon (good word!) which is going to cast a shadow on your dial, and you’ll use the yellow chalk to draw sunflower petals on the floor to mark out each hour of the day. We made our clock from 8am to 8pm

At 8 o’clock use your chalk to draw a petal on the ground, with the tip of the petal marking where the shadow of the gnomon falls. Add a number 8 to the tip of the petal.

Set your clock timer for 9 o’clock. When the alarm goes off, it’s time to mark out the location of the 9 o’clock petal. Continue setting the timer and marking off your petals throughout the day.

You could try out some the the ideas in our Sunflower Activities ebook or from the linky below to help you pass the time. We had lots of excited shrieks when the alarm rang!

Talk with the children about what’s happening with your sun clock. Why do the shadows move? Why are the shadows longer sometimes and shorter at other times? Do they think the pattern is different each day or the same?

Join the Sunflower Festival

Share an idea with us for any kind of sunflower-themed play idea, craft, activity or experiment. The linky will be open until the end of the month, so plenty of time for you to join in if you would like. Help us gather a great resource of sunflower ideas.

happily shared with get your craft on and  science Sunday and  craft schooling Sunday and  something for the weekend

Yesterday we made a ride-on train . . . → Read More: Train-inspired art and maths shape pictures]]> When you’re nurturing children I think you should always start with them – what they’re interested in and want to explore. At the moment my youngest is really enjoying playing trains, so I’ve been using this as a way to incorporate some ideas about shapes and colours.

Yesterday we made a ride-on train from a cardboard box, which has given us lots of role playing fun. We’ve been talking about what happens at a train station, where you might go on a train and how trains work. This  lead us on to talking about trains going underground, so we looked up a picture of the London Underground map. And wow! She was captured by all the lines and colours, and wanted to know the names of all the stations. She was tracing her finger along the different lines (which is great hand-eye co-ordination practice) and I thought she might like her own map which she could drive her wooden trains along. This turned out to be a great idea as she really enjoyed making her version of the map.

We used a long roll of paper and it was great for her to have the space to really extend her painting. And she knew the names of all the colours too.

Once it was dried we brought over her train set to bring her map to life.

Another way we explored the theme of trains was to make pictures using felt shapes. This gave us the opportunity to name the different shapes, count their sides and trace our fingers around their outlines. We looked at our wooden train to see what shapes it was made up of and then used the felt shapes to re-create the train in our picture – comparing the 3D object with our two dimensional picutre.

I’ve got a couple more train-inspired play ideas coming in the next post too. One helps with pre-reading skills and another is good for maths. Hope you’ll come back and see them.