NurtureStore » Out and About

Autumn sensory scavenger hunt

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:00:52 +0000

Remember the easy sewing project from yesterday, showing how to make a bag? It was a fun project for little fingers but we turned it into a springboard for another activity too, by making a scavenger hunt on the reverse side.

First we had a blast of ideas for all the things we might find on our nature walk . The children shouted them out and we put all the ideas down on some stickers. Some wrote them down, some drew pictures and I scribed the others. Here a some of the things they came up with:

leaves, sticks, twigs, branches, trees, feathers, pinecones, grass, acorns, conkers, squirrels, cobwebs, bark

Then I asked them to think what colours, shapes and textures we might find:

hard, cold, smooth, spiky, soft, sticky, floaty, pointy, round, scratchy, tall, long

Once we’d captured all the ideas, we stuck our stickers all over one side of the bag – we put them on the side without the child’s initial on, and added the stickers before we laminated the paper. This became the reverse side to our scavenger hunt bag. Then we set off on our nature walk to see how many things we could find to match the words we’d thought of.

Having a bag for each child encourages everyone to join in and gives everyone a turn to find treasures. It also means I’m not the only one carrying everything – and collects a great variety of items to explore in the other activities we have planned for this week.

The list of ideas on the bag is a prompt to invite the children to explore the shape and feel of everything they find, and to use their eyes and ears to seek out lots of different items. The bag design makes it easy for the children to carry the list with them, and the initials on the flip side lets each child locate their bag of goodies.

Come back tomorrow to see what we did with all the things we found.

And hop back to yesterday’s post if you’d like all the instructions for how to make a bag.

happily shared with nature connections and sunday showcase and friday’s nature table and it’s playtime

Bonkers for conkers: autumn playdough ideas

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:02:46 +0000

Are your kids bonkers for conkers at the moment?

We have to leave for school five minutes early so we can factor in enough time for horse chestnut gathering on the way there. And the walk home talks just that bit longer too because there are just so many interesting things to pick up from the floor at this time of the year.

Not that I’m complaining – it’s wonderful that the kids enjoy the natural treasures a this time of year and pounce on them as new toys to play with.

I had planned on sharing something else with you today be we are all about the conkers at the moment, so I’m following the kids’ lead and sharing their idea for combining our cinnamon-scented autumn playdough with the seeds of the season, and I present to you their Bonkers Conkers Creations.

This is a lovely activity for an autumn day – a nature walk, a batch of no cook playdough mixing and then a creative afternoon making creatures.

Are your kids crafting and modelling with conkers and acorns at the moment? What are you making?

You can find lots more playdough ideas in our free Let’s Play Dough ebook

happily shared with share your sunday best and link and learn and craft schooling sunday and sunday showcase and for the kids friday and It’s Playtime

Cinnamon autumn playdough: leaf prints

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:00:55 +0000

We’re celebrating the change in season by adding an autumnal twist to our easy no cook playdough recipe.

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We made three batches and for colour we added one tablespoon of food colouring to each, in red, yellow and orange. To give an extra sensory element to the dough we added one dessert spoon of ground cinnamon to each batch . Hello autumn playdough!

The easy no cook playdough recipe makes a dough which is nice and soft and which lasts for ages if you wrap it up in clingfilm or in a plastic bag after each play time.

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The leaves are already falling here so we gathered some on our way back from school yesterday and used them to make prints in the playdough – which was a great way to really investigate the patterns of veins on each leaf and all the different shapes we found.

Playdough is one of our tried and trusted ways for a chilled out afterschool wind-down, providing an activity which is fun but also relaxed – just right after your first day back at school.

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You can get our easy no cook playdough recipe, together with some other favourite recipes and a year’s worth of playdough play ideas in our free Let’s Play Dough ebook.

happily shared with kids get crafty and works for me wednesday and show and tell and get your craft on and made by little hands and tot school and link and learn and glitter link party and share your sunday best and the sunday showcase and friday’s nature table and for the kids friday and preschool corner and it’s playtime

Maps and literacy

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:45:35 +0000

If you’re out and about this summer grab a map and add some literacy lessons.

1. Giving a map to the children and following your route as you go is a great lesson in geography. Look out for landmarks, talk about left and right and the points of the compass. What words can they spot on the map to match up with what they see on their journey?

2. When you return home, use the maps to talk over your journey – sequencing the things you saw, seeing if you can remember them all. Talk about what you liked the best, what was most interesting, what was hard to find, what was the oldest thing you saw, what was the tallest: lots of chatting, boosting communication and vocabulary.

3. Use your finger or a pencil to trace your route along the map – co-ordinating your hand and eye as you move along, and practising early writing skills.

4. Use the map to play i-spy, taking it in turns to give clues and find the answer.

5. Draw a map of your own: re-creating your journey or making one up using your imagination. You could turn this into a photography project and make your own street map.

How do you use maps with your children?

happily shared with learning laboratory and link and learn and preschool corner and for the kids Friday and smart summer and it’s playtime

Join the Carnival of Outdoor Play

Cathy @ NurtureStore — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:20:45 +0000

Welcome to the Carnival of Outdoor Play!

This week’s Play Academy link-up is all about Outdoor Play. Please share an idea for any kind of outdoor play – a new post or one from your archive. Games, science, crafts, literacy, exploring, art – what outdoor play activities do you enjoy? Help us build a fantastic store of outdoor play ideas we can use whenever we need a new idea.

1. Please link to your actual post, not your homepage.

2. Please add a text link from your page through to this carnival, to invite others to come and share the ideas.

3. Go and visit some of the other blogs listed and say hi.

4. Grab an idea and go play!

5. Don’t forget to come back next Friday to join in with our regular ‘anything goes’ link-up.