on May 21st, 2012%
How do you go about talking to children about cancer? When someone in the family is facing cancer and you are dealing with a painful range of emotions yourself it can be hard to know how best to involve your children. Do you shield them from the situation or be open with them and show your own upset?
A teacher at my daughters’ school died recently. She was a much loved and respected member of the school community and had been teaching the very youngest class in the school. The children were just four and five years old and the teaching staff made the decision to involve them, and the rest of the children at the school, in a very thoughtful process of understanding what had happened to their teacher. The whole school was involved in creating a very personal and joyful remembrance of their teacher, combining stories, poems, pictures and memories, which I believe gave them all the opportunity to learn many lessons about love and caring, grief and remembrance as well as coming together as a community to support each other and think about what is important in life.
Having seen myself how sharing with children what is happening and giving them ways to be involved in the circumstances has helped my own daughters, I am very pleased to be able to tell you Read more »
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 7th, 2012%
Have you heard the research that the best art for babies is bold black and white images? The contrasting pictures are believed to help a baby focus their vision and develop their still fuzzy eyesight. There are lots of black and white art for babies available in books and as posters but why not make your own? Creating some baby art is a lovely way for siblings (or in our case cousins) to give a gift to a new baby in the family. Read more »
on April 29th, 2012%
 Just as a healthy diet can certainly include cake, so a balanced childhood can include screen time. Family movie nights, skyping with Grandma and typing stories on the laptop are all great fun. It’s just there are so many other fun thing to do if you step away from a screen.
This week is Screen-Free Week. It also happens to coincide with two birthdays in our household and an extra day off school for the girls. So, I’m not here. We’re embracing Screen-Free week, going offline and enjoying some fun family time. We’re probably baking birthday cake, visiting an art gallery or up to our knees in water beads as you read this. If you’d like to join in and spend a little more time with the kids and without a screen this week, whether for an hour, a day or the whole week, here are 100 fun kids activities you could try.
Click each idea to see the full details.
And you can print off the list at the bottom so you really can log off and go play. Read more »
on April 19th, 2012%
Remember the indoor meadow we grew as one of our Earth Day activities? This week it has become the indoor / outdoor stage for a theatre production using shadow puppets.
Home made puppets are some of the most played with toys in our house, lending themselves time and time again to all sorts of adventures. The children play with puppets so often I think because it lets them be the master of a small universe and really stretch their imaginations as they tell their tales. Puppets are also a wonderful way for children to work out real-life relationships and develop their language – and so much fun to make! Here’s how the girls made their shadow puppets this week, with links to some of the other puppet ideas in our archives.
How to make shadow puppets Read more »
on April 11th, 2012%
Whether you’re celebrating St. George’s Day, the patron saint of England, this month or whether you just need a junk model dragon to add to your play, here are four dragon craft ideas you can try.
What colour is a dragon? Do they have wings? Do they breathe fire? All of ours were made from bits and pieces we had in our making box and each is unique, based upon the young artists’ impressions of what the dragon essentials are. They do have one thing in common though – they’re all scary!
Dragon craft ideas: make a model dragon Read more »
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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.
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