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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…

Alongside learning how to read, write your own name and tie up your shoes laces, learning how to understand and deal with your emotions is an equally important part of early learning. If we hope to raise happy, reasonable and persevering children we should spend time nurturing their emotional well-being as well as counting, baking and making crafts with them.

One way we try to do this is by using books. There are lots of books which feature characters coping with lots of different emotions: happiness, sadness, nerves, fear, jealousy – and you can find a selection show below. But how about making a book about your own child to really capture their interest and give you the perfect opportunity to talk about how they feel?

The You Tube clip above shows a book we made for Little and retells her battle with frustration and shows how bouncing back from defeat can lead to success! Why don’t you make one for your child? Sit with them as they tackle a challenge and create your own photo story.

Or how about creating a book of the many faces of your child? Put together a selection of photos showing times when they were laughing, cross, tired or giggling. Add a word to describe each photo and read it together. This will open up lots of converation about different feelings. I’m certain you’ll find kids just love reading books in which they are the central character.

This post is happily shared with the writing workshop at Sleep is for the Weak and the photo gallery at Sticky Fingers and ABC and 123

A delicious and easy receipe when you’re barbequeing, and just right for children, is:

Barbeque Bananas

Take one banana per person and slice down the centre. Fill the slit with chocolate chips.

Wrap each banana in a tinfoil parcel and place on the barbeque after the main courses has been cooked. The remaining heat from the coals will bake the bananas and melt the chocolate.

Unwrap* your banana parcels, add a scoop of icecream and enjoy.

*This is going to be hot of course, so leave it to a grownup who’s wearing oven gloves.

Why not use a disposable barbeque and head off for a picnic in the great outdoors?

This is a very simple idea to include even the youngest child in the Valentine fun.

When I saw this heart shaped ‘Love Pasta’ I knew I had to have some! (Guess what we’re having for dinner on 14th?) And I’d also been thinking about how to include a baby I know in the Valentine celebrations as she’s too young for any chocolate treats or to get involved in the other crafts we’re doing. One thing she is fantastic at however is making noise! She’s really enjoying finding her own voice and also trying out what sounds she can make by banging toys around, which gave me the idea of making her a musical shaker with a sprinkle of hearts inside.

It’s pretty much the easiest thing to make:

Take a clean, empty drinks bottle.

Fill with something to make noise when baby shakes it. I used the Love Pasta, but you could use dry kidney or borlotti beans (which keeps with the colour scheme) or rice or whatever else you might have in your storecupboard.

Add something to catch baby’s eye. I used some heart shaped foil confetti and some swirls of red shiny ribbon.

Fix the lid on tightly. I applied superglue around the rim of the bottle and them screwed the lid on top. I added a ribbon around the neck of the bottle, but if you’re concerned about baby chewing this you can leave it off.

Hand the bottle over to baby and let them shake away to their hearts content.

This post is happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog Get Your Craft On. Why not pop over to find lots more great craft ideas?

Messy play is a wonderful way for children to explore their senses and there are lots of materials you can use. With younger children you must always be aware of course that whatever they are playing with is guaranteed to end up in their mouths – so shaving foam or playdough is no good for the littlies. Children explore so much with their mouths that there’s no point trying to stop them, but instead you can provide a material that it’s safe for them to use. So what better than some jelly!

You can easily get hold of jelly which is made with natural food colouring. With babies you can start with just one colour. I usually pop on a cover-all bib and sit them in their highchair at the table. I put a mound of  jelly on the highchair’s tray and then let them go for it. Watch them poke, squish and taste. Chat to them while they play and give them new words to try like wobble and squash. You could sing ‘Jelly on a Plate’ while you play.

With toddlers and pre-schoolers you can use 2 or 3 different colours of jelly and see what happens when you mix them together. This is a fun first lesson in colour combining, as you watch red and yellow jelly turn into orange. Let the children help you prepare the jelly so they can observe how it changes from solid to liquid and back to solid again.

Sometimes children can be reluctant to try new sensory experiences and may not want to touch the jelly. To overcome this and encourage them to experiment you could have a jelly lucky dip by hiding a few tempting treasures at the botton of a bowl of jelly for them to fish out.

You can also add props such as pans, plates and spoons to role play a kitchen or cafe. Spooning the jelly out onto plates is good hand-eye co-ordination practice.

This post is happily shared with weareTHATfamily in the Works For Me Wednesday carnival.

Around the time your baby learns how to sit upright by themself, they can discover a fascination for putting objects in and out of pots and boxes. They’re developing lots of skills when they do this.

Firstly they’re using their fine motor skills to actually hold objects, and may be passing them from one hand to another. They have to have good hand-eye co-ordination if they are to negotiate the object inside of the pot their aiming for.

Providing pots of different sizes challenges them to experiment with size and volume as they see which toys fit inside each one.

As they get older you can extend their play by adding lids or turing the pots upside down and hiding objects underneath. Hiding and discovering the toys inside helps them to grasp the concept of object permanence – the idea that things still exist even when they can not see them. You can have lots of fun with this by changing the objects you hide inside and sometimes sneaking away the item they’re expecting to see. Rather than teasing them, this actual helps them develop their thinking skills, as they process a result they weren’t expecting.

Another way to add an extra dimension to this play is to use pots which have a fragrance. If you collect together some old tubs from the kitchen which had a smelly content you’ll find they still have an aroma when they’ve been emptied out. Try pots of herbs and spices, custard powder, cocoa and teabag boxes such as Earl Grey or peppermint. Babies have a very developed sense of smell from birth but it’s often a sense which we neglect to nurture as they grow older.

Why not see what you’ve got that your child could explore today?

So here we are on 1st January and, after helping the children with theirs yesterday, I’ve been thinking about what resolutions I’m making myself, especially about how I can nurture my family this year. Over at notimeforflashcards Allie has been rounding off an inspirational year with a review of her most popular posts from 2009, and in number one spot she’s sent out a call to ‘Let them play‘. This got me thinking that letting children play is really the most important thing we can do to nurture their learning. I believe children learn best by doing (not just watching or listening) and giving them the space to be creative and explore is vital. Filling their weeks with non-stop activities isn’t the way I want to spend 2010.

So, here are my suggestions for making 2010 the Year of Play in your home:

1. Make an enabling environment. If you can arrange the play space in your house so that your children can access toys independently it means they are able to be in charge of their own play and use their imagination. We have open shelving in our play-room, with toys sorted into baskets with photos on to show what’s inside. This means that if my daughter is playing with her toy dog and needs some wooden blocks to build a kennel she knows exactly where they are to include in her play.

2. Provide  open-ended resources. I like to provide different props to spark play ideas and I favour open-ended resources. So I’d rather give them wooden blocks, fir cones and sea shells,  and different scarves and fabrics which they can use in anyway they want rather than a ‘toy’ which runs on batteries and only does one type of thing when you press a button.

3. Let them have freedom to play their way. So, I know that a jigsaw should be put together to make a nice picture but my daughter wants to put the pieces in a saucepan and ‘cook’ them. Is she wrong? Of course not, and if you encourage this child-led play you’re giving you child valuable space to explore what’s important and interesting to them.

4. Sit back and watch. Taking the time to really observe how your child is playing gives a window into what they’re ready to learn. By watching you can find out what they’re really interested in and use that as a springboard for other activities to develop their knowledge and understanding. Maybe they’re spending a lot of time playing with cars and you realise that it’s the circular motion of the wheels that’s fascinating them. You could then offer them some balls and a ramp to explore, or make a windmill together. Children don’t learn things in isolation but instead link together information and experiences. So if your child has been playing with a toy farm, combining this with a visit to a real farm, making a tractor from a big cardboard box and reading stories and singing songs songs all about animals is a very effective way to nurture their learning.

5. Sneak in the English, maths and science. Of course it’s important to incorporate these in your child’s world but this shouldn’t be instead of play. Therefore, your job is to ditch the flashcards  and in their place include numbers and letters almost without the children realising. If they’re playing ‘shops’ you can make an ‘Open / Shut’ sign for the door and price tags for the produce. When you’re having a teddy bears’ picnic you can count how many plates you need. Adding different sized funnels and buckets to the sandpit or at bathtime lets them explore different volumes. And growing a sunflower in the garden is a great way to introduce biology.

How about you? What will your focus be for nurturing your children in 2010 – I’d love to hear your plans.

Happily shared with ABCand123′s Let’s Get Organised