NurtureStore

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

It’s summer holiday season when lots of us are travelling with kids so this week’s Twitter Tips* are all about keeping children entertained on a car journey.

Twitter Tip #1 The key to traveling happily with kids is a little planning: make a box of goodies for snacks, treats and activities

Twitter Tip #2 Make a bingo game to take along with pictures of roadsigns, vehicles, people and landmarks you can spot along the way

Twitter Tip #3 Play 20 questions. With younger children give clues to about someone in the family, let older ones ask questions

Twitter Tip #4 Stock a busy bag with pens, paper, stickers, doll, magazine, books, sweets, a magnetic scribble pad, magic colour pens

Twitter Tip #5Every 20 mins or so give the kids something new from the busy bag – keeps them busy & helps measure out the journey

Twitter Tip #6 Take along some audio books (borrow some from the library ) -better for carsickness than watching a film on a screen

Twitter Tip #7 Locate the playgrounds along your route. Stop regularly and get out of the car to let the children run around.

Twitter Tip #8 Put together a compilation of the family’s favourite music: can’t beat a singalong to lift everyone’s mood!

Twitter Tip #9 Make story magnets & play with them on a baking sheet -they won’t get lost down the car seats

Twitter Tip #10 How about some washable car window crayons to let the kids get creative while they ride?

*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 and encouraging reading and writing

Happily shared with Top Ten Tuesday and We Are That Family’s Works for me Wednesday

*****Have you entered our giveaway to win fantastic Annabel Karmel goodies?*******

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.

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Make a Clothespeg Butterfly Mobile

Look what’s been fluttering in our garden: a Lesser Spotted Peg Butterfly!

We had some wooden clothes pegs left over from making our pegdolls and Little wanted to make a butterfly. Here’s how we made it….

We used a sheet of clear plastic to cut our a butterfly shape – but card or paper would work just as well.

L was in charge of customising the butterfly, with liberal amounts of glue and bits and bobs from our making box. We talked about symmertry and L had a good try at getting her butterfly to match.

We put lots more glue down the centre of the butterly and inserted the wings into the peg. We also tied a length of string around the peg. Sitting the butterfly on the side of a glass helped press the wings in place while the glue dried.

We twisted a pipe-cleaner around to make the antennae, and drew on a face (you can see this on the first pic). Once all the glue is dry you can hang your butterfly up and watch as the breeze makes it flutter around.

They’re so pretty, why not make lots more to decorate your bedroom?

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and

Storybook Springboard – bringing books to life

The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr is one of our all time favourite stories. My girls are spellbound by the idea of a tiger popping round and helping himself to all the cakes. It’s also a perfect book to use as a springboard for lots of other play and learning activities. Here are a few ideas:

When children first begin to engage in imaginary play it’s usually by role-playing things they see in their everyday life – feeding their teddy, giving their doll a bath, chatting to daddy on the phone. This is a valuable way for them to try out a different experience and practise all the language associated with it. As they get a little older and their view of the world expands beyond their own homelife they start to play in more imaginative, fantasy ways. The Tiger Who Came to Tea is a great book to use to foster this creative play and get them using their imagination. You could try some face painting, so they can be the tiger themselves. Add in some props, such as a tea set and some packets of food,  and they can recreate the story – and then adapt it and make up their own endings too.

As an alternative you could make a tiger mask.

Or how about making a tiger puppet so they can play out the story on a small scale.

Everyone learns best when a new idea is linked in with other experiences which re-inforce the new. Can you have some fun bringing your child’s favourite book to life today?

This post is linking in with The Gallery, hosted by Tara at Sticky Fingers, where the theme this week is A Novel Idea – a photo inspired by your favourite book. Why not pop over and see the other pictures for more inspiration?

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Fruit of the Week Challenge

featuring Handa’s Surprise (Walker paperbacks)by Eileen Browne

We all want our children to eat well but it can be hard work.  Sometimes children are simply reluctant to try something new, which can be so frustrating when you’ve planned, shopped for and prepared a new treat, only for them to take one look (let alone one bite) and turn their noses up at it. As fruit is super healthy and so handy for picnics and lunchbags it would be wonderful if children ate it happily: this is where the Fruit of the Week challenge comes in!

First of all you need to get inspired. Handa’s Surprise (Walker paperbacks)by Eileen Browne is about a girl called Handa who lives in Kenya. She packs a basket full of delicious fruits, including pineapple, mango and passion fruit, to take as a nice surprise for her friend Akeyo. On the way to Akeyo’s village several sneaky animals including a monkey and an elephant come and steal the fruit from on top of Handa’s head. When she finally arrives to see Akeyo, she discovers the basket isn’t quite the same as when she left and she’s the one who gets the surprise. It’s a good book to bring a multi-cultural aspect to your bookshelf and interesting for the children to compare the animals they see in their neighbourhood with the ones Handa meets. It also, of course, brings you on to talking about the different fruits mentioned.

So now for the eating! How about trying some of the fruits in the book? You could do this in one taste testing session, or try our ‘Fruit of the Week’ challenge.

You’ll need to make a chart with several column so you can record:

• what the fruit is called

• what it looks like outside and inside (my kids loved guessing what colour would be revealed when we sliced it open)

• words to describe how it looks and how it smells

• and a column for each child to draw a sad or happy face to show whether they liked it or not

Even children too young to do any writing can join in, adding the right colours for each fruit and drawing their own smiles or frowns. And you don’t have to be limited by the fruits mentioned in the book. We mixed in different varieties of melons (to try and catch them out on their colour predictions!) and some very unusal ones like dragon fruits too.

The children I’ve done this with really enjoyed it and our ‘Fruit of the Week’ became quite famous, with friends and family hearing all about it. The kids were eager to try the new fruits each week, and as it was more playful and away from a mealtime they were all keen to taste every new fruit .

So, why not give it a go!

Warm, sunny weather gives a great opportunity to take your play outside. How about some outdoor painting? Even if you’re usually reluctant to let the kids do messy play indoors, when you’re outside you can relax a little and let them get creative.

We used a wipe-able tablecloth to give the floor some protection and used washable paint. It was too hot to get wrapped up in coveralls so we wore old clothes. The plant pots did a great job holding our big roll of parcel paper in place. We had a washing up bowl full of water and a tea towel handy – good for washing off our feet!

We experimented with big brushes, washing-up scrubbers and the rake from the sandpit.

This was an ‘open-ended’ craft session where the kids had the opportunity to use the paint their way, rather than us making anything in particular.  Little especially enjoyed using her hands and feet to paint with and Big experimented with some splatter painting.

Why not try this with your children and see what they create?

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You can make maths much more fun if you mix in some songs and imaginary play. Today we’ve been counting backwards and singing ‘Ten in the Bed’.

First we took a cardboard box and used some fabric scraps to make a bedsheet, pillows and blanket.

Then we made 10 little people and numbered them 1 to 10. With a bit of a squash and a squeeze they all fitted in.

Then it was time for some singing – and lots of giggling as Little rolled her people out of bed. We’ve done an alternative version of this using our sofa as a bed and Big’s favourite teddies to make up the numbers. It’s very funny when you’re 3 to make your teds whizz out of bed!

A great book choice to go with this is Ten in the Bedby Penny Dale, which has beautiful illustrations.

And just in case you don’t know the song, there’s a cute pre-school class over on You Tube waiting to sing it to you.

Both of my daughters, at around the age of 3, gained a sudden awareness that they might get lost and not be able to find mummy or daddy when they were out. It’s a very scary thought for young children and quite natural for the realisation to come at around this age: they’re gaining an awareness now of the wider world, and taking little steps towards independence by staying places without a parent (such as pre-school) and wandering just a little further away when we’re at the park.

I think you tread a fine line talking about these issues with young children. On the one hand you need to answer questions they have, to re-assure them and give them confidence that they would know what to do if it did happen. On the other hand you don’t want to dwell on issues which might give them more fears or cause bad dreams, and which hopefully won’t happen anyway.

I have two books to recommend to you which we have found really helpful in exploring ‘being lost’.  The first is Come on, Daisy!by Jane Simmons. This is suitable for ages 2-4 and tells how Daisy Daisy wanders off from Mama Duck and gets a little frightened by suddenly finding herself alone. The story has a happy ending and Daisy learns to stay close to Mama. The illustrations are beautiful and it’s a great book to read aloud.

The second book is more for 4- 6 year olds and features one of our favourite characters. It’s Little Rabbit Lost (Picture Puffin) by Harry Horse. You’ve just got to love Little Rabbit – he’s such a 4 year old! Full of independence and confidence but, as it turns out, not quite ready to face the big world alone. This story tells of a family trip to a rabbit amusement park where Little Rabbit wanders off alone. The details in the pictures are wonderful and the book provides a good way for your child to talk about Rabbit getting lost, and what he should have done.

These books have helped us tackle the issue of getting lost before it’s ever happened, to give the girls the chance to think through what it might be like and what they would do. We have three Golden Rules…

1. I will find them. Whatever happens they know I’m going to be coming to get them. This is to reassure them and try to help them not panic. Mummy will come.

2. Stay where you are. I tell the girls I will come to them, so they mustn’t wander out of the park or shop to try and find me (and  perhaps put themselves in danger of a busy road).

3. Tell a grown-up. In a shop I’ve told them to tell the person at the till, in a park they could tell another mummy. We’ve talked about using a big clear voice to say ‘I’ve lost my mummy’ and practised how they’d answer the questions they might be asked.

Rather than scaring or upsetting them I’ve found these books and golden rules have empowered them – helping them feel more confident to cope if they did get lost. (But say a prayer that it never does.)

Have you talked about getting lost with your children? What Golden Rules do you have?

This post is happily shared with Babyrambles and the Keeping Children Safe carnival.

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