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Make a staycation a playcation

25/05/2011 by Cathy James 14 Comments

Keeping children entertained in the school holidays without spending lots of money is a lot easier with a little forward planning. Mixing things up a little, giving the wow factor to what you already have and creating tempting invitations to play can bring lots of fun to your holiday without costing a fortune.

Try these ten ideas for fabulous frugal fun to get your holiday off to a playful start.

Make things look tempting: taking five minutes the night before to arrange some materials is time well spent and can set the tone for the whole day. Try using muffin tins or dip trays to gather small, interesting items.

Double up for maximum fun: making crafts that transform into toys gives you lots of extra play factor. Try peg dolls, lollypop puppets or junk model animals.

Enlist help: adding a favourite teddy to a play set-up can be all you need to get children to dive in and start playing with something they’ve not used for a while. Try sitting teddy on one of their trains, set up a teddy bears picnic or pop ted on the sofa reading some books.

Turn a staycation into a playcation: by setting up a camping role play, with sleeping bags and torches. You could even toast some marshmallows on your campfire.

Keep it simple: often children are happiest with the simplest of things to play with. A bucket of water is always a big hit in our house.

Start as you mean to go on: lay something out on the breakfast table for the children to discover as soon as they wake. How about a holiday scrapbook or garden journal.

Go natural: toys don’t have to be battery powered. Put out some un-toys: bowls of shells, pebbles, fir cones or sticks and let the children see where their imagination takes them.

Mix it up: put different materials together and give them a new lease of life. Try marble painting or see our free playdough ebook for a huge list of things to try with dough.

Add a wow factor: Spark the kids interest by adding some real-world wow to the things they already have: put real food in the play kitchen, some of your own jewellery in the dressing up box or a few real coins in the toy shop.

Upcycle: put your recycling box to good use by transforming it into a dinosaur land , ride on train or horse riding stables.

Our archive is packed full of more ideas for things to do in the school holidays – take a look and grab a play idea to share with your children.

happily shared with works for me Wednesday and tot school and share your Sunday best and link and learn and the magic onion and for the kids Friday and it’s playtime

Five fabulous ideas for feet

22/05/2011 by Cathy James 10 Comments

Five fabulous ideas for a feet theme.

1. Set up a shoe shop: gather together as many different types of shoes as you can: lace-ups, high heels, flippers, wellies, ballet shoes, walking boots, football boots, slippers. Talk about when you would wear all these different types of footwear – what’s special about them? Add in some imaginary play and have some of the children be the shop assistants and some be the customers. Add in some maths by measuring everyones feet and graphing the results.

2. Explore movement and see what your feet can do: Play musical statues but have the children try out a different movement each time the music re-starts. Can they walk, hop, skip, run, go backwards, walk on tip toes? Try some other challenges such as seeing if they can pick blocks up with their feet and load them into a bucket. Or hold a crayon between their toes and do some drawing.

3. Discover animals’ feet: use toy animals or print off some pictures and investigate their feet. Talk about paws, hooves, webbed feet, claws and talons. Add some classification practise by sorting the animals into those with no feet, two feet, four feet, lots of feet. How do the animals’ feet suit how they live? Which animals can walk on the ceiling?

4. Make some footprints: for a great collaborative work of art tape big rolls of paper to the floor and then play some music. Have the children step in some paint and then dance their way over the canvas.

5. Read all about feet: with this fabulous selection of stories suggested by NurtureStore’s Facebook and Twitter friends. (Come and join us on Facebook and Twitter for lots more resources and idea swaps)

Like our ideas? Please VOTE FOR US in the UK Mum and Dad Blog awards!

happily shared with made by little hands Monday and math Monday and preschool corner and Outdoor Play and we play and math Monday and Tot School

Play dough recipe

18/05/2011 by Cathy James 33 Comments

Need a play dough recipe? Salt dough recipe, bread dough recipe, no cook play dough recipe?

How about a year’s worth of playdough play ideas – including math, literacy and creative play.

Now available: an all-new-and-improved Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book!

come and take a look!

How to make an origami dog

16/05/2011 by Cathy James 14 Comments

How to make an origami dog

1. Take a square of paper, any size you like – a piece of your child’s art is especially good to use as your dog will be unique

2. Follow this guide to fold it (or this one which is animated)

3. Add some googly eyes using craft glue and a nose using a felt pen

4. Make your dog happy by adding a smile.

5. Think of a name for your pet while the glue dries, then he’s ready to play

We made these dogs at creche today with sixteen 2- and 3-year-olds. They loved them! We counted out the eyes and they had a go with the pen adding the nose and mouth. There was a lot of woofing too!

The folding was a bit too tricky for the toddlers, but my two girls (4 and 8 ) found the instructions easy to follow. Using the children’s own art work to make the origami dog and letting them add the face still gives the younger children plenty of things they can manage all by themselves. I’m thinking we could use an egg box to make the dog a body, with this face at one end and a tail at the other to create a junk model dog for even more play – what do you think?

A big thanks to my colleague Lesley for the idea and to the lovely toddlers for sharing their origami dog creations.

happily shared with craft schooling Sunday and Saturday’s artist and the resource centre teach mama and for the kids Friday and it’s playtime upcycled awesome and we play

Match box art idea

11/05/2011 by Cathy James 10 Comments

After really enjoying our large scale painting we decided to go small this week and try out some tiny match box art.

I traced around the outside of the match box on a piece of paper to make lots of frames and then the children set to, creating all sorts of designs.

We had no particular plan in mind, other than using the matchbox as a frame, but when L drew a garden scene we decided to transform the matchbox into a window to peep through.

We added a window frame and used tissue paper to make some curtains. The girls like peeping through the fairy windows and have plans to make a whole skyscraper full of different views. I like the depth that the layers add to the picture.

Glue a little magnet on the back and you can create a match box gallery on the fridge.

If you like our ideas, please share them on Facebook or twitter or link back to them from your blog.

happily shared with made by little hands Monday and for the kids Friday and it’s playtime and creative juice and upcycled awesome

Make a garden journal

10/05/2011 by Cathy James 32 Comments

Gardening with children offers so many opportunities to learn. We love growing our own fruit and vegetables, even though our garden is small, so the children get to see where their food comes from and how seeds transform into something tasty to eat.

This weekend we’ve been working on making a garden journal.

We’re using a scrapbook for our journal and filling it with all sorts of information and pictures as we go through our gardening year – making a wonderful record of everything we’ve done, seen and grown. Here are some things we’ll be including:

diary entries of our progress: what we planted, when things began to grown, what we’ve been enjoying outside (giving the kids lots of opportunities to practise their writing)
photos and drawings of the plants and animals we observe
treasures stuck on to the pages such as seeds, dried leaves, seed packets
scientific and mathematical data on how high plants are growing and what conditions they like

The journal is a collaborative project that everyone is taking part in and I’m making sure to keep it out, rather than stored away on a shelf, to encourage lots of entries whenever the kids see something they want to include. By mixing in writing, photos and pictures everyone can join in – whether they’re at the writing stage or not. We’re hoping by the end of summer – when if we’re lucky we’ll have enough produce for a harvest celebration – to have a beautiful record of all the fun we’ve had in the garden this year.

Are you growing anything with your children? Are you doing any linked activities to springboard the gardening into literacy, math, science or art? We’d love to hear your ideas.