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Messy play with potatoes

27/01/2011 by Cathy James 10 Comments

Here’s a simple sensory pay idea for toddlers using potatoes.

Yesterday we were printing with potatoes but there are lots of other ways you can play with them too. How about some cooking and mashing fun?

We set up a low table with lots of kitchen equipment and just explored.

We had no plan other than to investigate the potatoes and see what we could do with them.

We used some toy pans from our kitchen set and lots of ‘real’ cooking equipment too.

You can see from the photo that L loved squishing to potato with the masher.

After they’d enjoyed the sensory experience of the play the game then turned into role play, as they served the potatoes in their cafe.

This is just the kind of play we love: everyday materials, inexpensive, new things to explore, and an inviting play space set up where the children can just get stuck in and play their own way.

What I noticed from this play session was that things that we take for granted are fascinating to children. They felt very grown up chopping and peeling the potatoes, and watching the texture of the potatoes transform as we boiled them was like magic. (A good bit of science for them too looking at how a substance changes.)

Are you happy to let your children play with food?

I understand some people don’t like to include food in play because they think it’s a precious resource which shouldn’t be wasted.

My approach to all our toys and resources is to re-use and recycle as much as we can and I try not to buy something that only has a short play time span. Some food items, such as uncooked pasta, rice and lentils can be stored and used several times but obviously when you’re using cooked food this isn’t an option.

Washing off the potatoes we used to make our rabbit pictures and using them for a different kind of play is a good way to recycle them though.

Rabbit craft

26/01/2011 by Cathy James 7 Comments

Are you celebrating the Chinese new year next week? I like to observe celebrations from around the world with the children as I think it open their eyes to diverse cultures, showing them how people around the world are different but how the basis of many traditions are very similar too. We like to make Chinese style lanterns (which are perfect for practising scissors skills) and eating a Chinese meal. This year, which begins on 3rd February 2011, will be the year of the rabbit so here’s an idea for a craft you could try:

Potato Printing a Rabbit

We used potatoes and carrots to print with to make our rabbit. (Seems appropriate to use carrots, don’t you think?) Carrot printing is great for younger children as the carrots are just right for holding in little hands. Potatoes are a little more cumbersome to hold but you can make easier for the children to grasp if you cut out a handle into the top – as shown in the picture.

This rabbit design provides the opportunity to mix in some maths, as we thought about what shapes we could use to make our pictures. We decided to make a picture using just two shapes: circles and triangles.

I used a knife to cut out a triangle from the carrots, the potatoes were simply sliced in half.

We also talked about size as we used a big shape to make the body, ears and carrots and a small shape for the head, nose and carrot leaves.

We enjoyed having a specific project – working out how to form our rabbits and follow our instructions to create the pictures – but it was great to add in time at for some free style printing too, to see what other designs we could come up with using the circles and triangles.

More Chinese New Year activities

Raise a global child! Exploring festivals from different countries and cultures is a wonderful way to learn about the world. You can see our archive of Chinese New Year activities here.

Valentine’s mobile for babies

25/01/2011 by Cathy James 3 Comments

Include your baby in the Valentine’s Day celebrations with this easy to make Valentine’s mobile. (Even better if you have an older brother or sister around who can help with the cutting and sticking).

Babies love looking at faces, especially ones they recognise as being special to them. Mobiles are a great way to help your baby develop their focus and track objects, and they can help keep them entertained when you’re changing their nappy or when they’re having some tummy time.

Here’s how to make it:

Look at these step by step drawings for more details

1. Cut out some hearts from red card – around eight is a good number to fit the mobile.

2.Print some photos of the people your baby loves: parents, siblings, grandparents and even pets. Cut out the faces and stick one in the centre of each heart. You might like to put a face on each side so there’s someone to look at whichever way the mobile turns.

3. To make the mobile, cut out a hoop from a piece of thick card, about the size of a large dinner plate and with a width of about 5cm.

4. Make four holes at even spaces around the hoop and thread through some string, wool or ribbon. Tie the four threads together and use this to hang your mobile.

5. Add threads to each of your hearts and fasten them to the hoop. An easy way to do this is with a sewing needle and some cotton. Thread the cotton through the needle and knot one end. Push the needle through the heart, then push it through the hoop. Leave a long thread so the heart dangles down and tie a knot at the other end to hold it in place. Place your hearts at even spaces around the hoop to help your mobile balance and hang well.

6. To make a simpler version you can hang the hearts from a ‘washing line’. Fasten a length of ribbon or thread between two nails and tie or peg the hearts along the line.

7. Hang your mobile or washing line where your baby can see it and the faces on the hearts are visible, but just out of their reach so there is no chance of them getting tangled up. You might find it better placed slightly to the side over their nappy changing table, as babies most often lie with their head turned a little.

We have more Valentine’s crafts in our archive including a Valentine shaker, just right for musical babies.

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Our SUPERbaby play series focuses on simple, playful ideas you can use with the youngest of children to have fun and encourage them to develop important early learning skills. The emphasis is on ideas you can easily fit into a busy week, using materials you’ll have around your home. View all our SUPERbaby ideas here.

happily shared with Works for Me Wednesday and Craft Schooling Sunday and the Virtual Valentine’s Day Party

Go Play! Showcase: Ready for Ten

20/01/2011 by Cathy James 1 Comment

This week’s Go Play! Showcase features Ready for Ten, a site which brings together articles and ideas from a group of parents and writers (including me) on a host of topics especially relevant if you have children around the ages of six to nine. Here’s the editor Linda Jones to tell you more.

Tell us about yourself

Ready for Ten is a website packed with ideas and inspiration for parents raising active, adventurous, happy kids. I’m privileged and proud to be working with a team of fabulous writers including NurtureStore’s very own Cathy who regularly contribute on their experiences with recommendations and advice about activities or on a given theme. This month’s is community and we have articles all about pets, street parties, volunteering and more. Our site, which is published by Britvic, is mainly aimed at children aged six to nine, but some of our readers also have a younger or older family.

What’s your play philosophy?

We love outdoor and indoor play and include a section on children’s skills including:

Balloon animals

Diabolo

Origami

Yo-yo

Kite-flying

Beat boxing

Cup stacking

Hula hooping

Juggling

Snooker

These activities have videos from Fruit Shoot showing how different children have mastered elements and can dazzle us with their skills as well as passing on easy to follow tips for anyone to give them a go.

We also have a UK map of great places to play and parent-powered information on which sorts of activity are best suited to the different locations. We nearly have 1,000 entries on this map, which we call the Skillscape and these have come from our contributors and readers across the UK. We’d love some more recommendations to help other families find more hidden gems. The Skillscape covers everything from a local park to massive themed attractions.

Ready for Ten Skillscape

Inspire us!

Here are three recent posts which have come under the umbrella of our ‘play’ category which has regular contributions:

Make a garden in a jar

Top tips for sledging

Ice suncatchers to warm up your day

Hop on over to Ready for Ten and check them out!

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Are you passionate about children’s play and crafts? Would you like to have your blog or website featured here? E-mail me to say hi and tell me about your site: Cathy (at) nurturestore (dot) co (dot) uk for more details

Eat some fractions

19/01/2011 by Cathy James 9 Comments

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Teaching children fractions is easy in the kitchen as meal times are when we apply fractions to our everyday lives. Whether we realise it or not every time we make sandwiches, cut up a cake or share out slices of pizza we’re using fractions. Here are some ideas you can use with children to introduce fractions in a fun and practical way, so that when they come to ‘learn’ fractions at school they’ll already be familiar and confident with the underlying principles.

How to Throw a Fractions Tea Party

Make some sandwiches and cut off the crusts to make a clear square shape from your slices of bread. Help your child to slice up the sandwiches and talk about the shapes and fractions you make as you slice. Cut the sandwich in half to make two rectangles. Cut it into quarters and count the four smaller squares you have. Cut these diagonally into eigths and count the eight triangles you have made.

Make a drink of juice and talk about how many parts of water and juice you need to mix together. Maybe you want to make half water and half fruit juice – measure out two equal halves and pour them together to make a whole drink. Maybe you need to use tenths and mix one tenth cordial with nine tenths juice. If you have a clear plastic bottle you can make lines on the outside with a permanent marker to divide the bottle up into tenths, to make the fractions clearer.

Put your child in charge of splitting some fruit into fractions. If you have five people in your family your child is going to have to give everyone a fifth of a share from a bag of grapes. Let them line up five little bowls and put one grape (or blueberry or whatever) in each bowl, repeating until all the grapes are shared out, with a fifth in each bowl.

Have some cake for pudding, cut into slices. How many slices do you have? How much is left after everyone has had a slice of cake – half? Three quarters? A third?

Including talk about maths in your everyday play and activities gives your child lots of opportunity to play about with concepts, so that when they come to study them in a more academic way they already have the beginning of an understanding of the principles, and they will feel comfortable and confident in approaching maths.

Printable bird and bird house set

18/01/2011 by Cathy James 15 Comments

Valerie over at the Frugal Family Fun Blog has such great ideas and we love the crafts she does with her two girls. When we saw her post about a printable bird house play set we thought they were so cute we’d have to try and make some. The houses can be made from card, or even a recycled cereal box, and Valerie has given us all a template to use which means they are so easy to make.

B, who’s seven, managed to do all the stages by herself: tracing round the template, cutting, folding and sticking and she is really pleased with her birdhouse. She decided to leave the roof un-stuck so she could put some furniture inside and use it as a play house. The house was a little too tricky for L, who is four, to make by herself but she got involved drawing a pattern which we used to make the roof, and she’s really enjoying all the small world play now the houses are finished. We made some extra houses to hang in the window as decorations too and for these we stuck the roofs down. I think the co-ordinating roofs and perches make this a very stylish neighbourhood! We used recycled wrapping paper to make them but they’d be the perfect way to re-use your children’s art work too.

Printable bird template

Of course then we decided we needed someone to come and live in our bird street so we made a little flock of birds. If you’d like to make some the same as ours you can use this Printable bird template, which works out a great size to match with Valerie’s bird house. All you need to do is draw round the bird template on card, adding a slit where you can insert the wings. The wings are made from a piece of paper folded into a concertina and pushed through the slot in the bird’s body. You can make a hole above the wings if you want to hang them up on a cotton thread, or add a base so they can stand up if you’d like to play with them. You’ll find both options available on the template.

We used the same paper for the birds wings as we did the roofs of the houses, so it turned out to be a good matching game too, making sure all the birds got back to their own house. A big thank you to Valerie for the idea and the how-to bird house template. If you don’t already know the Frugal Family Fun Blog do pop by for a visit as I know you will love her ideas.

happily shared with Kids Get Crafty, Upcycled Awesome and Works for me Wednesday and Preschool Corner and Craft Schooling Sunday and No Time For Flashcards and Making Mondays Marvellous and and Mad Skills and Mad Skills Monday and Made by You Monday and Homemaker Monday and Sumo’s Sweet Stuff and Today’s Creative Blog and ABC and 123 and Something for the Weekend