Jelly / Jello sensory play

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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.

Train inspired pre-reading and maths puzzles

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These two ideas wrap up our week of trains, trains and more trains.

Idea One is to make a Sorting Train.

I’ve seen lots of lovely train sets available in shops but my daughter specifically wanted one which had open carriages  so she could take her toys for a ride, so we made our own. We used plastic box containers from the recycling bin for the carriages and attached them together with string – very simple, but just what she wanted. She loaded the train with her toy passengers and played with the train in this way for a while. We have open shelving in the playroom to encourage the children to be creative and grab their own props when they’re playing, and today the wooden blocks were chosen. I asked my daughter if she could sort the blocks into the carriages by colour – which you can see she did. This classification ability – being able to sort objects into groups, be it by colour, size, purpose – is actually a pre-reading skill. It encourages logical thinking and helps to develop visual discrimination skills. Being able to look at a selection of objects and sort them is a step on the way to looking at a selection of letters and words and being able to read them. Of course, she was just having fun! Once the train was loaded she delivered the different coloured blocks to stations around the room.

We used the wooden blocks again for Idea Two. My daughter enjoyed using felt shapes to make a train picture  yesterday, so I thought I’d make her a ‘matching puzzle‘ using our wooden blocks. On a piece of paper I lay out some blocks to make a train shape and drew round them. Then I coloured them in colours that matched our blocks.

Then I asked my daughter if she could use the tub of blocks to find the right ones to go on top of the paper picture to make a block train.

To do this she had to use lots of maths and pre-reading skills as she had to think about:

– their shape – rectangle or square?

– their size – big rectangle or small rectangle?

– their colour – red semi circle or yellow semi circle?

– their orientation – arch pointing left or right?

You could adapt this puzzle game to the shape of blocks you have and what your child likes. You might make a house picture, a face or even a random pattern. If your child enjoys jigsaws, whiy not give this a try?

Train-inspired art and maths shape pictures

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When you’re nurturing children I think you should always start with them – what they’re interested in and want to explore. At the moment my youngest is really enjoying playing trains, so I’ve been using this as a way to incorporate some ideas about shapes and colours.

Yesterday we made a ride-on train from a cardboard box, which has given us lots of role playing fun. We’ve been talking about what happens at a train station, where you might go on a train and how trains work. This  lead us on to talking about trains going underground, so we looked up a picture of the London Underground map. And wow! She was captured by all the lines and colours, and wanted to know the names of all the stations. She was tracing her finger along the different lines (which is great hand-eye co-ordination practice) and I thought she might like her own map which she could drive her wooden trains along. This turned out to be a great idea as she really enjoyed making her version of the map.


We used a long roll of paper and it was great for her to have the space to really extend her painting. And she knew the names of all the colours too.

Once it was dried we brought over her train set to bring her map to life.

Another way we explored the theme of trains was to make pictures using felt shapes. This gave us the opportunity to name the different shapes, count their sides and trace our fingers around their outlines. We looked at our wooden train to see what shapes it was made up of and then used the felt shapes to re-create the train in our picture – comparing the 3D object with our two dimensional picutre.

I’ve got a couple more train-inspired play ideas coming in the next post too. One helps with pre-reading skills and another is good for maths. Hope you’ll come back and see them.

Cardboard box ride-on train tutuorial

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Got a long cardboard box? Here’s how to transform it into a train, for lots of role playing fun.

We used: a rectangular cardboard box, a Pringles tube, a panettone box, some coloured paper, sticky tape, scissors, a craft knife, a small plate, a felt tip pen

Wrap the tube in coloured paper. We used sticky tape throughout for all out sticking. You could use glue and could also paint the train instead, but then you’re going to have to wait for it to dry – and 3 year olds need instant gratification!

Place the tube where you want your chimney to be and draw round the bottom with your felt pen. Then cut the circle out with a craft knife (grown-ups only, of course).

Poke the tube through the hole and you have your chimney.

Cut your other box into the shape of the cab, wrap in coloured paper and stick onto the train with sticky tape

Using the craft knife cut out a square flap to make a carriage for storing cargo and passengers. make sure you leave enough room between the carriage and the cab for the driver to sit. (We discovered later that my daughter fits inside this carriage nicely!)

Now draw round a small late and cut out some circles from  coloured paper.

Stick these along the sodes of the train to make the wheels. Count tham as you go along and talk about what shape they are.

Adding spokes onto the wheels is a good opportunity to practice pencil skills.

Link up the wheels with a different coloured strip of paper . Talk about how this rectangle shape is different to the wheels.

All aboard! Ready to roll! Choo choo!

Add some props to extend the play possibilities – a drivers hat, some passengers, some parcels to deliver.

You can introduce some letters and numbers into the play by making signs for the stations you visit. How about making a train timetable and some tickets too?

We’ve been doing some train inspired art and maths play too – come back and see the next post to have a look.

Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog.

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Magic sauce recipe – get your kids eating vegetables

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This post is happily shared with wearethat family’s Works for me Wednesday.

I have lots of children around my kitchen table during the week and boy are some of them fussy eaters. It can be really difficult to find a healthy meal they will all enjoy as there’s no way I’m cooking more than one meal a night (this ain’t no restaurant!). This is my recipe which they will ALL eat – it’s easy to make, it freezes really well and it squeezes in seven types of vegetables without them even knowing. It definitely works for me.

You’ll need:

1. a onion
2. a clove of garlic
3. a stick of celery
4. a red pepper
5. a carrot
6. half a small fennel bulb
7. a tin of chopped tomatoes
8. a little olive oil
9. a teaspoon of sugar (optional)

Optional extras are herbs such as basil and oregano (but my kids will object to any tell-tale green bits) and a slug of balsamic vinegar.

To make it, chop up ingredients 1 to 6 and fry in a little olive oil. Add the tomatoes (and the sugar, if you’re using it) and leave to cook for 20 minutes (or until all the veg is softened). Now you need to whizz this with a blender and all those little bits of vegetable magically disappear to leave a delicious tomato sauce which you can eat as soup, as a pasta sauce or as a pizza topping. That’s it – seven veggies inside your child with no fussing!

I’m always looking out for recipes like this that are easy to make and child-friendly, so if you have any to recommend I’d love you to post a comment.

Teach children about time – make a family calendar

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My 3 year old is very interested in time at the moment – what day it is, what was it yesterday and is Father Christmas coming again tonight? Young children live so much in the present that the past and the future can be difficult concepts for them to grasp. When my older daughter was 3 we made our own calendar which worked well in introducing the seasons and months to her, so today I’ve made a similar calendar with my youngest. The original calendar was linear with the months going left to right across the top – which was easier to make but I wanted to emphasize the circular nature of the seasons so this time we’ve made a round version. It’s simple in design but gives lots of opportunity for questions and learning.

You’ll need: a big piece of paper (you could always stick 4 A4 pieces together), a felt pen,  a ruler, a saucer or similar to draw around,  crayons in blue, green, yellow and orange, scissors, a glue stick, photos and drawings to represent family birthdays and events

Start with your big piece of paper. We used white but you can be as colourful as you  like.

Fold it in half

And fold it in half again

Now fold this into thirds as the pictures show

Cut throught the folded paper as the picture below shows

Open out your paper to reveal 12 segments – one for each month of the year

Count them out with your child

Using a ruler and felt tip draw lines along each fold. (If you wanted to you could iron the paper with a very cool iron to flatten out the creases – but we’re not perfectionists here!)

Now think about the seasons. Does your child know what they’re called? Do they know which order they go in? Which season is it now?

Using a saucer draw a circle on a piece of paper and cut it out. Divide into quarters using the ruler and felt pen


Write the name of a season in each section and colour them in. We used cold blue for winter, leafy green for spring, yellow sunshine for summer and rusty orange for autumn. Stick this in the centre of your calendar.

Talk about what happens in each season. When might you build a snowman? When do all the flowers start to grow? We added some pictures to symbolise each season.

Write the names of the months around the edge of the calendar, aligned with your season circle. Does your child recognise any of the letters? Do they know when their birthday is? Now you can personalise your calendar with the events that are important to your family. Stick on photos of people in their birthday month. You could add a heart for Valentine’s day, a pumpkin for Hallowe’en and Santa for Christmas. My daughter loved this bit – she’s a master with a glue stick!

When you’ve finished you can play a game, taking turns to ask questions. Who’s got a birthday in the summer? Whose birthday comes straight after Christmas? Then, stick it up and admire! You can keep refering to it everytime you celebrate one of the events on it, and everytime you child asks ‘Is it my birthday soon?’

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