A roll of wallpaper – either a leftover from decorating at home, or bought cheaply from the DIY store roll-ends bin, provides a great canvass for your child’s artwork. The scale of the wallpaper roll lends itself very well to drawing a landscape, such as a beach picture. Or create a street which you can drive toy cars a long. Another fun idea is to have your child lie down on the wall paper and then draw round them to get a child-size outline. You can then colour them in – copying what they are actually wearing or making up a fantstic imaginary outfit.
Chalk Bull’s Eye Target
A quick and simple way to enhance a plain brick wall in your garden is to create a chalk target to throw balls at. Your child can have fun trying to hit the bull’s eye and develop their hand / eye co-ordination. Playing against someone else encourages turn-taking, and they can learn numbers and simple adding up if they keep score. And of course, the target is easy to remove when the game is finished.
Autumn Tree Collage
The falling autumn leaves provide a wonderful sensory material for children to explore. You can’t beat jumping through a pile of dry leaves! You can also gather some leaves and use them to make collage trees, giving young children a fun opportunity to work with sticky tape and glue.
Welcome to NurtureStore
Meet your teaching fairy godmother!
NurtureStore helps you put the magic back into teaching.
Thousands of educational resources for you to use
NurtureStore has been sharing creative, educational resources for over ten years. Use our archive of activities and lesson plans to add some magic back into your teaching:
forest school and garden classroom resources
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Head to the NurtureStore shop where you will find our range of books, ebooks, lesson plan kits, and all-planned-and-prepped-for-your teaching curricula.
Meet Cathy
My name is Cathy James and I’m the creator of the NurtureStore website. I live in the UK with my two children and I am very happy to welcome you here and to share with you NurtureStore’s child-centred, play-based, arts-focused way of living and learning.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree and have over twenty years experience working in education. This includes a wide variety of settings and age groups: from babies, toddlers and preschoolers; through the school ages, in school and through home education; to adult learners (designing and delivering training programs for the UK Civil Service). The unique insights gained from this diverse educational experience help me understand the challenges YOU face in your setting and mean the resources I make for NurtureStore work well, wherever you are.
NurtureStore is about sharing ideas that are ‘do-able’, not things that are complicated, unrealistic or time-consuming. So, expect ideas that are simple, effective, and that you can actually, really do with your children, with great results.
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Contact
For general queries, you can contact us at: support@nurturestore.co.uk
Toddler play activities
Our toddler activities focus on hands-on, creative play. We very slowly and gently begin to introduce imaginary play, counting and mark-making, but all with a focus on exploring and having fun.
Our Zero to Two ebook is perfect for toddlers. It’s packed full of fun sensory play ideas and includes a free set of puppets and some lovely stroller cards you can personalise for your own family. Take a look at it here.
More toddler play activities
Here are our top ten toddler play activities.
100 language and literacy activities – take a look at the mark making, story telling and puppet sections
Discovery baskets for toddlers
100 hands-on math games – take a look at the counting and ordering numbers, and shapes sections
Baby play activities
Our baby play activities focus on stimulating, sensory play using simple materials that are safe for your baby to explore.
Our Zero to Two ebook is perfect for babies. It’s packed full of fun sensory play ideas and includes a free set of puppets and some lovely stroller cards you can personalise for your own family. Take a look at it here.
More baby play activities
Here are our top ten baby play activities.
How to make sensory discovery bottles