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After ohhing and ahhing and wishing and dreaming every time we read a post from an American blogger, this week we discovered you can get hold of water beads in the UK. An order was placed, the water beads arrived and we were ready to play!
Water beads are a super sensory material and versatile in lots of play but as they were a brand new material to the children (and me) our first playtime was all about exploring and discovering: time for some water bead science.
Ice play provides a rich sensory experience for children to explore. There are so many wonderful creative ways to enjoy ice play, including science, art and maths activities. Here are some of our favourite ice play ideas, from some of our favourite bloggers. Click through on each of the links to discover some fantastic ice play ideas you can enjoy with your children this winter. [Read more…]
If you have got your copy of our free Let’s Play Dough ebook you might like to use one of the recipes to try this experiment we found via Brick by Brick – who knew playdough could conduct electricity?!
On our summer wish list: make a water wall using the ideas collected over on let the children play.
These kid created comics from kinderpendent are a fun way to keep kids writing all summer long.
And how much mess can you tolerate? Join artist Pia Walker and me as we chat about encouraging creativity in children.
Have a great weekend!
We’re enjoying the warm weather this week and the opportunity to play outside in the sunshine. As well as playing in their rock pool, the children have been cooking up sand pies and pebble cakes in their play kitchen. Do you have an outdoor cooking area for your kids?
As you can see, ours was improvised by the girls from a deckchair and items borrowed from our indoor home corner – a great reminder that you can encourage lots of creative play outdoors just by relocating resources from one area to another. Do you like the fire they made to heat their oven? Add in few pots and pans and they were ready to get cooking.
Play kitchens give children the opportunity to take on different roles, trying out the skills they see the adults in the family using. There’s lots of measuring and counting to be done and plenty to chat about as they prepare their meals. Providing sand, water or mud offers sensory play and science exploring, as the children combine wet and dry materials and observe how the textures change. Physical skills develop as they try out utensils and spoon and pour their ingredients. But even better than all of this, outdoor play kitchens are fun!
For more inspiring outdoor play kitchen ideas have a look at Worms Eye-View and let the children play. The Frugal Family Fun Blog has a diy travel kitchen, which you could take with you wherever you play – I’d like one made in a wipe-able oilcloth fabric which we could take with us to the beach. And Childhood 101 has a tutorial for transforming a cardboard box into a stove.
Do your children enjoy pretend cooking?
After a trip to the beach we returned with a bucket full of treasures and decided to make a rock pool in the garden for lots more beach play at home. You can see in the pictures some of the things we collected, and a few we already had at home: pebbles and shells, sand and seaweed and two mermaid’s purses (much to B’s delight).
The girls gave the treasures a clean and then settled them into a new home in a tub of water. They made some fish from scrunched up tinfoil and then were ready to play. Adding in some tea-strainer fishing nets was perfect.
Books about seasides and mermaids
My girls love stories about the sea. Here are two favourites which we’re reading tonight – the perfect bedtime stories after a trip to the beach.
Shirley Hughes books are favourites in our house and The Big Alfie Out of Doors Storybook is L’s favourite of them all. It’s a collection of short stories and poems about outdoor play and adventures. One tells the story of Bonting, Alfie’s treasured pebble who is lost (and later happily found) on a family outing to the beach. The illustrations capture the essence of a UK beach.
Can You Catch a Mermaid by Jane Ray is a wonderful story set by the sea. It’s a moving tale of a lonely little girl and a very hard decision she has to make. It’s all about friendship and features Jane Ray’s beautiful illustrations. B has a real love of mermaids so this is her top pick, and I like it because it can be read on different levels: it has a happy ending and also leaves you thinking about unanswered questions long after you’ve finished reading.
happily shared with gardening with kids and made by little hands and inspire me Monday and tot school and science Sunday and link and learn and craft schooling Sundayand preschool corner and the resource centre and it’s playtime and upcycled awesome and works for me Wednesday and tot tuesday and we play and abc and 123
There are opportunities for scientific learning everywhere. When your children are tired and it’s cold and dark outside, you may think hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows are just for comfort – but no! Science in action! Let them discover a little about heat and solids. Pop a marshmallow onto a skewer, light a candle and get experimenting. How does a match light? What’s happening to the wax in the candle? Talk about the best place to hold the marshmallow and discover that heat rises. What’s happening to the surface of the marshmallow as it toasts? What happens to the inside of the marshmallow? Children are natural scientists, so take some time to observe and chat and see what discussions come up. Just don’t eat too many marshmallows.
happily shared with We Play and ABCand123 and Science Sunday