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?

Ready for Ten Skillscape

This week’s Go Play! Showcase features the wonderful, creative ideas from Jude of Artful Adventures

Tell us about yourself

I am an artist and mum to two small boys. As long as I can remember, I have always loved drawing and making things. I studied Fine Art at university and have spent most of my career since then working in museums, galleries and historic houses, before giving it all up to look after my family. I am now trying to re-establish my artistic roots, and grow my business Artful Kids, which aims to create unique personalised wall-art by presenting children’s own artwork at it’s very best. My blog, Artful Adventures, started off life originally as a business blog, but has since developed something of an independent life of it’s own. It is dedicated to children’s art and includes creative projects, features, reviews and anything else which I think my readers might be interested in.

What’s your play philosophy?

When it comes to creative play especially, (though I suppose most play might be described as being creative) I believe that you should never impose or interfere too much. Even though I love creative activities, if my 2 boys don’t want to take part I don’t push them to do so, though I do make sure I provide them with plenty of opportunities.

I believe that children should be encouraged to have their own ideas, to explore and experiment. Children should be allowed to take the lead as far as possible – adults are there to help, encourage and facilitate. In art especially there is no right or wrong, and everyone needs to find their own approach. It can be very tempting sometimes to interfere if a child is not doing something quite as you planned it, but it is an impulse that I think it’s important to resist. I also think it’s important not to be too afraid of mess. Messy play is good – just try and control it as much as possible for your own sanity.

Inspire us!

Box Lid Art

This is a simple way of displaying children’s artwork, cheaply and effectively – it also means you can recycle some old boxes.

Valuing and Using Kids’ Artwork

Easy ways of re-using some of the piles of children’s artwork that you collect if, like me, you find it difficult to throw away!

This edition of the Go Play! Showcase features the irresistable ideas Sherry and Donna use in their pre-school on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. They’re passionate about play based learning and their blog is full of inspiration.

Tell us about yourself

We have been friends for over 20 years and have worked together for the last 12. We teach 4 and 5 year olds at a beautiful preschool in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. In our “spare” time we also run our blog irresistible ideas for play based learning. Here we present our daily program, warts and all!

What’s your play philosophy?

Our teaching is based on the philosophy that children learn best through play. We provide open ended, play based activities – active learning which is developmentally correct for every child. We believe in giving our children long uninterrupted periods of time where they can explore their environments at their own pace.

Inspire us!

This is hard! Nearly every day we think “Wow!” After lots of debate we have decided on these three, but we could have chosen many more.

making our own paint magic – making our own paint is so easy!

pendulum play – lots of fun discovering how hard the pendulum needs to travel and  in which direction to knock over a pile of boxes

a pinball marble maze – the children experimented with large group mazes, then went on to make their own

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I love Sherry and Donna’s ideas and hope you pop over to Irresistable Ideas for Play Based Learning to see some more. Even if you’re a parent or childminder working from home you’ll find it very easy to adapt their preschool ideas to your setting. I’m always reading and thinking ‘wow! I want to try that!’.

Donna and Sherry’s blog has just been nominated in the Edublog awards in the Best Group Blog category so if you’re inspired by their ideas you might like to vote for them.

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