kids activities Archives - Page 2 of 7

Make a ‘Let it Snow’ winter town

27/12/2016 by Cathy James 12 Comments

This little ‘Let It Snow’ winter town is such a delight to make, and it’s great for winter imaginary play.

Play dough angels

Autumn art from The Garden Classroom

01/10/2016 by Cathy James 27 Comments

We’ve been combining two activities from my book The Garden Classroom this week to create some beautiful autumn art. Taking the idea of leaf art and adding it to my Sticky Picture frames, here’s what we made.

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30+ pirate activities: games, crafts, food & costumes

19/09/2016 by Cathy James 9 Comments

Shiver me timbers, have I got some fabulous pirate activities for you! With ideas from Nurturestore and a crew of kid bloggers from around the seven seas, here are over thirty five ideas you can use with your little pirates. There’s everything for some pirate-theme play and learning – pretend play, food, dressing up, story telling, sensory tubs, writing, action games and more. Click each link to to find out more and enjoy some fun pirate activities with your kids.

35+ pirate activities: games, crafts, food and costumes [Read more…]

How to spell: top 10 tricks

03/09/2016 by Cathy James 10 Comments

>>>> Download our ABCs and 123s guide here

When I think back to the ways I learnt how to spell as a child, there was no fun or creative play involved. We got list of ten words every week, we copied them, we copied them, we copied them again, and then we had a test on a Friday to see how well we could remember them. We also had to put our hands up to show the whole class our scores, so if you hadn’t remembered that many it was pretty miserable.

But learning how to spell doesn’t have to be like that. Here are ten ways we learn spellings in our house – with lots of creativity and fun and jumping around involved.

There are lots of different ways that children learn and these spelling activities cover a range of preferred learning styles: visual/spacial, auditory, kinesthetic… If your child has a very strong learning preference trying out these ideas might help you discover a way that’s just right for them (it’s helped enormously in our house). In any case, all children can benefit from learning through a variety of ways, using all their senses, mixing things up a little so it doesn’t get boring, and maybe even enjoying learning how to spell.

The activities may take a few minutes longer to set up then just grabbing a pencil and paper but we’ve found they are a whole lot more fun – and effective – than just copying out the words.

How to spell: top 10 tricks [Read more…]

45+ fall sensory play activities

03/09/2016 by Cathy James 14 Comments

Here’s a fantastic collection of fall sensory play activities for children, featuring autumn play dough recipes, ideas for fall sensory tubs, and more!