We’re mid-way through our special series on activities for toddlers. If you’ve been following along with us you’ll have already seen our ideas for sensory play, arts and craft and math games. Today we’re all about imaginary play, with ideas for setting up a shop, going camping in your playroom, and hosting a posh tea party. We also have ideas for children who love dinosaurs, pirates and dens.
Valerie over at the Frugal Family Fun Blog has such great ideas and we love the crafts she does with her two girls. When we saw her post about a printable bird house play set we thought they were so cute we’d have to try and make some. The houses can be made from card, or even a recycled cereal box, and Valerie has given us all a template to use which means they are so easy to make.
B, who’s seven, managed to do all the stages by herself: tracing round the template, cutting, folding and sticking and she is really pleased with her birdhouse. She decided to leave the roof un-stuck so she could put some furniture inside and use it as a play house. The house was a little too tricky for L, who is four, to make by herself but she got involved drawing a pattern which we used to make the roof, and she’s really enjoying all the small world play now the houses are finished. We made some extra houses to hang in the window as decorations too and for these we stuck the roofs down. I think the co-ordinating roofs and perches make this a very stylish neighbourhood! We used recycled wrapping paper to make them but they’d be the perfect way to re-use your children’s art work too.
Of course then we decided we needed someone to come and live in our bird street so we made a little flock of birds. If you’d like to make some the same as ours you can use this Printable bird template, which works out a great size to match with Valerie’s bird house. All you need to do is draw round the bird template on card, adding a slit where you can insert the wings. The wings are made from a piece of paper folded into a concertina and pushed through the slot in the bird’s body. You can make a hole above the wings if you want to hang them up on a cotton thread, or add a base so they can stand up if you’d like to play with them. You’ll find both options available on the template.
We used the same paper for the birds wings as we did the roofs of the houses, so it turned out to be a good matching game too, making sure all the birds got back to their own house. A big thank you to Valerie for the idea and the how-to bird house template. If you don’t already know the Frugal Family Fun Blog do pop by for a visit as I know you will love her ideas.
happily shared with Kids Get Crafty, Upcycled Awesome and Works for me Wednesday and Preschool Corner and Craft Schooling Sunday and No Time For Flashcards and Making Mondays Marvellous and and Mad Skills and Mad Skills Monday and Made by You Monday and Homemaker Monday and Sumo’s Sweet Stuff and Today’s Creative Blog and ABC and 123 and Something for the Weekend
We’re getting ready for the Carnival of Junk Play on Friday 3rd December!
What do you think of our riding school? We have stables, jumps, a daisy filled paddock and some prize winning rosettes – and all made for free using re-cycled materials from our beloved making box. B has been off school ill this week and we needed a good ‘sitting down’ activity to keep us busy and cheer us up – and this is what we made. It was a totally spontaneous project, put together after a rummage through the junk box to see what materials we could find.
The base is made from a big piece of cardboard from a packing box, which happened to have a circular shape marked out in the centre which seemed to say ‘paddock’! The jump is made from two Smarties tubes, turned inside out, with a wooden skewer, snapped in half and poked through the tubes to make the cross bars.
The stables are made from tissue boxes, and the one on the end which has proper stable doors is made from a teabag box. We covered them in sugar paper, held in place with sticky tape – as you know we can’t wait for glue to dry when we want to get playing. The prize winning rosettes are made from little gift bows salvaged from some presents, with a ribbon made from sugar paper.
We have a bucket with a pipe-cleaner handle, wool for straw and a biscuit tray cut up and stuck inside each stable to make a feeding trough (there’s probably a proper horsey word for that isn’t there?) The bunting is made from wool, old wrapping paper and held up on wooden skewers. And the paddock was painted with poster paint, sprinkled with a little glitter while it was still wet, and with some daisies (cut from a remnant of edging from my sewing basket) glued on.
Not all our junk models are this grand – L’s boat was very simple, but they both sum up what I love best about junk modelling:
it’s recycled, it costs nothing, it’s creative and it’s makes a toy with lots more play value to it.
Our Happy Handmade resource is bursting with colourful and imaginative crafts and DIY toys that are designed to add even more colour and creativity to your home. With easy-to-follow tutorials and free patterns and printables, you can read, make, and start playing today! See more of Happy Handmade here.
Following on from the success of our Dinosaur Garden, this weekend we’ve been working on a Fairy Garden. The film below shows how we made it – now we’re eagerly waiting for the seeds to start growing so the flower fairies can really feel at home.
The music on the film is kindly provided by Anne van Schothorst and is from a piece called A Bird Came Flying.
As the weather is getting warmer and we’re starting to spend more time outside I thought I’d show you one way my girls love to play in our garden: in our Dinosaur Land. Big recently did a ‘show and tell’ at school about gardening and the Dinosaur Land proved to be so popular an idea with her classmates, that several of them have gone home and made their own – so it comes highly recommended.
This kind of ‘small world’ play is fantastic for young children: they get to be the boss of the world, create characters, role play situations, use their language skills, be imaginative….. I love watching children engaged in this kind of play as it really gives you an insight into where they’re at, what’s concerning them, what they’re exploring at this present time. Big’s characters are often having battles at the moment, as she works through ideas of ‘being fair’ and negotiations. Little’s play in nearly always focused on a family group and playing out familiar routines – her dinosaurs get tucked up in bed and read a bedtime story.
As always, this idea is easy to make and you’re likely to have most, if not all, of the things you need around your home.
Start by finding a big plastic storage box and making some drainage holes in the bottom. Then let your children fill it up with soil – good, messy fun. Add a few rocks – we have one big one, which the dinosaurs like to stand on to survey their territory, and some smaller one to sit on. How about some plants for the dinos to eat and hide in? Have you got one to spare somewhere in one of your borders? The grassy one we used works really well – low maintenance, pretty robust and won’t get too overgrown. You can add any other props which catch your children’s eye: glass pebbles, fir cones, sticks, water too if you’d like a swamp area.
Then it’s over to the kids to get playing.
If your children are enjoying the garden, have a look at our Sunflower Club for more outside play ideas.