Pre-school Play

Sensory Playdough - Week 2

2013-06-10T20:47:00.000+01:00

So following on from our last playdough exploration, I added these resources for the children. This time they had cinnamon and lemon playdough (as before), cinnamon sticks, cardomom seeds, lemon grass, chives, aniseed stars and lemon peel.

I wanted to keep with the sensory feel as the children had enjoyed this aspect last time, but I also wanted to incorporate their interest in cutting.

There was lots and lots of cutting going on last time!

I struggled to think of something sensory that the children would be able to cut and in the end settled on chives.

The children started off with the knives, cutting the dough into smaller pieces.

I rolled the playdough into long sausages to make this a bit easier for the children.

Gradually they began to explore the new resources, the orange peel proved popular.

This was the first time I had dried orange peel and it was a bit of an experiment! I tried cutting it into star shapes, but it shrunk more than I was expecting and was also quite time consuming, so the remainder I cut into strips.

This creation was 'a lorry' :-)

However, a few difficulties were encounted when it came to adding the wheels!

It seemed important that they were placed underneath the playdough lorry, however picking up a playdough lorry to position them is not easy!

Another playdough / orange peel creation.

Trying hard to get the chives to stand up in the playdough. These proved a challenge as with most objects the children add to the playdough, it doesn't matter where you hold them when positioning, but with chives, the children needed to hold them near the base.

The children also discovered that chives could be pulled apart and this occupied little E for quite a while!

R discovered that the aniseed could be used to make star prints in the dough.

Of course the usual interests, such as filling and emptying, were explored.

Our table got pretty messy during exploration. After the children had finshed I tided up the 'loose' parts but left some of their creations to inspire the next round of explorations.

A Week of Water Play

2013-06-09T21:11:00.000+01:00

We've had some fantastic weather in England this week. After weeks of cold weather this meant only one thing, water play!

I put aside my planning and set this up for the children instead. We needed to make the most of the good weather, you never know how long it will last in England!

I didn't need to worry about the planning I had put aside though, the children covered lots of different areas of learning through their play - all without any planning :-)

They experimented with filling and emptying an assortment of containers, sometimes simultaneously!

They posted objects through the tube, watching and expecting them to re-appear and then problem solving on occasions when they became stuck!

They experimented with rolling an assortment of objects down the guttering....

...which at one point became a slide for the playmobil people.

The hose pipe proved to be so popular that we had the opportunity to practise our turn-taking skills :-) Some of us did find this quite a challenge!

However, to keep the peace we managed to find a compromise and the person with the hose pipe, filled up containers for the others.

Swapping over!

The children also practised their hand eye coordination, scooping the ping pong balls with the nets, (unfortunately this was the best photo I had of this!)

And then emptying them back out.

Coordinating the different parts of their body and strengthening muscles as they tried to lift the cylinder and turn it over to empty the water out.

success!

They practised counting, rolling one,

then two,

three,

and four balls down the slope!

They practised their pincer grip, trying to get the butterfly confetti out of the water.

Did a bit of experimenting with floating and sinking after noticing that the ping pong balls didn't sink like the butterflies.

They incorporated the small world figures into their play, making boats for the playmobil people with the bilibos.

Playmobil figure making a call on the mobile!

More hand-eye coordination practise.

Getting better!

Some role-play, bathing the dolls.

Exploring the sponges, these proved to be fascinating.

Exploring the water with their whole body.

More role-play, this time we added our tea set to play.

Working out how things open and shut....

...how parts fit back together...

....practising pouring...

...which can be quite tricky!

Of course when the older children came home from school, play got a whole lot wetter!

Fingers crossed for some more great weather next week!

Playdough and Spices

2013-05-07T21:23:00.001+01:00

I'm always on the look out for something new and different to try with the little ones and got very excited when I found an idea here for adding spices to playdough. Not mixed in with the dough, but separate. I already had bay leaves and cinnamon sticks, but after a quick trip to Tesco added lemon grass and cardamoms to the collection.

I scented playdough with lemon and cinnamon and added rolling pins and cookie cutters to play.

I encouraged the children to smell the spices as they explored, as you can see some were not overly keen on this!

Ah that's better!

The children selected from the resources and added them to their dough.

K focused on laying everything flat on the dough.

He then discovered this made it a bit tricky to use the cookie cutter, so removed the pieces one by one.

R, on the other hand, positioned the spices vertically.

Pausing to smell the bay leaves :-)

K observed an imitated R's play.....

...and then rolled them all flat!

Little E, well she was just happy to stack the pots!

As this was an adult-directed activity, I introduced some number practise into the activity. The little ones however, were far more interested in their own explorations!

Using the lemon grass sticks to stir the pot...

...and then to move the rolling pin!

E progressed to filling the pots!

R came up with some fantastic creations...

Love it!

And here's one of K's :-)

The original post at A Little Pink A Little Blue, used dried orange peel in their play. I've had a quick look on-line and this looks pretty easy to do, so hopefully we'll also have some to add to play next week :-)

Hammering!

2013-05-06T20:23:00.000+01:00

I've noticed an interest in hammering recently. Our wooden pegs have been getting something of a battering, even for a hammering toy!

I managed to pick up a large piece of packing foam at the re-cycling centre and added some hammers and golf tees.

I also added some extra pieces of foam and foam balls for balancing.

First to explore was my car-mad little man! I showed him how to hammer the golf tees, creating a slalom for his cars.

These two joined in and set to work hammering with real hammers.

Even the really little ones, after watching the older children, wanted to have a go.

R really enjoyed this activity. She sat hammering every single one of these golf tees into this piece of foam, showing great hand / eye coordination.

Carefully positioning and holding the golf tees to avoid hitting her fingers!

Tools to remove the golf tees were also requested!

Balancing the tees....

...and the balls.

Creating a bridge.....

....helicopter....

All engrossed in their own exploration.

K added our pot of elastic bands to the table...

...stretching them over the tees.

J on the left, used some of the smaller pieces to create...

...a remote controlled gizmo (her words!)

Just needs a small foot movement to get it to move!

Adding buttons to her remote control!

So much hard work!

So focused!

Slides, a swimming pool and changing rooms :-)

Finally adding the small world figures to play.

Loose Part Storage : Outdoor Book Area

2013-04-27T21:07:00.000+01:00

This is just a quick post to share some of the changes to our outdoor area.

Now that summer seems to finally be on its way, I can start to make some of the changes I have been planning:-)

I've wanted to increase our supply of loose parts, as well as making them more accessible to the children. I've been on the look-out for something suitable for a while, then by chance came across these. They are actually hanging baskets for plants, but slightly smaller than normal, making them just perfect for our loose parts. At the moment we have them filled with sticks, pebbles, fir cones, tree blocks, white pebbles and some of our small world insects and fairies.

I debated for a while whereabouts to place them in the garden as I didn't want to restrict their use to one specific area. I don't have a huge amount of space and in the end settled for placing them by our small world area. I've attached the baskets loosely with cable ties so they can be un-hooked and moved to different parts of the garden if needed.

I've also added the frame from our old swing seat to the small world area - it seemed to good to take up the tip!

We've planted bean seeds and hopefully these will cover the frame by the summer, creating a cosy place to play and explore.

I was also keen to add an outdoor book area. I've been debating since last year how to do this. It had to be something that was weatherproof so I didn't have to drag the books in and out at the end of each day. Initially I thought of a tent, but was worried about the little ones tripping as they came in and out and also thought it might get a bit hot in the summer. Then I found these, sun tents meant for the beach. These are easy to get in and out of and the front flap zips up, so the books can be stored safely inside :-) We just need a few more cushions to make it really comfy and cosy!

Playdough, flowers and seeds.....

2013-04-26T21:31:00.000+01:00

We've been busy today exploring playdough, flowers and seeds. This is an activity I planned as part of the seed planting and growing we will be doing over the next few months. I say planned, but my planning only amounted to supplying an interesting selection of resources related to seeds and growing and allowing the children to take explore them as they wished. I knew the areas of learning applicable to each child's stage of development that I hoped to cover within the activity, but whether these were actually covered, depended on the direction the children chose to take the activity in.

As soon as the table was set up ready, they got straight to work!

Initially they focused their attention on adding the artificial flowers to their playdough.

Carefully adding one flower at at time and pushing it into the dough.

Sometimes using the mini flower pots.

K decided to use the flower pots in a different way, poking the flower stems through the holes in the underside of the pots!

R, observing K's exploration, decided this was a pretty good idea and joined in!

These two then progressed to exploring the dough and seeds.

Rolling the dough...

...and pushing the seeds deep into it.

E was also interested in combining the seeds and dough.

Initially, she was content to explore the feel of the seeds...

....scooping handfuls and observing as she let the seeds fall through her fingers.

She also experimented with pushing the pots into the dough...

...filling the pots with seeds...

...and repeatedly stacking and un-stacking the pots.

In the meantime, R and K, had discovered that they could make the petals move by blowing on them. (They have been really interested in the fans lately)

K pushed his flower into the dough and both K and R noticed that it slowly fell over.

They then found that if they blew on the flower it fell over quicker!

During the activity, there were also opportunities to discuss colour and compare sizes.

(E, to the left, has tired on the activity and decided to explore the magnifying glasses instead!)

The children also experimented with making marks in the dough with the flower stems....

... a bit more evident in this picture!

They also experimented with squashing and squeezing the dough....

and creating prints.

During play our table mostly looked like this!

When the children had lost interest, I tidied the table, but left some of their explorations.

Tree Cookie Threading

2013-04-22T20:43:00.001+01:00

I've found another use for our tree cookies :-)

As well as small world play and construction, I thought we could also use them for threading and lacing. I had to wait until hubbie went out though, so I could use his drill!

I used some of our tree blocks...

...and also our cookies.

I added leather shoe laces for threading.

K started off with the cookies...

...but the blocks were definitely his favourite this time.

The blocks proved to be just the right size for little hands.

Trying different ways of threading

Think I might need to find a way to make this a bit more challenging for him!

He even managed the tiny blocks without difficulty!

These were really easy to make and free, apart from the laces which were only £2 :-)

Brown Bear Brown Bear Story Sticks.

2013-04-21T09:17:00.000+01:00

I finally got round to finishing our Brown Bear story sticks. I'd seen the idea for story sticks a while ago on the internet here and they've been half-finished on the table for months!

Story sticks are used as an accompaniment to stories, a way of involving the children and providing an opportunity to extend their learning and enjoyment of the story. I know myself the children like to play an active role when we read books, joining in with repetitive parts and pointing out particular objects on the page. It can get a bit hectic at times, when everyone is keen to participate! With story sticks, each child has their own stick and adds counters to it as the story is read.

I chose Brown Bear Brown Bear by Eric Carle because as well as being one of the children's favourites, the different animal images made the story easily adaptable to story sticks.

I used a long wooden stick from a local DIY store. I found it in the section with the decorative wood for banisters and dado rails, then cut it up when I got home. I then attached adhesive velcro to each piece.

I then made templates for the images from the story. The pdf is available here if anyone wants to use it. I laminated the images, but was still a bit worried little fingers would be tempted to bend them, so stuck them on to plastic counters. I found these on Ebay (50 for about £2).

I then attached velcro to the back of each counter and we were ready to play!

I put all the counters in the middle of the table and as we read the story, the children looked for the correct counter and added it to their stick.

I realised at our first attempt at play, that I had forgotten the monkey!!

Carefully adding the counters to his stick!

Some of us found an alternative use for our sticks, namely swatting the counters to send them flying across the table!

Some of us were so keen, that we helped everyone else to find the correct counter!

Helping to tidy away once we had finished.

This proved to be popular too, so we had to divide up the jobs, one person removing the counters from the sticks and the other placing them back in the bag!

I've just used a plastic zip wallet to store our sticks and counters.

Painting ON the table :-)

2013-04-03T14:56:00.002+01:00

Last week when we were painting our giant Easter eggs, I noticed a bit of painting on the table going on, so decided to have this for our activity this week :-)

I covered the table in a shower curtain and provided 3 pots of paint.

Both E and R were keen to explore.

K on the other hand is reluctant to do anything that doesn't involve a car. I wanted him to join in the activity, but I didn't want to take him away from his play on the floor with cars that he was engaged in. So I decided rather than interrupting his play, I'd just add some cars to the table and see if he noticed and was interested enough to join in :-)

As I suspected, cars make an activity a whole lot more appealing!

K experimented with the marks he could make by running the cars backwards and forwards through the paint.

R adopted a slightly different approach, using the car like a brush to make large swooshing marks.

Despite his reluctance to join in with the activity when it was just brush painting, K did use the brush in his explorations to add more paint to the table to run his cars through!

Explorations fully under way!

K played in a similar way with the cars as he had done on the floor, but the additional paint enhanced his play, apparently becoming the cause of many crashes!

R continue her exploration with the paint, enjoying both mixing the paints and adding them to the table, sometimes creating new colours along the way.

I showed K how he could drag his finger through the paint to make a road for his cars.

Building dexterity in his wrist with all that twisting and turning to stay on the road.

R became really engaged with this activity, happily adding layer upon layer of paint to the shower curtain. There was no talk accompanying her play, but she was clearly engrossed in what she was doing.

She then decided to paint the cars.....

which, as well as being highly amusing :-) also took our activity in a whole new direction.

Not being one to miss out on anything to do with cars, K soon joined in!

Now why hadn't I thought of painting cars!!

Tip: Painting cars, great activity for getting reluctant boys involved in mark-making!

Only problem was we needed more cars to paint! I added some of the bigger lorries which would require more than one brushstroke to paint.

Purposefully painting each wheel in turn.

Then it was requested that the cars needed to be cleaned, which again changed the direction of the activity. I provided a small amount of water and cloths and the children set to work.

I did have to keep reminding them that they needed to squeeze out their cloths, but kept a towel to hand.

They seemed to enjoy cleaning as much as painting!

I showed them how they could also use the cloths to clean the table, an activity and clear up all in one :-))

Love how she holds the car up close to her face so she can make sure she gets all the paint off!

While the children were engaged with the cars and cloths, I started to clean up the rest of the table as they had clearly finished their paint exploration.

Inevitably the cars ended up in the water - still that would save me having to wash them after!

One of the messier activities we have done, but it kept the children engaged right until the end and even enabled me to clear up the parts they had finished with whilst they continued to play. The children dictated the pace of the activity and the direction it took, following their interests. I can honestly say even though, it was a very messy activity, it was one of the most relaxed we have done.

Easter tub exploration...the children's way!

2013-04-01T20:51:00.001+01:00

Last week, I added sticks and playdough to our Easter sensory tub.

I thought maybe we could make Easter nests.......the children however, had other plans!

This didn't mean though that they weren't learning.

At first they were fascinated with combining the rice and playdough. They pushed, prodded

and rolled. (strengthening muscles)

They filled the eggs with the playdough (learning about capacity)...

...and the playdough with rice (more capacity!)

They added feathers to their playdough & rice....

...and sticks (following their interests and building on their knowledge that different resources could be combined)

They then became fascinated with transferring the rice to the tray on the floor.

I put it there because the one year old had enjoyed dropping handfuls of rice on the floor the previous day!

After transferring with their hands, they then used the eggs to transfer (building on existing knowledge that eggs could be filled)

and then the brush (exploring and experimenting)

Of course a tray on the floor has to be stood in!

After their experimenting with moving the rice with their hands, they tried their feet!

So much exploration, but this was my favourite part of the activity.

K is just over 2. I watched as he carefully laid the sticks on top of the playdough.

He then focused on pushing the sticks into either side of the dough.

After he had added several sticks, he sat back and announced 'a spider!'

Now I don't think that he had planned on making a spider when he started out adding the sticks (could be wrong though!), but what was brilliant for me was that he could see the similarities between what he had created and a spider. He received no prompting to make this connection and there was nothing on the table to encourage this. It had come purely from his imagination :-)

Sticky Eggs

2013-03-27T20:33:00.002Z

Another super easy activity for little ones that also strengthens hand and arms muscles :-)

I cut out a couple of egg templates and then added book covering film to make them sticky.

I wanted the children to tear the tissue paper themselves, but I didn't want the activity to be too difficult with them having to work with large sheets of paper, so decided to cut it into strips ready for tearing.

All ready!

Working hard to tear. The children did need a bit of help at first because the tissue paper needed to be kept quite flat for them to be able to tear it.

Sticking :-)

Exploring the 'sticky' feel

This activity has been up all week so the children come and go from it.

This little man was highly amused that his pieces of tissue paper stuck!

Still adding pieces!

Just about finished.

Once the children had finished I added another sheet of book covering film to the back so the eggs wouldn't stick to everything on the way home :-)

Easter Chicks

2013-03-27T20:00:00.001Z

Here are our cute opening chick eggs the children have been working on this week.

I love these as the children get to develop their small motor skills and strengthen hand muscles every time they squeeze the peg to open the egg.

Oh and it is a really simple activity to do:-)

The children started off decorating their templates with pens.

We then added glue and some chicks, bunnies and lambs. I coloured the glues so the children would be able to see where they were applying it. After I added the paint and glue to the pot (without the children knowing there was paint under the glue) I encouraged the children to stir the glue to reveal the colour!

They then added glue and selected the decorations they wanted to use.

Giving the glue an extra stir!

Some of us chose to do this in a slightly different way!

Once their decorations had dried, I cut the egg into two pieces in a zig zag shape (tip - cut the last bit in a horizontal line as it make attaching the peg easier!)

Older children could cut the egg themselves.

I then hot glued the peg onto the back.....

...and then the chicks.

All ready for play :-)

Process Art Easter Eggs

2013-03-24T21:53:00.002Z

I wanted to do an activity with the children, but I wanted to ensure the focus was on the process rather than the end product.

The learning intentions I had in mind for the activity were:

To explore the texture of the paint
To experiment with marks

As this activity had a 'process' focus I didn't have too many learning intentions in mind as I wanted to ensure the activity remained under the control of the children and they had they opportunity to explore as they wished.

I decided to use paint thickened with flour as this had a lovely texture to explore with hands and also would create a textured surface to the children's finished pieces. I cut egg templates from thick card to use as a base for their exploration. The shape wasn't really important, but it tied in with Easter and I ensured I cut them large enough to allow the children to fully explore the paint.

We started off with 2 colours of paint which the children added to their template as they wished.

I used only 2 colours as I wanted the focus to remain on exploring the paint, rather than on having a turn with the colour that someone else had!

Although E had joined us in painting activities before, this was the first time she really seemed to enjoy it and stayed at the table for over 15 minutes.

The paint was quite thick so the children had to really work at spreading it around their card.

Although I had planned for exploration with hands, the children weren't overly keen on this!

There was some hand exploration, but the children didn't seem overly keen on the feel of the paint.

Typical, normally when we do a painting activity I can't get them to keep their hands out of the paint!

As the paints were quite thick, the children could add more than one colour to their card and the colours didn't mix completely.

Despite having a large egg template, painting the table cover proved to be too tempting to resist!

Our eggs after day 1.

I wanted to give the children lots of opportunities to explore the paint and develop their exploration, so they had the opportunity to return to the activity every day.

Day 2, that face still looks interested to me!

Different children today and there was a little more exploration with hands!

Smearing.....

...squeezing...

....dripping...

...patting.

Such concentration!

Watching.

Adding a second colour in circular actions.

The children continued to add to their eggs on the days they attended.

And here's how they looked at the end of the week.

Can't decide whether to leave them as they are, or to give the children glue and materials to add to them.

Easter Sensory Tub

2013-03-23T20:20:00.000Z

Our Easter Sensory Tub :-)

I use green rice for a 'grass' base and added different sized eggs, feathers, big and small chicks, small spoons and baskets.

The learning intentions behind the activity were:

To encourage the use of size related vocabulary
To strengthen hand and arm muscles / small motor skills (opening the eggs)
To provide opportunities for filling and emptying (mainly the 1 year old but I know the other children enjoy this too)
To explore the different textures and introduce appropriate vocabulary.
To count 1,2 and 3 objects

There were also opportunities for colour recognition and exploring capacity

Well it's been really popular all week!

As well as what I hope the children will get out of the activity, they also have the opportunity to explore their own interests.

K was fascinated with opening all the eggs to discover what was inside.

(I had pre-filled some of them with chicks and rice)

He sat and opened every single egg!

Now that is concentration.

Discovering rice....

...and then another egg. I managed to find 3 different sized egg that I could nest inside one another.

After K had taken them apart, he tried to fit them back together!

As predicted the children enjoyed filling the eggs with rice.

R was also fascinated by the feathers.

She found she could fit them in the small holes in the base of the eggs.

This took ALOT of concentration and perseverance!

R has also been very interested in the fans that I added to our investigation basket about a week ago.

She brought them to the table and incorporated them in her exploration.

First she held them fans so the blew against her face.....

and then she explored, discovering that she could use the fan to blow the feathers.

This fascinated her and she spent a long time watching the feathers blowing.

R also enjoyed discovering what was hidden in the eggs :-)

Trying to put them back together.

Exploring the feel - don't think she liked it!

Child-initiated tidying up :-)

Letters and Sounds: Sound Cylinders

2013-03-22T20:30:00.002Z

I finally got round to finishing our sound cylinders. I'd had half a set completed for a while, but I needed two of each cylinder so we could play a matching game.

These are really easy to make. I used identical recycled containers, filling two with the same object, adding sticky start to make them a bit more attractive! I filled our with things like stones, conkers, bells, water, rice etc and then hot glued the lids back on.

Initially the children explored each sound by shaking the cylinders

We tried to think about what might be making the sounds. The cylinder filled with water was the favourite.

We then tried to find the cylinders that matched.

Listening :-)

The children tried really hard trying to match the cylinders.

It proved a bit tricky at times though as some of the little ones were just keen to shake the cylinders as loud as they could!

We managed to find some matching pairs though and can explore again another day. :-)

Cars and Roads

2013-03-22T19:44:00.001Z

As ever cars are still very popular here :-)

We've been busy building lots of different roads.

We've been experimenting with making roads with the playdough.

Added bridges with the wooden blocks

Experimented with making tunnels.

Which we then expanded and added our wooden blocks.

We added a tunnel, roundabout and parking spaces.

However, we had a bit of a problem as we kept knocking the blocks with our arms!

But we used playdough to sort that. This made our roads much more stable!

Our road lasted all week with a few adjustments here and there :-)

Valentine Hearts

2013-02-17T21:37:00.001Z

A couple of our Valentine activities from last week :-)

We started off making biscuits.

Practising our stirring and rolling, as well as our concentration!

Icing.

Then counting smarties as we decorated our biscuits.

We've also been lacing hearts.

I cut the heart shapes from stiff cardboard and kept them quite small so they would be easy for the little ones to hold.

We started off with plastic needles, but the beads wouldn't thread through them, so switched to pipecleaner needles.

There aren't too many photos of this activity as the younger members needed help to enable them to participate.

Some of their finished hearts :-)

Valentines sensory tub.

2013-02-17T21:27:00.002Z

Our Valentine's sensory tub for this year. It's pretty much the same as last year, mainly because I am looking after different children this year, who are all around the age of the children I made it for last year.

We ended up doing this activity on the floor, mainly because all our tables were occupied with activities. But it also meant the rice didn't travel quite as far when dropped!

Explorations begin!

All engaged in their own play.

Posting the hearts into the post box (very difficult to catch on camera!)

And then retrieving them.

Setting their own challenges - posting petals!

Shaking rice.

The two year olds filled pots with rice to make shakers.

They then experimented with making shakers with different containers.

Sorting.

I think R would have got in the tray if there weren't quite so many resources. Maybe an activity for next week :-)

Chinese New Year

2013-02-17T20:07:00.001Z

Noodle exploration for Chinese New Year :-)

This has been really popular with the children.

I added some utensils and pots, but at first they were happy to explore with their hands.

Seeing how many noodles she could scoop onto her fingers!

Exploring the taste!

Later the children incorporated the utensils into their play.

Those noodles did prove to be a bit tricky to get into the pots though!

Pouring - an easier option!

It took a lot of concentration to thread the noodles through the holes!

Love this one, R decided to make noodle castles, filling the pot with noodles, turning it over and patting it!

Noodle castle!

We've also had Chinese resources in our home corner.

Trying hard to pick up the dried noodles with chop sticks.

A cup of tea anyone!

The children were fascinated with the cups having no handles!

We managed the whole week without a single breakage!

Bird Themed Activities

2013-02-08T21:55:00.001Z

It was the Big Garden Birdwatch here in England last week, so we were busy with lots of 'bird' related activities. I've already shared our simple bird feeders, but alongside this we also explored bird seed, painted with feather and made our own birds with templates.

First up was bird seed exploration.

I love bird seed and can never resist running my hands through it!

Yep, definitely has to be explored with your hands.

We did progress eventually to using some of the other resources.

Practising scooping with the spoons.

Filling.

And emptying.

Lots of emptying.

We tried hard to work out how to use some of the other resources. Some required squeezing....

....some a scissor action.....

....and more squeezing (we found prising apart worked just as well!)

We explored capacity, seeing how much we could get to fit into the containers.

We worked out which resources fitted together ......and which didn't!

We set up our own play, laying out all the containers and then filling them.

We made shakers!

Sensory play always holds the children's attention.

We also used feathers and templates to create our own birds.

(This was a feather exploration / colour recognition activity and not a creative one)

We talked about the colours of the feathers as we selected them.

Explored the feel.....

....and discovered if we blew, they moved!

Our final activity, and my favourite, was painting with feathers.

I wasn't sure how this activity would turn out, as it occurred to me as I was setting it out that the children might be a bit heavy handed and snap the feather!

However, the children seemed to know that they needed to be gently and press lightly.

This activity really caught the children's interested and they stayed far longer than they normally do.

Experimenting with using the other end of the feather!

Definitely process art!

Finished pieces :-)

Enhancing our road puzzle with small world figures :-)

2013-02-04T09:01:00.000Z

Last week we enhanced our car road puzzle with some of our small world figures and animals.

The day before we had been out for a drive in our 'car'.

We'd encountered lots of animals crossing the road on our journey, causing up to screech to a halt!

Although the children played along, I wasn't convinced they understood the scenes we were acting out (I think they actually thought I had gone mad!), so I decided to use our small world figures to develop their understanding.

We initially set the road puzzle up on the floor, but found little bodies kept laying across the road so transferred it to the table, where it worked much better!

And then we acted out our play from the day before, screeching to a halt when we noticed ducks in the road....

...and dogs......

...and then we had to avoid people crossing!

We also introduced new scenarios, cars that crashed had to be taken to the garage.

For the most part the children played happily alongside each other.

However these are toddlers, so there were disagreements along the way.

And lots of opportunities to practise sharing :-)

Funny how everything looks more appealing when someone else has it (even as an adult:-) )

Ice Play

2013-01-31T21:45:00.001Z

We got out our Arctic animals and added some ice to our play this week.

This was the first set up we tried yesterday. I froze a large block and attempted an O shaped piece of ice. This didn't work! It broke up when I tried to get it out of the tray, but this didn't matter too much, as it gave us some smaller pieces to use in play:-)

The children had great fun moving the animals around, we made stepping stones with the ice blocks for the animals....

...and also found we could balance the ice blocks on top of each other.

We tried balancing the animals on the ice.

E then became a little concerned about the animals being wet, so we had to find towels to dry them!

She then decided to place the towels over the ice to stop them slipping, without any prompting :-)

After play had finished, I decided to put the ice pieces back in the freezer for tomorrow. It occurred to me as I was doing this, that I could freeze the ice pieces together.

And this is what we had to play with today :-)
I attempted a B shape this time, again without success (I will succeed!) and also froze more cube shapes this time.

Here are the pieces I froze together. I created different level, a slide and a sort of tunnel!

The children needed no prompting to play!

The different level of ice allowed the introduction of positioning vocabulary - on, under, behind, in front of.

The children also explored space as they tried to fit the different animals through the tunnel.

Like yesterday, we role-played with the animals. The children are just beginning to role-play with figures so ever so often you hear something like 'oh poor baby!'.

A paddling pool for a penguin!

We got lots of opportunity to explore cold and slippery!

The smaller cubes proved really popular, they were made into stepping stones....

...fitted into the larger pieces of ice....

....and also slid off into the water!

Now it's back in the freezer ready for next week!

Note: Just wanted to add that I know polar bears and penguins live at seperate poles!! Because it has been cold and snowy here the last couple of weeks, we've had animals out that live where it's cold. Being play-based, the children have the freedom to add the resources of their choosing to an activity. All being under 2, they are not yet able to understand north and south poles and generally like to add as much as possible to play! I tend to take the 'set-up pictures' after the children have finished playing.

Easy Toddler Bird Feeders

2013-01-25T22:02:00.002Z

The toddlers made these really simple bird feeders today.

I melted a block of lard in the microwave.

I wasn't sure if it would end up too hot, but it was warm to the touch so perfectly save for the little ones.

The toddlers then spooned the wild bird seed into the lard.

We practised stirring round and round.

And counting spoonfuls into the bowl.

We found it easier to use two spoons, one to transfer and one to stir!

We carried on adding spoonfuls until it looked like this!

Then we used the spoon to transfer the mixture into a shallow plastic tray.

Patted it down.

Oh, added string so we could hang them from the tree and put them in the fridge.

I used a knife to loosen the feeders around the edge and then turned them upside down and pushed them out of the plastic container.

Ready for the birds :-)

5 Little Speckled Frogs Felt Set

2013-01-25T20:44:00.003Z

I'm hearing lots of reciting of numbers from my little ones at the moment, so made this felt set to accompany our singing of 5 Little Speckled Frogs. The main idea for this activity is to encourage 1 to 1 correspondence when counting (pointing to each frog in turn as they say a number), as well as practising reciting numbers in sequence. Although I've added the numbers 1 to 5, I don't really want to focus on these too much with the children at the moment. I prefer that they gain an understanding of the ways numbers can be used before focusing too much on symbolic representations of numbers.

I found a frog image on this site , copied it into publisher, cropped as I just wanted one frog template not a page full, and adjusted the size. My frog template is here Frog Template, there are 3 sizes, I used the middle on.

I then used the template to cut out the frogs from felt. A normal biro worked fine.

I wanted to use two pieces of felt for each frog to make them a bit sturdier (and childproof!) but am rubbish at sewing. So I cheated and used hemming web (I think that's what its called, the stuff you iron on instead of sewing!) I picked it up in Wilkinson if you're from the UK.

In my trial run, I cut out 2 frog templates and then ironed them together. but this was quite time consuming and it was difficult to get the frogs exactly the same. I found it was easier to do it as above and then cut out the second frog once I had ironed the two together (if that makes sense!) Like below :-)

Once I had attached the frogs to another piece of felt, I then cut them out.

I then added wiggly eyes and detail with a black fine liner, copying the original template. (it's difficult to draw lines on the felt and easier if you dot the lines on).

Finished frogs :-)

I cut a log (adding a bit of detail with the fineliner) and a pool from brown and blue felt.

So I had er, 7 little frogs for the 5 Little Speckled Frog song. Why, well the extra 2 are spares should any little frog get sucked, chewed or 'accidentally' dismembered!

I picked up a set of wooden numbers, you know the ones you usually find in the craft section, that I've never worked out what you are supposed to use them for. Anyway I painted mine with normal kids paint and added a layer of Modge Podge to make them a bit more durable (pva glue would work just as well) and a small square of adhesive Velcro on the back. And that's it - really easy :-)

The large frog at the bottom was my trial run. It realised as I was finishing him, that I wasn't going to fit 5 frogs of that size on the board.

So what did the children think of it?

Well we sang the song first using the resources.

Then I let the children explore.

Practising counting and one to one correspondence.

Think I might try 5 Little Ducks next :-)

Role-play Kitchen - Enhancing Play (Week 2)

2013-01-21T20:18:00.000Z

Well the dried pasta and peas in our role play kitchen proved very popular with the children, so the following week I added resources to encourage tea making (always good to train them up in essential life skills while they're young!)

We started off with china cups, teabags, pretend milk and sugar, and water in the teapot.

Initially I couldn't decide whether to have water or not. In the end I decided to add it but it didn't really work. Although the children enjoyed it, with them all being under 2, I found it hindered rather than enhanced play. I had to supervise the children quite closely and spended most of the time mopping it up from the floor, so that they children didn't slip up.

In the end I opted to remove it, for the time being we'll keep the water for play in the outdoor kitchen.

Removing the water didn't affect the children's interest. With a little initial direction, they soon got the hang of making tea:-)

Adding water (not always to the cups!)...

...teabags....

...and then milk.

I watched R playing for a while and she was determined to get the teabag to balance on the spoon!

This activity even attracted the attention of usually more reluctant role-players.

K even participated and there wasn't a wheel in sight!