In Play and Learn you can find all kinds of activities and arts & crafts to do with the kids, as well as articles on child development and education.
My kids love making dens when we’re out in the woods, yet there are times when it’s not practical or possible to make one that’s kid-sized. But we don’t let that stop us – instead, we just think smaller… Read on to see how to make an adorable mini den!
Making a mini den in the woods is a fun way to introduce den building to kids!
We love a bit of woodwork with the kids – whether out in the woods, at forest school, or at home with a bit of softwood, so we were very happy when One Hundred Toys asked us to test out a pile of fabulous-looking, kid-sized real tools from HABA. Read on to find out why we’re now eschewing pretend tools for the real deal.
HABA’s folding saw is kid-sized and just right for taking to forest school.
We love leaf painting! Use natural materials like leaves, sticks and stones as the canvas for your kids’ artwork!
Painting is a great activity for young children. It’s a fantastic work-out for their imagination, and helps them practice their fine motor skills, as well as helping to develop their understanding of colour, shape, texture and viscosity (yes, wet paint WILL drip onto the floor/your clothes/the dog’s dinner…). We do a lot of painting in our house, and love finding different things to paint – after all, flat paper can be SO last earlier-this-morning. We try to bring natural materials into our play at every opportunity, and painting is the perfect thing for this as its easy to find natural objects to decorate. Stones, sticks, pinecones, shells… you name it, we’ve painted it. Leaf painting is an absolute favourite, though, and something that we do all the time – read on to find out why!
There are images of some amazing mud kitchens out there on the web, and it’s very easy to fall down a rabbit hole of great ideas without actually ever making one for your child. I was certainly guilty of it, until one day my sister stopped by and interrupted my description of the great mud kitchen I was going to make (one day), by pulling together a few things lying around in the garden and making one in about thirty seconds! My kids have been playing with it ever since (we’re talking for years now!), and though I still dream and plan of a more beautiful and robust solution, they’re out there having fun today – and they really couldn’t care less that it’s not perfect.
So read on to see what you need to make a mud kitchen right now, and I guarantee that you’ll have enough stuff already to get your kids playing today!
Mud kitchens are great for kids so get them playing dirty today!
If you’ve read ‘The Bog Baby’ by Jeanne Willis and Gwen Millward, you’ll know that bog babies are round and blue, with goggly eyes, spiky tails and ears like a mouse, and their wings are no bigger than daisy petals. This magical book is perfect for inspiring creative model making and small world play, while at the same time gently encouraging children to explore what it means for a thing to be wild and free. Read on to find out how to make a home-made play dough bog baby kit with our play dough recipe and basic craft accessories – not only are they great fun, they also make fantastic and original gifts when given with a copy of the book!
A magical story about two children who find a mysterious wild creature, ‘The Bog Baby’ is perfect inspiration for creative play!
A bowlful of soapy bubbles makes for a quick and easy sensory activity for young kids!
Though I love letting my kids get stuck in to some messy play, I sometimes find the thought of the inevitable cleanup just too daunting. On days like that, I often resort to our tried and tested fallback -the cleanest messy play imaginable – bubble play!
Mike Teavee – first person to travel by television! Or should that be Wonkavision?
Every September, members of our local community are invited to make and display a scarecrow for the annual festival, and then everyone troops around all the houses looking at what we’ve all done – which is actually a whole heap of fun, and also involves a stop for tea and cake at the Community Orchard, making it even more fabulous. This year’s event was only a few days after what would have been Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday, so of course our scarecrow had to be Roald Dahl themed!
You can have a fantastic, fun-filled Star Wars party in your home without disastrously epic lightsaber battles and kids in permanent hyperdrive… Here’s how we did it!
G-man’s birthday this year happened to coincide with the release of arguably the most anticipated film of the century – Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And since we’re all big Star Wars fans here, he absolutely had to have a Star Wars party.
Handling scissors correctly is a difficult skill to master, and so we try to practice every chance we get. In the house, we have a “snip box” full of different scraps to cut up, following patterns and lines or just snipping away. But sometimes we like to take our scissor skills practice outside, to try our hand at cutting things we find around us while exploring in the sunshine. Creating a Nature Snip box takes absolutely no effort at all – in fact, the kids do pretty much all of the work!
Practice scissor skills with garden cuttings!
There is magic in puddles that seems to call to all children. In the rain, or after, it’s a rare child who can resist the urge to stomp, splash, swish and splatter through them, regardless of whether or not they’re wearing their wellies. It’s a well known kid fact that it’s really not a successful puddle jump if you don’t come out of it with soaking socks.
Playing in puddles is one of those great activities that requires little or no preparation – other than pulling on those wellies and a rain mac – and most of the time my kids are happy to play in them without interference from me. Should puddle ennui set in, though, we can always find further fun with these simple alternate games.
Puddle Jumping – just one of many simple games to enjoy on rainy days!
After the rain has stopped and the pavement starts to dry out, try making wet footprints from puddle water. We love making footprint trails to follow, patterns and even letters and words using puddle water as paint.
We are big fans of ‘Singing in the Rain’, and twirling our umbrellas in a Gene Kelly homage. There are a ton of other rain related songs and nursery rhymes to try if 50’s musicals aren’t your thing – classics such as ‘it’s raining, it’s pouring’, ‘raindrops keep falling on my head’ and ‘I Hear Thunder’; but don’t forget the many pop songs too – the chorus to Rihanna’s Umbrella song, for example, is one of our favourites and another good one for umbrella dancing.
Both our kids were awed by the admittedly awesome video for Kate Bush’s song ‘Cloud Busting’, and since watching that, another favourite game of ours is to play with making the weather. We catch reflections of clouds in puddles, and smash them to pieces with big, splashy jumps. We’ll also twirl them into tornados by spinning round and round, or make the rain fall with a rain dance. G-Man likes to raid the kitchen to borrow the hand whisk, which he insists is his very own cloud making machine.
Not got rain shoes on? Play another of our favourites, the Puddle Vaulting game. Jump over each puddle, making sure not to make a splash. Amp up the peril by filling the puddles with sharks, piranhas, water goblins, or lava. Whatever you do, don’t get wet!
We sometimes use the boules set, or pebbles if we’re out and about, and then stand back to toss them into the puddles. We like to see who can get their pebble closest to the target, or who can make the biggest splash! We also love trying to count the ripples as they spread, and tossing several at the same time to make beautiful overlapping patterns.
When the puddles are in the garden, we turn them into landscapes by drawing around them with chalk and adding props like mini dinosaurs or farm animals. Draw a red chalk border, and the puddle becomes a Martian lake; yellow or white can be a tropical beach or a desert oasis. Natural elements like rocks, twigs and leaves make great scenery. Muddy puddles are perfect for Peppa Pig and friends.
Who can play with water without floating something on it? Not my kids! Leaves, sticks, feathers and flowers – all sorts of found-things have been set adrift on puddles by my guys. We’ve even made paper boats, twig rafts and cork ships to try out on the bigger puddles.
These are just some of the things that we’ve done on wet days, and every rainy day excursion with the kids leads to them creating new games and imaginative play – I’m constantly amazed at their inventiveness. So don’t let grey days trap you in the house and get you down; get on your wellies, wrap up warm, and go have some fun!
