Ways to Play with Aluminium Foil

Aluminium foil (or tin foil for all my US friends!) is relatively inexpensive and its shiny, foily qualities make it a great fun thing to include in play ideas.

We like to:

• Cover blocks and boxes and containers in it to make rockets and robots and spacey play scenes. Building with blocks and creating fun scenarios builds on imagination, creativity, language skills and motor skills.

• Roll it into balls to play with, building on motor skills and eye-hand co-ordination.

• Cut it and tear it because it’s easy to work with and makes a great sound. This works motor skills again and it is also a great way to practice cutting skills. Tearing and crinkling is a great way to explore the senses too.

• Paint onto it to give our paintings a different finish. Painting is a great fun art and craft activity that builds on spatial awareness, creativity, motor skills and knowledge of colours, shapes and patterns.

• Wrap up presents for soft toy birthday parties. Foil folds easily and doesn’t necessarily require sticky tape. Playing party games builds on social skills like empathy, compassion, care and nurturing. Looking after and organizing toys is also a great opportunity to build on language skills.

• Include it in collage crafts. Shiny foil makes a great body for a robot or a magical mermaids tail or bright, sparkly fishy scales. Cut out some squares for a robot or scales for a fish or a long mermaid's tail. Give your child the cut-outs, some glue, some paper to stick the shapes onto and some pens and textas to draw on and around the foil cutout. Crafting builds on motor skills, creativity, imagination, language and spatial awareness.

Have you used foil in your play?