If you've never squirted Shaving Cream onto a table and let your kids go wild with it, it's something you have to try at least once in your pre-school parenting (or caring) life. The fun and absolute delight on the faces of the children involved is priceless.
We did it at playgroup last week and the children loved it so much, I think we may do it again this week. They were rubbing their hands through it, rubbing it all over their arms and bodies (which were thankfully covered in water-proof smocks), clapping their hands together to make the foam explode sideways ad generally having a good old time.
The great thing is, even though this activity seems like a bunch of harmless messy fun, it is actually a great developmental activity. When doing this activity children
- feel really good about themselves and life in general because they are having fun
-are developing their sensory awareness which has proven benefits for brain development
- are using their motor skills to move the foam around
- are constantly thinking and experimenting with what they can do the with the foam next
- are talking to the people around them about the fun they are having which is developing language skills
- can work and have fun together, thereby enhancing their social skills.
There are a few precautions you can take to minimise the mess
- do it outside!!
- use a table that can be wiped down or hosed down easily
- have a warm soapy bucket of water nearby to clean off as well as a clean, dry towel
- have spare clothes outside to change into
- always use a waterproof smock that can be put straight into a bucket
- roll sleeves up!
Leaf Stew, Anyone?
I have just started running a structured playgroup at the local neighbourhood centre (we have spare places, so if you're in Melbourne and interested in coming along, drop me an email and I can send you the details). One of the activities we did yesterday, that was a hit with most of the children, was cooking with leaves.
Autumn leaves are everywhere at the moment in this part of the world and I love to include them in play whenever I can. I really believe that play is far more beneficial and relevant to children when it brings in their everyday environment.
Here are the materials we used. I got a plastic basin and filled it with leaves. then added some tongs for the children to use to move the leaves into the yellow plastic saucepan and stew pot you can see in the picture. The tongs need a lot of muscle strength and eye hand co-ordination to manipulate, so it's a great way to build on motor skills. I also added some wooden spoons, which strengthen the muscles in the wrists when used for mixing. I got all of these materials from my kitchen and the local $2 shop (my favourite place!)
I also added a pretend wooden oven so that the children could move the leaves from the table onto the oven and talk about cooking and baking while they were doing it.
It's a really simple activity, but very effective. The children who enjoyed it played there independently for long periods of time (which is a great benefit for parents!) and the activity is really effective in building language skills, life skills and motor skills. It's also a great way for the children to act out situations they see in real life which helps them to process social rules and make sense of their world, which, of course, is of great benefit for them.
Autumn leaves are everywhere at the moment in this part of the world and I love to include them in play whenever I can. I really believe that play is far more beneficial and relevant to children when it brings in their everyday environment.
Here are the materials we used. I got a plastic basin and filled it with leaves. then added some tongs for the children to use to move the leaves into the yellow plastic saucepan and stew pot you can see in the picture. The tongs need a lot of muscle strength and eye hand co-ordination to manipulate, so it's a great way to build on motor skills. I also added some wooden spoons, which strengthen the muscles in the wrists when used for mixing. I got all of these materials from my kitchen and the local $2 shop (my favourite place!)
I also added a pretend wooden oven so that the children could move the leaves from the table onto the oven and talk about cooking and baking while they were doing it.
It's a really simple activity, but very effective. The children who enjoyed it played there independently for long periods of time (which is a great benefit for parents!) and the activity is really effective in building language skills, life skills and motor skills. It's also a great way for the children to act out situations they see in real life which helps them to process social rules and make sense of their world, which, of course, is of great benefit for them.
Learning about Cars
Like many almost 3 year old boys (and many almost 43 year old boys!) my little Ed is obsessed with cars. He has been since he could first sit up, but his interest has seemed to hit an all-time high recently.
About six months ago, we purchased a very cheap car calendar from the $2 shop. The calendar had a lot of vintage cars in it and on each page it described the make and model of each car. One of his favourite bed-time 'stories' is to go through this calendar and listen to the names of each of the cars. He started to memorise them for himself and has learnt to identify each of them just by looking at them.
One of his favourite vintage cars was an old Mercedes (he has good taste - he gets that from his mum!). We were out shopping with my mum and she bought him a model Mercedes which he named Bertie - bless him! Since then he has loved all Mercedes and can spot them at a hundred paces. He started pointing them out everywhere, recognising them from their badges.
This interest in badges has spread to all cars and if you see a car crawling through car parks, with a crazy woman pointing at the back end of each car in the row and a small boy with a look of absolute glee on his little face, then it's probably us.
It is his favourite thing to do at the moment, and so to help him develop this interest and build on his memory, recall and language skills, I have put together a little sheet for him of all his favourites.
It was a really easy thing to do, I just copied and pasted a heap of pictures from a MSN images search onto a Word document and typed in the name of each of the badges.
It's a really simple thing but he absolutely loves it and it's something that you can do to promote any interest area your child has.
About six months ago, we purchased a very cheap car calendar from the $2 shop. The calendar had a lot of vintage cars in it and on each page it described the make and model of each car. One of his favourite bed-time 'stories' is to go through this calendar and listen to the names of each of the cars. He started to memorise them for himself and has learnt to identify each of them just by looking at them.
One of his favourite vintage cars was an old Mercedes (he has good taste - he gets that from his mum!). We were out shopping with my mum and she bought him a model Mercedes which he named Bertie - bless him! Since then he has loved all Mercedes and can spot them at a hundred paces. He started pointing them out everywhere, recognising them from their badges.
This interest in badges has spread to all cars and if you see a car crawling through car parks, with a crazy woman pointing at the back end of each car in the row and a small boy with a look of absolute glee on his little face, then it's probably us.
It is his favourite thing to do at the moment, and so to help him develop this interest and build on his memory, recall and language skills, I have put together a little sheet for him of all his favourites.
It was a really easy thing to do, I just copied and pasted a heap of pictures from a MSN images search onto a Word document and typed in the name of each of the badges.
It's a really simple thing but he absolutely loves it and it's something that you can do to promote any interest area your child has.
A Lot of Play for Very Little
I found these small plastic shot glasses in the supermarket a few months ago and just knew they would be a hit with the kids. They're quite small and have an unlimited amount of uses which means they get incorporated into lots of different games and activities. Amongst our favourites are sand play, water play, playdough and imaginative play games (they are just the right size for a teddy bear tea party!), but by far, my kids' favourite use for them is at bathtime.
We have a heap of them in the container of bath toys and it seems their uses are endless. I think that's the beauty of giving children open-ended resources like these - the children are able to constantly reinvent what the cups can be used for. They have been used as under-water helmets for Barbie, drinking cups for cars, hats for rubber duckies (see below!) shakers, pourers, containers, goggles and boats, just to name a few.
Not long ago, my nephew was here to stay with us and he even found some new uses for the cups that my kids hadn't thought of before. My nephew is seven and a half and these small little cups that I grabbed for under $3 entertained all three children for half an hour. Just goes to show you that when play items are open ended and children are able to direct their own play, lots of fun and learning can occur at their own developmental level and their own pace
Why we love Drawing!
Our school holidays were not the relaxed, long, easy days, full of wonderful play opportunities, that I had planned. But one thing my kids always seem to have time for, no matter what we're doing, is drawing. They both absolutely love it and it is something that they do every single day.
I have put together an art cupboard so that whenever the mood takes my two, they are able to open up a cupboard we have in the dining room and set themselves up to do some drawing. The way I've organised things, they don't need my help at all which means they are able to amuse themselves and get themselves busy no matter what I am doing and whether or not I'm able to help them.
This is what one shelf of our art cupboard looks like. I've used different things to hold pencils, textas and crayons. I've tried to choose containers that are bright, colourful and appealing but also containers that allow easy access to materials. The kids can choose colours easily because they're all visible and I have sorted each container so that all the pencils are together, all the textas are together, etc.
I've used some document trays to hold the paper. I always try to provide clean, white paper to use because I think drawings look better on nice paper and it encourages the children to take pride in what they are doing. I encourage the recycling of paper by re-using pieces that have already been drawn on for times when the kids are just trying out ideas, scribbling or cutting. You can see there are two trays - the first is for clean paper, the one alongside is for work when it is finished. I try to clean out this tray every couple of weeks. I find my emotional attachment isn't as strong as time goes by, so I wait to sort things through. Then I'll throw away junky pieces of work (or drawings that I have seen over and over again!) and just keep the good ones. The really special pieces I will give away to grandparents or stick into some scrapbooks I keep for each of the children. It's great to look back and see how the kids' drawing has progressed over the years. Mind you, my scrapbooks are nothing fancy, just the cheap paper kind you buy from the supermarket and I stick the pictures in with a trusty old glue stick. I do try to write the date and the year the drawing has been done though.
Ed has just started to draw recognisable faces. He has drawn alongside his sister for around 18 months and up until now he has just scribbled, but he has loved every minute of it. It's amazing how much drawing can entertain a young child even when they are not producing recognisable work. But scribbling is a really important stage that all children go through and I really think it's important to respect this stage and allow lots of opportunity for it. Ed's practice has paid off and here is an example of his fine work!
He is so excited by the fact he can draw faces that I even found him at the table the other day trying to draw his favourite tractor.
The finished product didn't resemble the tractor much at all, but he did manage to draw the three wheels he could see. Seeing him set something like this up for himself really made me appreciate just how complex and involved children's thinking can be sometimes and also how important it is that as parents we give our children the materials and opportunities that allow them to explore their creativity and play out their ideas. If I had his textas and paper locked away where he couldn't access them, there is no way Ed would have been able to do this for himself.
Em has been drawing since she was around 12 months old and her drawings now are really detailed and involved.
She uses the drawing materials in all kinds of ways. She will sit down and do detailed, involved drawings like this, or she will write letters, make invitations for make believe parties she has dreamed up, put together books of her favourite things or use the sticky tape, staplers, glue and stickers we also have in the art cupboard to create whatever her heart desires.
Of course, drawing every day means she constantly works on her fine motor skills, she is always writing, which means she is building her literacy skills and practicing her hand writing, not to mention the imagination and creativity she is developing when putting together her stories and pictures, but I think the biggest impact for Em is the effect her drawing has on her social and emotional abilities. She is always making pictures and letters for her friends and family, drawing with and for friends who are visiting and she also uses drawing to help her make sense of things she is seeing around her. She will draw places she has visited or recreate a scene she has experienced with her loved ones. It's a constant means for her to process what she is experiencing in the world and I think this is probably one of the most important ways drawing helps children develop.
I have put together an art cupboard so that whenever the mood takes my two, they are able to open up a cupboard we have in the dining room and set themselves up to do some drawing. The way I've organised things, they don't need my help at all which means they are able to amuse themselves and get themselves busy no matter what I am doing and whether or not I'm able to help them.
This is what one shelf of our art cupboard looks like. I've used different things to hold pencils, textas and crayons. I've tried to choose containers that are bright, colourful and appealing but also containers that allow easy access to materials. The kids can choose colours easily because they're all visible and I have sorted each container so that all the pencils are together, all the textas are together, etc.
I've used some document trays to hold the paper. I always try to provide clean, white paper to use because I think drawings look better on nice paper and it encourages the children to take pride in what they are doing. I encourage the recycling of paper by re-using pieces that have already been drawn on for times when the kids are just trying out ideas, scribbling or cutting. You can see there are two trays - the first is for clean paper, the one alongside is for work when it is finished. I try to clean out this tray every couple of weeks. I find my emotional attachment isn't as strong as time goes by, so I wait to sort things through. Then I'll throw away junky pieces of work (or drawings that I have seen over and over again!) and just keep the good ones. The really special pieces I will give away to grandparents or stick into some scrapbooks I keep for each of the children. It's great to look back and see how the kids' drawing has progressed over the years. Mind you, my scrapbooks are nothing fancy, just the cheap paper kind you buy from the supermarket and I stick the pictures in with a trusty old glue stick. I do try to write the date and the year the drawing has been done though.
Ed has just started to draw recognisable faces. He has drawn alongside his sister for around 18 months and up until now he has just scribbled, but he has loved every minute of it. It's amazing how much drawing can entertain a young child even when they are not producing recognisable work. But scribbling is a really important stage that all children go through and I really think it's important to respect this stage and allow lots of opportunity for it. Ed's practice has paid off and here is an example of his fine work!
He is so excited by the fact he can draw faces that I even found him at the table the other day trying to draw his favourite tractor.
The finished product didn't resemble the tractor much at all, but he did manage to draw the three wheels he could see. Seeing him set something like this up for himself really made me appreciate just how complex and involved children's thinking can be sometimes and also how important it is that as parents we give our children the materials and opportunities that allow them to explore their creativity and play out their ideas. If I had his textas and paper locked away where he couldn't access them, there is no way Ed would have been able to do this for himself.
Em has been drawing since she was around 12 months old and her drawings now are really detailed and involved.
She uses the drawing materials in all kinds of ways. She will sit down and do detailed, involved drawings like this, or she will write letters, make invitations for make believe parties she has dreamed up, put together books of her favourite things or use the sticky tape, staplers, glue and stickers we also have in the art cupboard to create whatever her heart desires.
Of course, drawing every day means she constantly works on her fine motor skills, she is always writing, which means she is building her literacy skills and practicing her hand writing, not to mention the imagination and creativity she is developing when putting together her stories and pictures, but I think the biggest impact for Em is the effect her drawing has on her social and emotional abilities. She is always making pictures and letters for her friends and family, drawing with and for friends who are visiting and she also uses drawing to help her make sense of things she is seeing around her. She will draw places she has visited or recreate a scene she has experienced with her loved ones. It's a constant means for her to process what she is experiencing in the world and I think this is probably one of the most important ways drawing helps children develop.
Car Washes and Barbie Baths
It was such a beautiful sunny day in Melbourne today and Em had a friend over to play. We headed outdoors and the girls were itching to get their hands a little messy so I set up some Barbie washing for them to do.
I used
- a plastic basin I picked up from a $2 shop
- water
- a couple of facewashers and handtowels
- some hotel soaps my husband collected from one of his many overseas trips
(I knew they would come in handy one day!)
- travel toothbrushes collected on one of the above mentioned trips
- a few cotton tips
- some plastic shot glasses bought from the supermarket
- a variety of Barbies
- our plastic outdoor tables purchased from a discount store for around $10
I basically set the whole thing up and then just left them to it. Em and her friend played for over an hour while I got into some much needed gardening.
Ed wanted in on the act too so I gave him the same materials (minus the Barbies!) and he collected up some of his favourite cars to clean.
We had a lovely morning playing, talking, washing, imagining and gardening
I used
- a plastic basin I picked up from a $2 shop
- water
- a couple of facewashers and handtowels
- some hotel soaps my husband collected from one of his many overseas trips
(I knew they would come in handy one day!)
- travel toothbrushes collected on one of the above mentioned trips
- a few cotton tips
- some plastic shot glasses bought from the supermarket
- a variety of Barbies
- our plastic outdoor tables purchased from a discount store for around $10
I basically set the whole thing up and then just left them to it. Em and her friend played for over an hour while I got into some much needed gardening.
Ed wanted in on the act too so I gave him the same materials (minus the Barbies!) and he collected up some of his favourite cars to clean.
We had a lovely morning playing, talking, washing, imagining and gardening
Teddy Bear Dress Ups
Hamley Bear is my little girl's favourite friend in the world and one of her favourite ways to keep busy is to dress him up and create things for him to do (as you can see in the title bar above!)
On the weekend we made a trip to Spotlight to collect up some goodies for the school holidays and we discovered a small range of teddy bear accessories. I couldn't resist a pair of round spectacles for our furry friend. When i first spotted them, I was in hysterics at the thought of him wearing them. "Hamley could be a professor!" Em exclaimed - she was excited too! At $1.75, we could not go past them.
Then we spotted a cowboy hat - Hamley size! I thought it would be another great dress-up prop for Hams and I thought Em would have fun decorating it too.
So we headed home with our treasures (and a few other bits and pieces). The glasses and hat went on to Hamley as soon as we got home and the glasses looked fantastic - he hasn't taken them off since - it reminds me of the time we found a pair of handmade doll's knickers for 50c at a market and Hamley wore them for a good month before they were taken off! - anyway, I digress. He really looked great in his glasses.
The hat on the other hand looked more Mardi Gras than Wild West, but Em turned it sideways so it looked like a sun hat and Hamley looked like a Grandpa ready to whittle some wood. Em then made him a walking stick out of a straw, and Hamley was set. We haven't even got around to decorating the hat properly yet. I guess that might come this week some time.
By the way, we still haven't got around to dyeing the eggs I mentioned a few entries ago. I have been on the hunt for white eggs. Does anyone know why they are so hard to find?
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