Sensory Play is one of the few activities that I know will entertain my kids for quite a long period of time. The quicker and easier the set-up for me, the better. 

For today's activity, rather than make up some slime for my son to play with, I gave him the two basic ingredients, popped out a selection of his little superhero figurines and let him make it for himself. 

This not only means less work for me, but more importantly, it means that he is experimenting and learning a range of skills and concepts through experiencing for himself.

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Watercolour paper, salt and watercolour paint come together to create some incredible results. What makes the best results? That's what you'll need to explore!

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There are not many children that I know, that aren't fascinated by dinosaurs in some way. (Or adults, come to think of it). These incredible creatures, larger and more interesting than we can really imagine, that lived on this earth long before we arrived!

If your children love dinosaurs, here are a collection of 10 fabulous dinosaur themed activities that incorporate sensory play, maths, imagination, storytelling, creating, crafting and more! Enjoy!

1) Handprint Dinosaurs

Create your own dinosaurs, using your very own handprint for their body, legs and neck. Add eyes and a tail to complete your creation.

Materials: Easy Wash paint, paintbrush, paper, googly eyes (optional), marker.

TIP: To avoid really awkward twisting of the wrist, print your handprint with your hand around the right way and then turn your paper upside down to get the "dinosaur legs" on the bottom of the page 

To make the head, either print an extra thumb print at the end of your dinosaurs "neck" or slightly move your thumb when making your handprint to create a head shape. Press your googly eyes on while the paint is still wet. Alternatively you could stick them on with glue or draw on eyes once the paint has dried.

Use your paintbrush to add a tail to your dinosaur. You could also add spikes or any other details you'd like.

Add further details with a permanent marker once the paint is dry.

 What cool colours and patterns would you make your dinosaur?

We thought that this little guy, made by my 4 year old, looked a lot like an orange spotted grinning Arlo.

2) Create your own Dinosaur World

 Provide your child with materials to make their own Dinosaur World for pretend play.

Materials they could use are:

• a large tub
• your favourite plastic dinosaurs
• rocks
• trees (use plastic shrubbery or collect some leaves and twigs from outside)
• smaller tub for lake/pond (optional)
• water (optional)
• felt for grass or water

Have fun playing, using imagination and story telling to create adventures for your dino friends in their new dinosaur land!

3) Dinosaurs in Sticky Mud

For a super sensory activity, full of messy imaginative play, have a go at this sticky mud dinosaur tub! You can find all the details for making it here.

4) Paper Plate-a-sauruses (with free printable templates)

Use some basic supplies, including these free printable dinosaur templates to create your own paper plate dinosaur friends. 

Use your creations for decoration or story telling. You could even try sticking a craft stick to your designs, turning the lights out and shining a torch on your dinosaur for some cool dinosaur shadow puppets!

My kids noticed that the Diplodocus looked a lot like Arlo the Apatosaurus. They were right! They do look similar and in fact, they are both from the Diplodocidae Family.

This super cool activity made by The Craft Train for Learn with Play at Home

5) Sandpit Dino Dig!

How about trying out the role of paleontologist with your own dinosaur bone excavation in the sandpit? You can see more pictures of our dino dig (and whole Dinosaur Party) here.

6) Make your Own Dinosaur Bones

Picture by The Imagination Tree

If you don't have any plastic dinosaur bones to dig up, fear not! You could make your own using these instructions from The Imagination Tree. You'll also see some great ideas on how to use the bones to work on maths concepts such as length and counting.

7) Create Dinosaur Fossils from Coffee Grounds

Picture by I Can Teach My Child

As well as bones, you can make some very cool dinosaur fossils out of coffee grounds using these instructions from I Can Teach My Child.

8) Make Dinosaur Masks

Use paper-plates to make your favourite dinosaur masks and use them for imaginary play. Or, you can print out some free Dinosaur Masks from Itsy Bitsy Fun or from Mother Natured here. What would you use to make an Apatosaurus mask?


9) Cardboard Tube Dinosaurs

Picture by The Craft Train

Get crafty making these adorable dinosaurs from The Craft Train, using cardboard tubes or toilet paper rolls. See the full instructions on how to make them here. If you collect enough cardboard rolls, you could even create an entire prehistoric land!

10) "The Good Dinosaur" Colouring Sheets

Decorate your favourite characters from The Good Dinosaur movie with these free printable colouring sheets. Click on the links to download and print your favourites. Paint, colour or collage them as you like.

 ** Arlo & Spot 1 ** Arlo & Spot 2 ** Butch ** Ramsey ** Nash **

Perhaps you could use them as inspiration to write your very own story imagining what it might be like if dinosaurs never became extinct, or "If I had a dinosaur as a friend". 

Happy creating!

Do you have any dinosaur fans in your family?

Happy playing,

Debs :)

Look where else we are. Are you following along? :)

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Pompoms/pom-poms/pompons/pom-pons (whatever you call them!) are a relatively inexpensive, yet very fun and versatile little manipulative. Usually found in the craft section of most shops in a range of different colours and sizes, pompoms can be used in all manner of different ways and for different play and learning activities. Here are 53 fabulous ways that you can use pompoms to help further math, literacy, fine motor, gross motor, sensory, play, imagination, craft and/or scientific skills.

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Today's simple play idea is one that people often play outside, but is equally as fun inside too. Making potions! My children very much enjoy adding little leaves, flowers and pebbles to water when they are outside. In fact, I remember loving to play like this when I was young too. To play inside, rather than searching the garden for potion supplies, we raid the pantry and craft cupboard instead, looking for small items that can be mixed into water. 

Here is a fun sensory "Invitation to Play" potion making that encourages skills such as pouring, transferring and scooping whilst investigating solubility (which things dissolve or not), capacity, buoyancy (whether they sink or float) and more.

Ages: 2 years +

(N was 3 years old here. See the handy tips at the bottom to Simplify and Extend to suit your child's needs) 

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Handwriting is something that takes children a while to master. 

It is a skill to coordinate a pen/pencil in a controlled manner to produce an exact result and one that develops over time and experience. 

To develop good handwriting, you require good fine-motor skills, hand/finger muscle strength and a good pen-grip/hold.

Being a trained teacher, since my children started holding and drawing with writing tools (pens, pencils, markers, crayons, paintbrushes), I have been encouraging them to adjust their grip to hold their writing implements with the three correct fingers that allow for good handwriting down the track.

Many children don't practice holding a pen using the correct 3 fingers until they get to school and then it's often a matter of trying to correct the natural hold that they have developed. 

Whilst children (and adults) are able to write using other various holds, the time-tested method below, once mastered, is the most comfortable way to write, allows for ease of movement and is the least likely to cause muscle strain or discomfort, especially when writing for lengthy periods of time.

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This post is sponsored by Illooms Ballons

Balloons are often synonymous with parties for decorating and adding a burst of colour and fun, quickly and easily, but there are so many more things that balloons can be used for! 

There are a huge number of balloon games, fun activities with balloons, balloon crafts and even science experiments using balloons that you can try.

Playing balloon games is great for encouraging gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination, balance, concentration, focus and movement. 

Balloons don't cost a fortune, they're easy to store and transport (we take some with us in our kids travel kit) and they can be played with by people of all ages, making them an ideal material for all sorts of occasions.

It seems that now the humble balloon has become even more fun with the introduction of the new ILLOOMS balloons. Unlike your average balloons, these contain a fixed LED light in each balloon, which illuminate for up to 15 hours when activated with the easy-pull tab!

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We love experimenting around with various creative materials and seeing the different results that can be produced using these different materials and processes. 

In today's arty activity, the steps involved are simple enough for children of all ages, but can vary dramatically in results depending on their design. The results that we obtained ended up looking quite beautiful, but it was the experimenting with different designs, colours and the dramatic change that occurred when water was added, that really made this a stand-out activity.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom for Handy Tips

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Magna-Tiles. Are they really worth the money?

This post is sponsored by Finlee and Me

There are so many toys out there available for purchase, that it can be hard to know what is going to be of real value. We have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to review a number of fabulous educational toys over the years. We're often asked to promote or review toys for kids but the reality is that only a select few make it on to the blog and into our hearts as a toy that we absolutely love.

For a toy to make it into our top toys list, it needs to:

• be fun
• be educational
• be appealing
• be open-ended
• allow for creativity
• be able to be used for many years by multi-ages

Magna-Tiles ticks all these boxes and their aesthetic beauty combined with their ease of use and ability to allow for creativity, problem solving and imaginative play have firmly entrenched it as one of our favourite toys of all time.

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My 3 (almost 4) year-old is really into letters at the moment. 

He's asking questions about them, pointing them out, recognising/naming them, making them and just generally showing that now is the time to follow his interest and provide him with opportunities to practice and learn more about letters and his name.

I don't have time for fancy set-ups or anything that takes a long time to prepare these days (3 year-olds really keep you busy!) and it's almost always the simple activities that are most enjoyed and get the most use. 

This wax-resist activity is a classic that doesn't go out of style. You only need a candle, paper and some watercolour paint to have fun practicing name recognition, letter learning, number learning and just having fun.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom for handy tips to simplify or extend to suit your child's age & level of development.

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Letters are a hot topic at our house these days. Noah (3.5) has taken a real interest in letters, pointing them out, asking about their names and sounds and making connections between letters and other people or things in his life. Now is the perfect time for me to build upon this interest and offer opportunities for him to practice reading, writing, tracing, sounding-out, recognising, playing with and experiencing letters. 

At this age especially, I believe learning should be enjoyable and not forced. You can read more about my thoughts on learning letters with younger children here and how best to go about it here.

Today's activity works specifically on letter recognition, letter formation, fine motor skills and name recognition.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom of the post for handy tips for getting the most out of this activity for your child/ren

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We've been interested in monoprinting ever since we tried it out ages ago while cardboard comb painting and painting on a mirror. The reveal that you get when you peel back the paper is fun and exciting as you never quite know what is going to appear and no two prints will ever be the same!

This clay imprinting art is a fun activity for kids of all ages with just a few simple steps.

1) Making your design by imprinting your rolled clay, 2) painting over the design, and 3) printing the design off the clay.

Ages: 2-3+

See the bottom of the post for handy tips to extend or simplify for your child

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Your little engineers will really enjoy these 12 creative engineering activities.

On a recent trip to Sydney, Australia, I spent a lot of time admiring (and photographing) the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge which is the widest and one of the longest steel arch bridges in the world. Quite the engineering feat! 

Between that and the world famous Sydney Opera House, I came back buzzing from my little getaway with lots of thoughts about engineering and just how important it is for our children to have opportunities to experience it and to learn more about it.

What is engineering? 

Engineering is the application of science, technology and maths to develop solutions to problems. Put simply, engineers are creators! 

They take the above disciplines and combine these with creativity and ingenuity to make something new. 

Engineers see a problem and solve it. They create and re-create products, infrastructure and solutions that make our everyday life easier.

Architectural engineers play a huge role in the construction of buildings like the Sydney Opera House (pictured above) and civil engineers work on things like roads and bridges like the Sydney Harbour Bridge (see pictures below). 

There are also many other types of engineers that are heavily involved in so many different projects and areas of production. 

From technology and the engineering of the mobile phones we use, to robots, computer games, chemical engineering, medicine, renewable energy, aircraft and much more. 

There are so many different avenues that engineers can put their skills and passions towards in this modern day and age.

Why is it important for children to learn engineering?

Allowing children to experience different forms of engineering helps them to understand more about the processes that go into making up so much of the world around us. 

Engineering encourages creativity, problem solving and cooperation. 

It allows children to think outside the box and to come up with solutions to problems through experimentation and trial and error, whilst putting into practice so many of the skills they are acquiring as they grow.

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This simple little place value number game is a favourite of Maddie's (aged 6) at school and at home. 

Use it to practice recognising numbers, writing numbers and place value, along with problem solving. 

You can play with two or more people and it is great as a whole class game on the whiteboard (with teacher vs students) or just in pairs (parent and child/two children).

You can use this activity for practicing two digit numbers (with tens and ones), three digit numbers (hundreds, tens and ones), four digit numbers (thousands, hundreds, tens and ones) and so on.

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We love a sweet treat (who doesn’t?) but increasingly I’m noticing that treats are becoming more of a regular thing than an occasional, “treat.” In fact, I could pretty much refuse to personally give my children a single treat and they’d still end up with plenty. Between grandparents, special events, birthday parties, class parties/birthdays, etc. they are getting these sorts of treats quite regularly. Most of these commercial sweets however are full of things, like refined sugars and unnecessary chemicals and colours that don’t add any nutritional benefit to my kids at all.

So, as a way to ease my concerns a little, I decided we'd attempt to make more of our own sweet treats using healthier alternatives. Still sweet, still a yummy treat, but one that can be slipped into the lunchbox guilt free. You can click on the links in the Ingredient list below to read more about why these ingredients are not only better than the alternatives, but provide health benefits as well.

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