Are you following us on Pinterest?

Last Easter, I bought a whole lot of little chicks in different colours to use for an activity. (I actually bought them after Easter when the price was reduced and shops were trying to get rid of all their Easter stock. For some reason I packed them away and completely forgot about them until we started approaching this Easter and I saw them in the shops again).

As I couldn't remember the originally activity I'd had in mind, I decided to create a simple Invitation to Play with the chicks and some sensory materials. This activity was open ended so that it allowed for creative, imaginative play for both my 2 year old toddler and 5 year old.

We used the activity to further language skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, sorting, counting, colours, classifying, story telling, model making and more.

Ages: 12 months+

(See the handy tips at the bottom for ideas to suit your child's needs)

Continue reading...

There have been so many awesome Easter crafts going on all over the net that it's been hard to find something to do that everyone else isn't doing.

We actually did this Paper Plate Easter Chicken last year when I'd just started blogging, so, suffice to say, the photos weren't all that great and this year I thought that we could improve upon it.

I have shared this post on the memetales blog so if you'd like to see even more photos on it and details on working through it with a small child, click on the link below.

Simple Rocking Chicken Craft on memetales.

Continue reading...

Welcome to  TUESDAY TOTS for this week.
Brought to you by Learn with Play at home (us), Rainy Day Mum, 
Growing a Jeweled Rose and In Lieu of Preschool

This Week:

Learn with Play at home is featuring

9 Easter Activities with added Learning

These great activities all came from last weeks Tuesday Tots linkup
where we featured Easter Activities using Plastic Eggs

Continue reading...

Welcome to  TUESDAY TOTS for this week.
Brought to you by Learn with Play at home (us), Rainy Day Mum, 
Growing a Jeweled Rose and In Lieu of Preschool

This Week:

Learn with Play at home is featuring

Fun Activities for Easter using Plastic Eggs

These great activities all came from last weeks Tuesday Tots linkup
where we featured Activities to promote Imaginative Play

FEATURED

Obviously there are Easter Activities galore at the moment! We happen to have a whole lot of plastic eggs (that I bought very cheaply at the end of Easter last year) so I've been on the hunt for fun and different ways to use them for crafting, playing and learning.

Here are 6 fun posts that were linked up to Tuesday Tots last week that I thought provided some great inspiration and ideas for ways to use them.

Continue reading...

This craft is so simple that it needs very little explaining. The fun thing about using a paper plate as the chicken's body is that the bottom is rounded and therefore rocks when pushed to appear to be pecking. Kids love this :)

Spend time with them as they do this craft to help them experience bonding and emotional development as well as fine motor skills and cognitive development.

Fold a paper plate in half and using whatever materials you have at home, have your child decorate it as a chicken by adding eyes, beak, wings and tail.

Some tips:

- My daughter wanted to colour the plate with crayon and we used googly eyes, coloured paper and a patty pan for the tail. You could cover the paper plate with feathers, paint, paper collage etc and add any embellishments you have available.

- Simplify this activity by helping your child with the folding and cutting. Provide them with some basic materials for the decorations and let them figure out where and how to stick them down.

- Extend this activity by having your child do the folding and use this time to talk about "halves." Folding evenly in half can be challenging for kids so they will often need guidance and practice. Also allow them some input in choosing the materials to cover and decorate the chicken and let them attempt any cutting involved

- Talk with your child and ask questions about what they are doing. This will help them understand the physical and mental processes they are going through as well as giving them the vocabulary to describe it. eg "That is a good material for the beak. How are you going to attach it so that it stays on?"

- Use new language and descriptive words like, "embellishments" This will help with their language development.

Debs :)


Linked here:

Continue reading...