For some quick and easy, holiday inspired play, I whipped up some peppermint scented Candy Cane Playdough. The whole activity took me about 10 minutes or less to set up (including making the playdough from scratch) and kept the kids busy for well over an hour. And, being playdough, they've been back using it every other day this week. (Although, it's more a pink coloured playdough now.)

Ages: 2+

Skills: Creativity, fine-motor, language, sensory, etc.

To make our Peppermint Scented Candy Cane Playdough I made a batch of our no-cook playdough. (Takes about 4 minutes to make)

I then divided the mix into two and coloured one half red (using red food gel colouring) and left the other half plain so that it would be white.

To the mixture I also added some Peppermint Extract to give it a candy-cane scent. Extract is meant for flavouring more than the smell so it's not super strong but safe if a small amount is consumed. For a stronger scent that will last longer I would recommend using Peppermint Oil. (I used the extract as that's what I already had in the pantry)

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Welcome once again to this week's TUESDAY TOTS.
Brought to you by Learn with Play at home (us), Rainy Day Mum,
and One Perfect Day

This Week:

Learn with Play at home is showcasing

Fun and Learning Activities using Balls

These great posts all came from last weeks Tuesday Tots linkup
where we featured "Kids Chalk Activities"

FEATURED

Aside from the gross motor and hand-eye coordination that using a ball can help aid children with, there are lots of other fun ways to utilise a humble ball that work on a range of different skills and experiences for children.

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Welcome back to the "Playful Maths" weekly series brought to you by

  Learn with Play at home (us) and The Imagination Tree

Together, let's make MATHS FUN!

............................................................................................................

Last week I shared Counting and Grouping with Sticks.

This week we bring you another 2 Playful Maths Activities using Natural Materials. 

This week we are focusing on counting and playing with concrete materials.

Other skills involved include fine motor, number recognition, writing numbers, counting on, making patterns, grouping, sorting etc.

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Today's Invitation to Play is designed to encourage young children to learn and explore numbers.

Possible outcomes include counting, number recognition, drawing, writing, representation, one-to-to correspondence, manipulation, calculator skills, memory, fine motor and more. 

My favourite thing about Invitations to Play is that they are open ended. This means that there is no set outcome or end result that must be achieved. It also means that the child has the freedom to work at their own level and ability within their own interests.

Ages: 2-6+

(See Handy Tips at the bottom for ways to simplify and extend to meet your children's needs)

Materials: (we used) Number books/charts, foam number stickers, dot stickers, glass stones, paper, markers and calculator.

You could also use: counters, beads, beans, number stamps, number stencils, deck of cards, dice (and pretty much anything with numbers on it or number/counting/manipulating related) etc.

The stickers and the calculator were utilised first by my daughter (aged 3.5y)

Without prompting she decided to start at the number one and found a foam 1 sticker and then the number 1 on the calculator.

"The "1" sticker needs 1 dot sticker to go with it"

I love how she used one-to-one correspondence to place one glass bead on top of each dot sticker.

This is a great moment to talk with the child about what they have done and why.

Having visual cues is good for children to make and form connections between the written symbol and the amount. They are able to see and count. Having them talk about what they see connects the language that goes with it.

Seeing the written numbers (written both in numerical form and the written words) will also allow children to attempt their own writing of the numbers.

She spend a long time drawing 3 little people, finding and sticking the number 3 and corresponding one glass bead with each person. 

Here in this little picture alone are a number of important and valuable skills that have been used.

I was so happy to see her representation of the number in a different way.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by providing a few less materials to work with. Start with something like paper, number stickers and sticker dots. Add new/different materials each time and focus on working with and manipulating them. Try another invitation another day with a calculator and beads/counters/stones so that the materials are all introduced but separately to give enough chance to explore them and learn how to use them (just peeling the back paper off foam stickers can be tricky for little kids still developing their fine motor skills.. but so worthwhile)

- Extend this activity by mixing around and changing materials for the children to explore. Provide number charts etc of higher numbers depending on the children's levels. Try adding glue and craft sticks for children to make their own 10s frames (10 beans/beads etc stuck to a paddle pop stick to represent the number 10). You could have these made already and add them in for children exploring larger numbers. Challenge them to use all the materials combined to demonstrate a chosen number representation. Have them teach/show this to their siblings/peers/you.

- Assist your child to use materials they may be unfamiliar with like a calculator. Allow them to explore it themselves first and just step in where needed.

-Ask questions to help connect their understanding and use vocabulary to give them words to describe what they're exploring/creating, eg. "What are you working on now?", "How many people have you drawn?", "Which number is that?" "How many beads will you need?" "What's a different way to represent that?" etc

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

- Supervise your child when using small items such as glass beads/stones.

More Invitations to Play

Dried Playdough and Water

Books and Cars

Playdough, Pipecleaners and Beads

Boxes and Tools

Pipe cleaners, Craft sticks, Playdough and Animals

Paint and Recycled Materials

Playdough Sweets

Marble Exploration

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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When ever we can get outside of the house or classroom, we try to make the most of it.

A bright sunny day is just calling for some outside play and learning for all ages.

I started with an Invitation to Play with the materials pictured above.

Ages: 6 months-6 years +

(see Handy Tips at the bottom for ideas to simplify or extend to meet your child's needs)

Materials: Chalk, water, paint brushes, foam stampers

An 8 month old and 3 year old dive right in. Both practicing different skills and learning from the same yet different experiences. 

Above there are fine & gross motor skills being practiced, sharing, painting, sensory experience with water, writing, stamping, concentrating, observing.

Learning about gravity and properties of water. The water runs towards the lowest point.

Painting water over the top of chalk gives it a strong and vibrant colour. Use descriptive language.

Look... no strings! Baby learns by chasing around a stick of chalk. The curved surface makes it roll.

Practice writing or spelling

Just making footprints? No. Learning about patterns, shapes, printing, mirror image and evaporation! 

Learn more about numbers. Writing them, tracing them, counting and stamping the corresponding number.

Handy Tips

- Simplify this activity for younger children by providing as an "Invitation to Play" and seeing where they go with it. There's no need to push a specific literacy/numeracy focus. You can see the learning they can get out of simply exploring the materials.

- Extend this activity for older/more advanced children by encouraging them to write spelling words, play giant games of tic-tac-toe, work on group problem solving, represent harder maths equations on the concrete, test evaporation in different weather conditions, write brain maps etc.

- Always supervise young children when outside, around water or possible choking hazards.

- Mix it up by adding different materials to investigate and explore outside in the same way. Try the same materials plus a pile of twigs, or without chalk and only water, add pebbles/stones/leaves...etc.

- Talk with your child 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.


- Use chalk outside to learn more about the parts of the body.






Happy playing,
Debs :)

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Today I set out an Invitation to Play for my daughter. Using just 2 different materials that most people have at home, Books and Cars, she engaged herself in building and balancing, experimenting and exploring and a whole fantastic imaginative world full of language development.

Ages: 2-6+

(For ideas to simplify or extend this activity, see the Handy Tips at the bottom)

Materials: Books (hard cover are easier) and Cars

To create this Invitation to Play, I put out a pile of children's books, set a couple of them into small tunnels and provided a couple of wooden cars. Entering the room to find them, she was already excited.

She quickly swept away what I'd set out and got to work building and balancing

Creating Ramps at varying heights and angles produced different results

The books became tunnels, ramps, roads, mountains, garages, houses and more. Yep, just books.

The dialogue this activity produced was incredibly beneficial and my favourite outcome

The amount of time she spent on this activity even surprised me. I'll set it out again with extra/different materials next time.

For more fun Building Activities with stuff from around the house click on the Picture

 

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by providing smaller, sturdier books. Board books would be perfect for this. Assist your child in creating simple structures like a garage for the cars or one long tunnel. Set up a few basic book ramps for your child to race their cars down.

- Extend this activity by challenging your child with all different sized, shaped books. Try soft cover books and see if they make a different. Have your child experiment with varying heights and angles for ramps and include a measuring tape for added maths skills. Challenge your child to use every single book in one long continuous tunnel. 

- Mix it up by providing other materials to build with to provide different challenges. Ask your child to look around the house and see what ideas they come up with. 

- Make your child aware of the problem solving they are doing. "How are you going to get that ramp to stay leaning up against that book without it falling over?" "Putting the 2 books back-to-back like that for extra sturdiness was a great sollution/idea. Well done!" etc


- Instead of always giving your child directions as to how they are expected to play, I like to mix it up and create "invitations" to play where children can explore and figure out for themselves what they can do. This type of open-ended activity allows the child to take the activity to a level they are comfortable with while giving them the freedom to explore different angles. Your child may come up with other fabulous games/activities with just these 2 materials.


- Use new language and descriptive words when talking to your child about what they are doing, like, "balancing" and "gravity" This will help with their language development and conceptual understanding.




Happy playing,
Debs :)

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I sure do love a good "Invitation to Play" You can read more about what an Invitation to Play is here.

The things I loved the most about this particular activity were the language development, creativity and imagination used through out the activity. Throw in fine motor skills, a sensory experience and more, and you have a good fun learning experience.

Ages: 2-6+

(M enjoyed this at 3.5 and you can see ways to simplify or extend to meet your child's needs at the bottom in the Handy Tips)

Materials: Playdough, pompoms (with tweezers), patty pans, feathers, chocolate tray (but you can use the materials you have on hand!)

Fine motor skills and co-ordination to separate the patty pans (you can separate for younger children)

Creativity, fine motor skills, colours, patterns

Learning new skills. Rolling to make a ball and applying pressure. 

More pressure, less pressure? Discovering what is needed.

Imitation

Talking about "layers" and "sizes" 3 layers. Large, medium and small.

Creation and creativity

Faces, expressions, emotions, creativity, imagination....

A whole wonderful sweet shop. Language and Imaginative play.

That's a lot of learning from one simple play idea and a few materials...


Handy Tips

- Simplify this activity by providing larger pompoms to avoid choking hazards and leaving out things like the tongs. Helping preparing things like separating patty pans and demonstrating how to roll balls, etc, will all assist.

- Extend this activity by introducing some letter or number cards and seeing how these are used within the invitation. Pretend to be a customer who is requesting some sweets made using the letters of your name etc

- Problem Solving. Make your child aware of the problem solving involved. "How do you know how much play dough to pull off to fit in the containers/patty pans?" etc

- Use any other materials you may have around the house. Allow your child to request additional items they may require.

- Talk with your child 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.

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

- Supervise your child when using small items such as mini pompoms.

More Invitations to Play

Dried Playdough and Water

Pipecleaners, Playdough and Beads

Boxes and Tools

Pipe cleaners, Craft sticks, Playdough and Animals

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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We just love playing and creating on a Sticky Easel. You can see how to make one here, they are so simple and yet so much fun! 

Today I set up a quick Invitation to Play with the sticky easel and ribbons and string.

Ages: 2-6+

(M is 3 years old here. See Tips at the bottom to simplify or extend to meet the needs of your child)

 Materials: Contact paper/Sticky-back plastic (the stuff you cover books with), sticky tape, string, ribbon, wool etc.

I provided the string/ribbon in different lengths. Some short, some long. 

Maddie got herself into a bit of a tangle here :)

We talked a lot about different lengths, patterns, colours, designs, weaving, manipulating and more while we played

Adding in different widths. Easy to talk about the contrast with children. 

"Wow, that is a thick ribbon. It is so much wider than the string" etc

Use ribbons and string to make letters, words, numbers, designs, pictures and so on.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by providing materials for sticking that are appropriate for your child. If strings provide a hazard for your child, be sure to supervise and/or switch for shorter lengths. Also, if sitting/standing at an easel won't work, try sticking the contact onto a baking tray and giving them that to play with on the floor.

- Extend this activity by having your child test the strength of the stickiness by trying to stick other objects from around the room on there. What weight or size becomes too much? Use the sticky easel for early literacy practice such as making letters, writing words etc.

-Ask questions to help connect their understanding and use vocabulary to give them words to describe what they're creating, eg. "That looks great, tell me about it" "What are you creating?" "Why did you choose that?" "How are you going to fill this space?" "I love how you've lined them all up in a row" etc.

- Listen to your child talk as they go through their experiences. This will help you determine where they are at with their learning, knowledge and understanding and help you to develop the activity (or future activities) to their level and interests.

Here are some more fun activities using contact paper

Craft Sticks and Straws on the Sticky Easel

15 Fun ways to use Contact Paper

15 MORE Fun activities with Contact Paper

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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Twist ties. One of those items that we end up accidently collecting but never actually use for some reason. The white ones come free in the packs of plastic freezer bags here in Australia. After getting some coloured ones from a craft supplies shop, I decided it was time to actually put them to use!

The cool thing about twist ties is that there is a very thin strip of wire through the centre of them so they are great for manipulating and therefore perfect for practicing and developing fine motor skills.

Rather than deciding how they should be used, I presented them to my daughter in an Invitation to Play so that she could explore them and investigate their potential herself.

Ages: 2-6+ 

(M is currently 3.5 years old. See the bottom of the post for Handy Tips on how to simplify or extend to meet your child's individual needs)

Materials: I provided Twist ties (the coloured ones were separate and the white ones I left as they came, joined together), black paper, PVA glue and a paintbrush.

Developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination to peel and separate the twist-ties

She was very interested in glueing them to the paper. The black paper made a great contrast and she enjoyed the white glue on the paper as well!

An important part of this process was the language that she was using as we talked about what she was doing.

There was a lot of attempting to twist and tie them. This was fiddly for little fingers but excellent practice.

She was very pleased with herself when she managed to get ones to twist and stay together.

I had a turn too. Playing with your child is a special time and one that is gone all too soon. Take every opportunity that you can.

Use twist ties to make letters or numbers, to spell words and more....

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by simply allowing your child to investigate and explore the twist ties themselves and let them decide what they could do with them. For younger children who's fine motor skills are still developing do not focus too much on twisting them together as it can be quite tricky. Encourage bending them into different shapes

- Extend this activity by challenging your child to build various items out of twist ties. I attempted a cube and found it was a bit more challenging than I'd imagined. They are fiddly little things! :) Encourage your child to make letters or numbers from twist ties. How many letters can they make using only 1 twist-tie? How many need 2? etc

- Instead of always giving your child directions as to how they are expected to play, I like to mix it up and create "invitations" to play where children can explore and figure out for themselves what they can do. This type of open-ended activity allows the child to take the activity to a level they are comfortable with while giving them the freedom to explore different angles.


- Process over Outcome. Remember that children need to create and explore, they don't need it to be a specific item at the end. Allow this and don't push them to think they must make something "real." Certainly with an activity such as this, the process is more important then the outcome.


-Ask questions to help connect their understanding and use vocabulary to give them words to describe what they're experiencing, eg. "What are you doing with the twist-ties?" "Why did you choose to paste them like that?" "How are you going to attach this to that?" "I love how you've managed to twist those ends together to make a..." etc

- Focus on improving particular skills with your child and help them to practice, ie. Wiping excess glue before pasting to avoid drips.

- Keep a damp cloth beside them so that they are able to wipe down their hands easily and quickly

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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