The change in seasons can be a dramatic one, depending on where you live. Here in Australia, Autumn (Fall) is during the months of March, April and May and we actually have very few deciduous trees (trees that loose their leaves) that are native to our country. We do have some, but they are far outnumbered by the evergreen trees, so when we see the change in colour and pops of red, orange and yellow appearing on trees, they really stand out against the all the green.

To further investigate the changes happening around us and to inspire learning and creativity, I set up this Autumn Leaf Investigation Table for my kids. At ages 4 and 7, I knew that their experiences were going to be different to one another and that materials and even expectations had to be open-ended and able to be used in a way that interested them and was appropriate to their levels.

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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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Open Ended explorations for Children are vital in their development and constructive play is a great way to encourage this.

Children love to physically explore and manipulate materials as it helps them to gain a better understanding of their world and gives them the control to move, question and create.

Today M (3.5) and a mini mate, took on the role of 'Builders' and got cracking.

Ages- 2-6+

The Set Up

Creating an "Invitation to Play" is as easy as setting out a few materials to set the intention of the play and then let the kids go for it.

Materials: Empty cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes. Any play construction toys such as hard hat, hammer, drill, measuring tape etc

I also popped a "broken" stool in for them to hone their fix-it skills

The Play

First it's fixing time

Then time to build. Notice the added containers/boxes that the kids gathered themselves?

Their minds were working hard and were set on their task.

The ever evolving construction site. Builder J is busy drilling the front.

This type of play is fantastic for Collaborative play. 

Working and playing together with their peers leads to skills such as sharing, taking turns, compromising, working together, language development and so on.

Checking to ensure it's been built to specification. 

Note the addition of measuring skills, number recognition and so on.

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by simply providing the basic materials and letting the children loose on it. You could assist younger children with the building process. Talking with them about how to balance the items, which are best for the base, etc.

- Extend this activity by giving your child/ren a "brief" on what's expected. Join the role play fun by being a contractor who is calling in a building team for a particular project. Perhaps you need a building of a particular height, width etc. Add toy telephones to call your workers and explain what's needed. Be sure to add in other materials such as measuring tapes, spirit levellers etc. 

- Talk to your child about what they are doing/building in order to develop their cognitive skills (thinking) and language development. Not to forget the important bonding that takes place between you both.

- Giving children a different scale to work with or a different surface, etc, will affect their behaviour and will involve problem solving processes that they're unaware they're even using. They require concentration and identification. eg. These kids were building on a soft surface which makes their process slightly different to if they were building on a flat, solid surface

- Repeat this activity with different materials, in a different location, with different specifications... etc. Children need to be exposed to experiences more than once and mixing it up will ensure that they are focusing on, gaining or using different skills each time.

- If you don't have "pretend tools" etc... then make some! Let children use their imagination to find something or create something they think could be appropriate for the job.

Looking for more Pretend/Imaginative Play Activities?

Here are some of our favourites

Pretend School

Pretend Washing Up - Water play

Pretend Shop. Learning Numbers

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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Children love to build. It's something to do with the challenge, the skill and probably the knocking down, that makes it such an appealing activity for kids. It's not hard to find things around your house (other than blocks etc) that your children could build with, and today we raided the plastics cupboard to give it a go.

You will need some plastic plates, cups and bowls (or whatever you have on hand really)

I got these from KMart ages ago and at the time they were $3 each set. I think they may be $2 now!

All I did was put them on the floor. Job done, haha. 

Now leave it up to your child to figure out what to do.

It wasn't long before she was building!

That naughty gravity!

The challenge, use ALL of them in one tower

What goes up...

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by just focussing on balancing as many as your child is capable of. Provide a stable surface to begin on.

- Extend this activity by challenging your child to use every plastic item they have in the one tower. See if they can build 2 towers that they can join together somehow. Include a focus on colours and patterns as well.

- Mix it up by providing other plastic items like various shaped and sized containers, funnels, bottles etc to provide different challenges.

- Make your child aware of the problem solving they are doing. "How are you going to get the bowl to balance on the cup?" "I love how you turned the cup upside down to balance it on top of another cup" 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 some plastic pieces.


- 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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Ages: 2-6+

Materials: Pipecleaners, string/line

In order to further develop fine motor skills as well as working on problem solving and creativity, I rigged up a line between 2 chairs*, hung a couple of pipe cleaners from it and presented my daughter with a bunch of pipe cleaners of her own as an Invitation to Play.
*If using in a classroom setting or with children who might pull on the string and drag the chairs down, be sure to affix the line between 2 areas that can't easily move.

Would you believe this simple idea of hanging Pipe cleaners on a string could keep your little one occupied and learning for ages? Well, in this case, it did. I loved the open-endedness of this activity as well as the room for so much extension and other activities. See "Handy Tips" below the pictures for more ideas.

 Your child could create their own pipe cleaner sculpture using this method

 Practicing different loops and twists to make the pipe cleaners stay on the line while pulling the string down and closer to her body

 Having the rope/string at eye level present a different view and experience for the child. It dictates where their hands need to be

The hardest part for Madeline was when she decided to make a "swing" out of the pipe cleaners. Attaching a pipe cleaner across 2 hanging pipe cleaners presented her with a problem solving challenge and gave her hand eye coordination a good work out.

Handy Tips

- Simplify this activity by giving yonger children a much lower line or a small basket or collander to poke pipe cleaners in and wrap them around

- Extend this activity by hanging string at different heights or at different angles to present different challenges for children. Hang a few intersecting lines and add some extra materials like large threading beads or patty pans and watch their creativity 

- Use this activity to teach patterns, colours or numbers if you like. Just show/explain your focus to the child and provide the colours or amount of pipe cleaners required. 

For example:
- Instruct your child to hang/attach only Blue pipe cleaners etc,

- Have them hang them in a pattern (red, then blue, then green, then red, then blue, then green...what comes next? etc),

- Have them hang 5 pipe cleaners across and 3 pipe cleaners down 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.

- Demonstrate some of the techniques that could be used to attach and hang pipe cleaners on one another if your child is struggling or asks for assistance

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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Here is another open ended Invitation to Play idea that could have your child occupied and learning for ages. A Multi-Material Playdough Exploration.

Develop those senses, practice skills and give their brain a work out by providing a range of attractively presented materials to work with a play dough base.

Ages: 1+

Materials: This was a simple set up of 4 different coloured balls of playdough and 6 different tubs of materials



 The containers held the following materials.

1)Patty pans and doileys (she used them before I got a pic), 2)Soft things- pom poms and wool, 3)Pretend play objects- Small plastic animals, trees and fences 4)Long stick like objects, straws, coloured sticks and coloured popsicle sticks, 5)Mix tub- cut up pipe cleaners, little bits of wood ends and plastic teddy bears and 6)Basic playdough tools- rolling pin, cutters and pattern roller

Simply 'discovering' and exploring the different materials within each tub was fun and exciting.

Giving her choice and control over what and how she used each item was what kept her exploring and manipulating for quite some time.

Some tips:

- Repeat this activity time and time again with the same or different materials. You will be surprised by the amount of different ways they use the same materials.

- If you feel your child gets "stuck" repeating the same process again and again, you could play along side them and explore different ways to use the materials yourself. Your child will see what you are doing and how you are doing it and learn

- Use the materials you have at your own house. You don't need to buy things specifically. Be creative with what you find around the house for them to use.

- This activity would be enjoyed by children of all ages

Happy playing,

Debs :)

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Open ended activities (meaning there is no specific end result required and children can take the activity to whatever level they desire) are my all time favourite types of activities with children.

Whilst we always have a lot of fun learning new skills and creating decorative and useful items when crafting or cooking, providing an activity that I don't know exactly where it's going to lead is when I witness the most authentic learning and where I experience the most delight watching.

Providing 4 materials for my daughter to manipulate and explore on a mat is how I created this invitation for play. The rest was up to the child.

 Here is the invitation to play

 Bypassing all the animals, it was "plant making" time with the pipe cleaners and playdoh

 Using coordination and fine motor skills to wrap one pipe cleaner around the other

 The beginnings of a sculpture. Giving their brain a workout and using problem solving to make things stand up, stay upright, keep balanced etc.

 This is perfect fine motor skill practice for young children. Simply wrapping pipe-cleaners around craft sticks

 She spent a long time wrapping and wrapping and wrapping to create this beautiful "plant," using the playdoh as a stand

"I'm making a sun"

Some tips:

- Notice she didn't use the animals at all. Not once. This is fine. Allowing them to choose which materials they deem necessary to whatever they are creating is important for their own creativity and problem solving. Letting them know they don't have to use everything they see could be valuable for your child

- This activity really doesn't need to be simplified or extended. That is the beauty about open-ended play.

- 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.

- This activity can be repeated time and time again with a different end result each time. You can also mix around and change some of the materials that you provide each time to inspire new ideas

- Use this time to demonstrate particular skills to them that they might be attempting unsuccessfully. Just learning to wrap something around an object might need some guidance. Wrapping a pipe cleaner around something solid and stable like a craft stick is easier than wrapping one around another pipe-cleaner. Start with the easier experience first and work up to the harder experiences.

- Make your child aware of the problem solving they are doing with questions and comments. "How did you get that pipe cleaner to stay on the end of the craft stick?" "Using the playdoh as a stand was a good idea to get your plant to stand upright" etc


Debs :)

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