Sunday, July 21, 2013

Quick and Easy Car Play

This was an off the cuff activity, while I was washing up my son wanted to play in the utility that has a step. I opened up the cupboard and saw my plastic tub lids and ice cube trays. I gave them to him for ramps but as we played with a
DIY Road. (http://littlebrightsparks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/diy-road-activity.html) 
previously he decided to use them to make a road.
His favourite was the ice cube trays as they made a bumpy road.

Dylan 2.7 years 

DIY Road activity




My son has become obsessed with cars and has reinstated his interest in his toot toot garage.  You can buy extension parts but I decided to make some extra road and tunnels to encourage imaginative play.

Materials needed
Old cardboard boxes such as cereal boxes
Scissors
Black tape or marker
Toilet and kitchen rolls - for tunnels




Dylan liked turning the road over to see the cereal advertising, he needed help to construct the road to get a complete circuit at first then he successfully modelled what I had shown him. He did get a little frustrated when the road moved so I encouraged him to overlap the pieces and place the garage on top of the pieces.

This was mainly an imaginative play session but we did talk about directions like left and right , forward and reverse.  I also encouraged him to count the pieces and the black stripes. 

I now have this in a bag ready to whip out when I'm looking for a quick activity.
We do have a car mat, this could be used to extend that or to take in the garden.
I have seen another blog make a road out of playdoh. We might try this next.

To make the tunnel I cut a tab out of the kitchen roll and taped it to the two toilet rolls.



Dylan 2.7 years

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Sandpit fun: small world dino land

My husband has built my son a brilliant sand pit and  I have been trying out new ways to get him to use it.  He enjoys playing with his dinosaurs and one of the previous times was also using playdoh and pasta.  So I decided to make him a small world  dino land with twigs, leaves and stones.  He is only 21/2 so he wouldn't be able to make one on his own.  I then had to model and explain what it was and how to play .




He started burying body parts. 



He made and identified foot prints by counting the number of toes/ claws.






We talked about carnivores eating meat and herbivores eating plants and role played this.
I was impressed how quickly he understood.

Then we lined them up in order of size.


Then he wanted to knock them off using a ball.


There are lots of activities to do with sand and dinosaurs.

The ones we covered today :-

Dino prints: make and match
Feeding habits 
Imaginative play
Sequencing- size
Sorting by colour
Describing body parts/ counting body parts
Balancing 
Target practise

I think he enjoyed to role play and burying the most.

Dylan 2.7

It was a lovely day, enjoyed the weather. Another easy activity for my son to enjoy the fantastic sandpit my husband made.



Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Wicked Water Balloon Day


The weather has been lovely the last week or so, but it is so hot Dylan has loved the water play. I decided to research ideas to use the water balloons I brought ages ago.

Here are the ideas that we managed to do today.

Water balloon balancing- we used utensils like a spoon, siv, tennis racket, frisbee.
I asked him to walk as fast as he could to the washing pole and back. He couldn't run very fast without  dropping it and he did the usual of holding it on there with the other hand.
This is good for physical skills.
To incorporate learning of colours, numbers or letters I asked him to select a certain colour or number written on the balloon.

Water Balloon Yo-Yo- very simple to make and he loved it. Just be careful when the elastic springs back. I attached a elastic band that I had cut to a water balloon. General learning about how materials behave like elastic and physical skills to master the movement.  We used this as a counting activity, you could recite the alphabet too. We also used it to splash into the paddling pool which Dylan loved. I showed him how to swing it around your head . He tried it but wasn't too keen on this version.

Water Balloon Golf- change the ball to a water balloon. I encouraged him to move the balloon from a starting point to a finish point without breaking it.  We didn't do any literacy or numeracy for this just physical skills. You could incorporate literacy by having target points as letters or numbers.


Water Balloon Polo- We extended to a game of polo where he had to get the balloon through various sized arches. Again the focus was physical but you could label the arches. Dylan cheated for this and used his hands some of the time.

Water Balloon Bowling- we tried the air filled skittles but it was too windy. So we used these inflatables.
The rolling was not that successful so I encouraged him to throw them at particular coloured inflatable skittle. 

Water Balloon Washing Line activities- we started using it as an obstacle course running in and out of the balloons.   Then we used it like piƱatas where he used different bats and rackets to hit amp s burst the balloon.  We counted the swings and we talked about colours. You could write letters or numbers on them as an alternative. 

Tools and water balloons - Dylan used his bob the builder tools to try burst to balloons. He loved this also and he soon figure out the tools that were the best which was the saw 

Water balloon lunch- very simple activity with a plastic knife and fork with a paper plate. We did a little role play discussing food on the plate then he used the cutlery to burst them. Again loved it.

Water ballon clock activity- we used paper plates with nip umber and arranged them like a clock face. We had to place stones to stop them flying away in the wind. As he got a stone I asked him to place them on the number. We did the same but using a balloon filled with water. He then decided to kick the balloon to the number.  He also did different movements to get to each number I.e. hop to number 3, jump to number 7.

Umbrella  Water Balloon Toss- the idea of the game was to toss the water ballon into the umbrella. He did it the very first try but failed to do it again bless him. again easy to incorporate literacy . Numeracy and colours.
Water Balloon Bouncing-  Dylan loves his trampoline so he asked to to take them on. I used balloons filled with water as they are stronger.  He tried to make them bounce high and  to do seat drop on them. Eventually they burst after a lot of fun.

Water Balloon Rolling- he rolled the balloons down the slide and most times they splashed.

Water balloon window clock- using foam numbers we made a clock face on the window simply using water. Then I asked Dylan to throw a balloon at a certain number.

Water Balloon Dribbling- the game was to rubble the balloon to the correct colour cone. There are lots of different variations of this game.  Dylan didn't like dribbling to far and picked the balloon up but with practise and age he will become more able and confident.



We also did the usual catching, throwing, squashing and stomping on them. We had a wicked day especially as it wasn't too hot. 

Thanks Dylan for this wicked day! 

Anyone have ideas how to extend these activities or other wicked water balloon activities?

Dylan 2.7 years