Garden Small World Play

Wugs is fascinated with flowers at the moment.  Thankfully we live in an area that is plentiful with them. Lining the path from our condo to the local supermarket is a hedge full of little orange and yellow flowers. Every time we come back from our walks, Wugs insists on picking an orange flower from the hedge and taking it back home with him.

I decided to have some fun and experiment with a small world  play based on his love of flowers and incorporating a couple of sensory materials.  I added a little edible treat to the small world play in the form of milo chocolate cereal balls which surprisingly took him a while to discover.  He played with this for a full hour and was so careful with the scene that when he finished, we were able to fasten down the lid and play with it the next day.

What we used:
Large shallow container
Green play dough (following this recipe)
Rolled oats
Artificial flowers
Small plastic flowers
Small plastic bird figurines
Toilet roll
Milo chocolate cereal
Scoops
Dishes

Expanding Vocabulary Using Old Greetings Cards

I'm in decluttering mode at the moment.  It's a therapeutic activity I turn to whenever I feel there is just too much stuff in the house and things are spinning out of control.  I found myself in the spare room this afternoon sorting through an old box of stationery that I brought across from England. I discovered some beautiful old greetings cards and art postcards there that I have held onto for years.  I didn't really want to throw them out, but I couldn't find a use for them as it's been a few years since I wrote a letter by hand.  Just then a little head popped up...Elijah gathered up the cards and started pointing out the different things he could see.  It occurred to me that this would be a wonderful way for him to expand his vocabulary and an interesting (and cheaper) alternative to using flash cards.

Play Dough Gift Tubs

It was Wugs' birthday party today and I was in a rush to complete my play dough gift tubs which I added to the party bags for the children to take away.  They were a fairly inexpensive gift to make.  I made a couple of batches of play dough using the recipe from this site and dyed it blue, green and red and filled the tubs to two-thirds.  The remaining play dough I dyed yellow (which came out a darker yellow than I anticipated).  I added some gold glitter to the yellow play dough and filled the tubs to the top separating it from the first batch of play dough with wax paper.  Finally I inserted a cookie cutter and they were ready to go.

What we used:
Playdough:
Flour
Salt
Vegetable oil
Cream of tartar
Food colouring
Glitter

Cookie cutter
Small tubs

Resist Tape Art

What a brilliant, effective process art and it makes lovely cards and gifts!  This was a gift to Wugs' "Nana" in England (which probably should have been spelt "Nanna").  The only problem we encountered with making names using the resist tape is that the names have to be fairly short in order to fit onto the card.

The preparation for this art took a little while as I needed to cut the tape and place it onto the card for Wugs.  A bit of precision is required here because if the tape is not aligned perfectly, the letter looks disjointed.  (For example, in the first picture, on the bottom of the first "N", the tape wasn't overlapped exactly and it shows up when the resist tape is peeled away).  The first picture also shows what the art work looks like before the resist tape is removed (see the two middle letters).

Once I had finished adding the resist tape, I let Wugs paint away and when he was finished I left the art work to dry a little before gently peeling back the tape.  The beauty of resist tape is that it sticks to the paper like sellotape, but doesn't tear the paper when it is pulled off like sellotape would.

What we used:
Scotch magic tape
Card
Paint
Scissors

Rain Art

It is the start of the monsoon season here in Singapore and I thought we would celebrate by trying some rain art. 

I gave Wugs the felt tip pens and let him colour in the paper plate.  Once he had finished, we went out onto our balcony and placed the plate in an area where the rain would reach it.  We stood back and watched as the rain water blended the colours together to give this beautiful effect.

What we used:

Paper plate

Washable felt tip pens/markers
Rain!

Alphabet Tubs

I wanted to find a fun way to introduce Wugs to letters and I came across the idea of doing an alphabet tub.  These tubs can either include all the letters in the alphabet or focus on single letters.  I didn't want to overwhelm Wugs so I focused on one letter per month.  The idea is to fill the tub with objects that have names beginning with that letter.  To compliment the activity, I added some flashcards so Wugs could match the images on the cards with the objects in the tub.  This was a great activity for building up his vocabulary.  I didn't continue with it beyond letter "C" though as creating the flashcards was a little time-consuming (and not necessary, but Wugs had come to expect it) and I found myself buying objects for the tub, so it might be a better activity to do with a slightly older child who has more toys.

Sun Suncatcher

I have been trying to build our activities around particular themes this year.  This month we were focusing on the sky and the weather.  As Wugs has just learned the word for “sun”, it felt appropriate to create a sun-shaped suncatcher. 

What we used:

Contact Paper

Coloured Transparent Paper (red and yellow)

Coloured Tissue Paper (red and yellow)

I cut up the paper into large squares and put it into the tub.

When we attempted this activity previously (see here), we attached the contact paper horizontally to the table.  This time I attached it vertically to the balcony glass door.  This worked much better as it reduced the chances of Wug’s hand and arm getting stuck to the contact paper.  I put the tubs of coloured paper on a chair near the balcony door and left him to play.  He engaged with it straightaway sorting out the tubs of cut up paper.  Although I offered him both yellow and red (anticipating that he would stick both to the contact paper and overlap to create orange) he seemed quite specific about only wanting the yellow coloured transparent paper on the contact paper.  He added to the contact paper over a number of hours (without any instruction from me) until his bath time when I took the paper off the door, backed it with a large sheet of tissue paper and cut out a sun shape.