The lead up to Christmas was a great time for writing messages in our house. Our visiting elf Christopher Poppinkins left notes for the girls and they responded with their own notes, we made gifts for the neighbours with a little note attached, wrote Christmas cards for the family, shopping lists and yesterday the girls helped me write a list of songs for my music class.
As children approach school age, parents are often anxious about their children’s emerging literacy and how best to support them at home.
When is the right time to introduce writing?
Does my child need to be able to write their name before they go to school?
How do I start?
Do they have to form letters in a particular way?
Writing is a complex skill involving much more than the correct formation of letters. I can’t guarantee that my girls will continue to love writing but I think we are headed in the right direction.
If you are interested in finding out how I encourage the girls to write and keep it enjoyable I am sharing some of my experience in a guest post for ‘What to Expect.’
Looking across the street at our neighbours wonderful light displays makes our house look a little inferior. I really don’t mind because our decorations are a labour of love. Almost everything is homemade and those that are not have been bought very cheaply from charity shops or dollar stores. We may not set the street alight but the decorations are for the children and have had the children’s full involvement.
We have a cherry tree outside our front door and have been gradually adding decorations to it. They are not as beautiful as many of those you may see on Pinterest but they are all the children’s own work.
Here are some of the things we have been doing over the past month.
1.Lolly/Popsicle Stick Snowflakes.
2. Snowmen
Joining the pieces
colouring the nose in orange
Fixing on the nose
Look they are holding hands
Join polysterene balls together with cocktail sticks and decorate with push pins or sticky tape. This activity took on a life of its own as my daughter’s let their imaginations run wild.
3. Decorate old Cd’s
4. Ice ornaments
5. Pine cone reindeer
6. Gingerbread Cookies
7. Wreath
We bought a cheap tinsel wreath in dollar store and re-threaded it with items we had collected from the garden.
8. Hula hoop weaving
Using old Christmas decorations and our spiderweb we had made for Hallowe’en.
9. Snowflakes
I’d recommend using thin paper with young children as they found them hard to cut. In nursery we used to use kitchen paper, thin packing paper works well too.
10. Salt dough decorations
11. Recycling Christmas Cards
My favourite. I left out a basket of old Christmas cards, scissors, tape and glue sticks and this is what the girls came up with. We also used them to make gift tags for family presents.
12. Table Centre
Using items we collected in the autumn, scented with oil, dusted with fake snow and adding a few finishing touches.
A snow day is always a treat but after a few days off school, enthusiasm wanes. Try some of these snow day play activities to keep your kids entertained.
Sledging
Sledging is always great fun, it was always my favourite snow activity as a kid. You could shake it up a bit with some Winter Olympic themed bobsledding. Lie on your front while being pushed down the hill shouting oy, oy, oy. You could race one another too.
Snowmen
See if you can roll a really big ball to make a body. Sometimes kids find this difficult but if you I start it off and everyone joins in to help, it is lots of fun.
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Make a baby snowman and pull it along on a sledge.
Add accessories such as buttons, hats and scarves or Mr Potato Head features.
Even without much snow you can make miniature snowmen and add an origami hat.
tiny snowman perched on the fence
Snow Painting
Fill glitter sprinklers or herb containers with powder paint. Little ones enjoy sprinkling it around while older children draw pictures in the snow. You could use fingers or sticks to draw and colour them in.
Make a snow angel and colour it with paint.
Paint a snow sculpture
Build a snow sculpture and add colour with block water colours painted on with brushes. You could also paint pictures on the snow.
Winter Olympic Fun
It can be great fun to stage events from the Winter Olympics. Ice hockey, curling, skating and skiing are fun events to try even without snow but with snow on the ground they are even more fun.
What had originally been an icy art project, unexpectedly turned into a fascinating science investigation.
A few weeks ago we filled up my baking tins with water that we coloured with powder paint and dropped all manner of things into them. Shells, berries, leaves, sequins, buttons and even a stone were placed inside to make ornaments for our tree. The weather unfortunately instantly became warmer, so we had to wait some time before they were ready to hang. Even then, only the top layer of ice had frozen and within an hour of hanging them on the tree they had melted. We also discovered that if you colour water with powder paint it separates once it begins to freeze, so most of the ornaments were not the lovely colour we had hoped for.
The girls have been peeking outside every morning to check if there is any ice. This week they were rewarded with below freezing temperatures. The ice ornaments were finally ready! We hung them on the tree. The sun was shining and the tree stands in the sun until mid afternoon. I wasn’t sure how long they would stay this time as ‘plop’ one fell down from the tree.
Let’s put it by the door. That’s in the shade – it might make a nice present for Father Christmas.
A present for Santa
As we went inside I asked the girls to watch the ornaments from the window.
They are melting.
How do you know?
They’re wet and they’re dripping down.
What do you think will happen as they melt?
I don’t think it will fall off the string because the string is attached. It will just melt and the floor will be wet.
When we went out later there were more interesting observations
Look this one has holes in it. It might break not melt.
Can I touch one?
Yes sure.
It’s cold and wet.
Within an hour or so the tree was in the shade and the temperature was beginning to drop. We noticed that the drips were starting to turn into little icicles.
The girls thought this was really cool and the next day even more so when we saw large icicles had formed.
They rushed outside to feel them, touching them gently so that they didn’t break off.
A Winter Pirate Treasure Hunt
The weather was so cold that during the late afternoon I sneaked into the garden with a jug of water and some pirate coins. I put the coins in various containers and poured a little water on the top.
In the morning I invited the girls on a pirate treasure hunt. First they needed to make a map. I had some coffee stained and singed paper that in true Blue Peter fashion I had prepared earlier.
Next they needed their pirate toolkit:
A hammer
A spoon
A pot of pirate sea salt
Ready Mummy
Out they went and quickly found coins. The hammers were their first choice. They weren’t very successful so then they tried the salt. They found that if they used the spoons and the salt they could gradually get down to the coin and hook it out.
Got it!
This could take ages, if we got a jug of hot water it might be quicker.
The ice is still there you just can’t see it.
Drop it in the water
We were talking about the sea salt later in the day.
How do the pirates get salt from the sea?
Good question. The salt is in the water so how do you think they could get it out?
I don’t know.
Shall we try it?
Yes.
Little Scientists
What do we need to do to make the salt disappear into the water?
We need to dissolve it
How? Do you remember how we made jelly dissolve or the sugar water we make for the hummingbirds?
We put hot water on it. Let’s be scientists and do an experiment.
The girls helped to stir the mixture until all the salt had dissolved. We poured the mixture into a pan and put it on the stove.
What happens to water when it gets cold?
It turns to ice
What about when it gets hot?
I don’t know.
Watch. What can you see.
steam
If I put this spoon over the steam what can you see on the spoon.
It’s wet – water.
Yes the water is turning to steam. Now look what’s happening in the pan. What do you think the white stuff is?
I don’t know. Is it steam.
No. The water has gone now so what is left?
salt.
We had another idea for an experiment. If we put the salt back in water and then left it outside would it freeze?
As an outsider ‘Thanksgiving’ is a bit of a mystery. My basic understanding is that is a time to say thank you, get together with family and eat a big turkey meal and is associated with harvest festival.
However, as a young child you might be forgiven for believing that it is a celebration of turkeys. Whilst browsing Pinterest a few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the amount of turkey crafts. There were a few posts about ‘trees of thanks’ but every other Thanksgiving activity included turkeys. I asked my 9-year-old
You’ve learned about Thanksgiving at school. What do turkeys have to do with Thanksgiving?
I have no idea.
Did they eat turkey at the first Thanksgiving?
I think so.
I know that turkey is eaten at Thanksgiving but then we eat turkey at Christmas and we would think it a little weird if everyone started making turkey crafts for Christmas.
I did a bit if searching on the internet. The origins of Thanksgiving come from the arrival of the pilgrim fathers to America from Plymouth, England. The journey across the ocean on the Mayflower was dangerous and many lives were lost. Coinciding with the European Harvest Festival the pilgrims decided to hold a feast to thank God for their safe arrival and invited the native Americans to join them. It is suggested that 4 turkeys (a native American bird) were killed for the feast (though it is likely they ate many other local fowl, game and seafood too). The turkey came to be known as a symbol of affluence (even in Victorian times only the very richest Europeans could afford to eat turkey at Christmas) . I assume therefore, that the turkey at thanksgiving symbolises a way expressing thanks for prosperity.
I was interested to find out if my-5-year old knew what Thanksgiving was.
I know what it is. It’s when we give lots of stuff.
She remembers her friend across the road bringing her pretzels last year.
Why do we give stuff?
To say Thank You
I wondered if she knew anything about the first Thanksgiving. I told them about the first settlers here from Europe.
How do you think they got here?
On a boat.
I think it would make a lot of sense to help their understanding of Thanksgiving if they could understand how difficult it is to travel on a boat without an engine for thousands of miles across the ocean. I looked for a book from the Library to help explain. None of them seemed quite right until we found this one, a simple description of the pilgrims journey from the point of view of the children.
I decided to take the idea to a free build play session where we began by reading the book.
The children were very interested in the fact that the pilgrims could only eat certain foods on the boat like hard biscuits.
“But I like hard biscuits” said one child.
“Yes but not if you ate them all the time.”
” How did they manage the journey without getting scurvy?” asked another.
“A good question, many of them didn’t”
We brainstormed some of the reasons the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving
A parent had donated large cardboard boxes for us to make a replica of the Mayflower. Fourteen children worked collaboratively to build the boat. They added a mast and sail, lifeboats, steering, roof, a plank and loaded the boat up with food from the play kitchen.
It has been left up for the children to continue to play with and develop their own stories.
I think that makes more sense than making a turkey out of a pine cone.
I used to love frosty days when I was a kid because we could play on the way to school pretending to ice skate or breathe like a dragon. The same sense of wonder came over my girls when they looked out on a clear frosty morning. They dressed quickly and rushed outside to see if they could find ice . They found ice on top of the water table and in containers that we have on the deck.
They soon learned that ice is very cold!
Later in the morning the girls put on their gloves to go out on an ice hunt.
Look there is water and a leaf is floating. The ice has edges, I think there is water underneath.
I removed the lid from the water table. The girls were very excited to find ice inside there too. We added the penguins play set and a few whales.
We made a slide for the penguins with some of the broken ice.
When we got to the front of the house we found a small patch of frost.
Why is it frosty here and not anywhere else?
Because the sun made it melt.
So, why didn’t this bit melt?
It was in the shade.
We decided to leave the lid off the water table to see if we could get even more ice the next day. When they woke up the next day the girls were desperate to get out before any of the ice had melted.
First they checked the water table.
The ice was thick and some of the penguins were buried underneath.
Let’s see what else we can find.
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We went back to the water table where the girls found 2 scoops filled with ice.
We can’t get it out.
Shall I run it under the hot tap like I do with the ice lollies?
Yes please
Next the girls turned their attentions to the animals stuck in the water tray.
Please can we get them out? Can we put hot water on them too?
Yes. I’ll get some.
We poured water onto the ice to free the animals, they could feel the hot water making holes and as we poured more on they were able to free them.
The other side of the water tray made a perfect ice rink for the penguins.
I’m so glad we are home pre-schooling on days like this. Our next project is to make ice decorations for the tree at the front of the house and using pirate treasure maps they made earlier in the week, hunt for coins buried in the ice. My pirate obsessed girls will be armed with special pirate tools and a bit of magic sea salt. Arrrr.
We were a little disorganised this year and didn’t get our pumpkins until Hallowe’en. It seemed such a shame to throw them away almost as soon as we had made them. To avoid this the pumpkins were incorporated into our play, building on the children’s interest in pattern making and investigating some of the questions and discoveries they made when we visited the pumpkin patch.
One of the things I love about living here is that we don’t have to go to the supermarket to buy our pumpkins because there are pumpkin patches everywhere. I love that the children can find out how pumpkins grow by wading their way through the leaves and mud to find the perfect pumpkin.
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Pumpkin Play
Exploring Inside a Pumpkin and Learning about Seeds
I removed the top of one of the pumpkins and gave the girls spoons to explore what was inside.
Look at all the seeds, they look like lemons but with no other sideIt’s a slother pumpkin. It feels really cold. There are lots of stringy bits, they look like messy hair.
We talked about saving the seeds for the Spring, so that we could try to plant pumpkins in the garden next year. This lead to a discussion about how the seeds were spread.
How do the seeds get out of the pumpkin if they are in the pumpkin patch?
The pumpkin gets mouldy and then the seeds can come out.
Do you know how the seeds are spread?
No
What happens to a dandelion seed?
Where are the dandelions seeds?
The seeds are on the dandelion clock.
Oh so they get blown around.
Yes. Does this happen to the pumpkin?
No
We talked about how the animals spread the seeds – the girls thought it was a bit disgusting to talk about poo so we left it at that but later read ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle to remind ourselves how other seeds are spread.
2. Scientific Experiments
How Does the Pumpkin get Soft?
I think we eat this bit because it’s all juicy but it is hard. How do we make it soft?
Hmm, can you think of any ideas?
I know we could make it wet and then dry it.
We could sprinkle it with soft sugar.
We could cover it with a bag.
We covered one half of the pumpkin with a warm flannel to see what would happen.
We sprinkled the other half with caster sugar.
After 30 minutes we checked to see what had happened.
It didn’t work, it just got wet on my side.
What about the sugary side?
It feels softer, the sugar is softer but the pumpkin is hard.
I asked the girls if they could remember how I made spaghetti squash soft (when I tried to cut it, it was so hard I cut my finger instead). They couldn’t remember. I said that they had been along the right lines when they decided to warm it.
How could we warm it?
Put it in the microwave
or?
The oven.
Yes that’s how I made the squash soft.
3. Paint a Pumpkin
We painted our largest pumpkin with acrylic paint. The acrylic paint remains shiny .
4. Make a Squirrel Feeder
With the painted pumpkin we made a squirrel feeder by removing a section at the front and sprinkling it with birdseed. We often have squirrels in the garden but this gave us a good opportunity to watch them close up.
Filling the feeder with seed
Here comes the squirrel
squirrel feeding
5. Fairy Toadstools
Our garden is full of toadstools in this damp Autumnal weather and we have been exploring them to see if we could find any fairies.
Turning the top of the pumpkin upside down made a perfect fairy toadstool for our flower-pot. We are also going to watch and document what happens as the pumpkin starts to decay. It might make a nice art or photography project for the girls.
6. Pumpkin Poetry
I helped the girls to make up a poem about a pumpkin using some of the descriptions I had recorded them saying.
Pumpkins by my 5-year old
Pumpkins are very orange
Inside they have seeds
The seeds look like lemons
And feel slimy and cold.
Around the seeds it is orange and stringy
It looks like crazy hair.
The bottom is lumpy and chunky
I call it the core.
7. Pumpkin Juice.
I sliced and peeled the pumpkin we had been exploring and we used it to make pumpkin juice.
Ingredients (quantities according to taste)
Pumpkin
Apple
Carrot
Ginger
Sprinkle with cinnamon.
8. Seed Collage
One of our current topics is pattern. We used the pumpkin seeds alongside other seeds and pulses to make collages.
9. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
As a healthy snack we tried roasted pumpkin seeds. Sprinkle with oil, salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 25 minutes.
10. Mr Potato Head
We still have one small sweet pumpkin left to make into a pumpkin curry.
Further ideas
Use the seeds for measuring in a balance scale
Use the seeds in a play or mud kitchen
Put a hollow pumpkin in the water tray
Make pumpkin cookies
Make pumpkin drafts or checkers
Roll pumpkins down a hill and see which one reaches the bottom first.
Give children trays of seeds with scoops and containers.
Use the seeds with clay or pumpkin scented playdough.
This year I am home preschooling my 2 youngest, not something I ever thought I would find myself doing but my reasons for making this choice can be found in a previous post Why I am Home Preschooling my Children.
I get a mixed reaction from people, some give me a glazed expression as if to say really? Can’t you just send them to preschool like the rest of us? Others wonder why on earth I would want to. Some look at me as if I am some kind of Supermum and others as if I am denying my kids a normal social life. Some however, just want to know how it all works and what exactly I do with them – this post is for you.
It really isn’t rocket science, I don’t follow a rigid schedule and home schooling allows us loads of flexibility. My 5-year-old said today
I’m glad we are doing your preschool because it means we can go to the zoo whenever we want.
It isn’t entirely without structure though – I plan for the learning environment and have a timetable . I suppose it is a little like having a plan for how you spend time with your children. It isn’t an academic preschool, we play and explore together, sometimes they play alone and we share interests, questions and ideas.
What about interaction with other children?
One day a week we have no preschool the girls go to ballet class, meet with friends and help me with normal everyday things like grocery shopping.
Building a mountain with the large blocks.
Two days a week we attend a local membership based playspace, it’s a little like a toddler group in the UK except that it is a purpose-built space and is open all day. Some of the music and language games we play at home don’t work very well with only 2 children so I run music and movement, craft, sensory play or storytelling sessions here which gives us an opportunity to do activities in a larger group. The rest of the time I allow them to free play but take their learning diaries to record what they may be interested in or achieving in a different context. The girls get chance to play with other children and use different materials than those we have at home.
The other 2 days are home based but sometimes we will use one of them to go out on a trip.
Timetabling
One of the things I have disliked about many preschools is the rigidity of their schedules. There seemed to be little time for the children to become absorbed in a project or flexibility about what they might do each day. I did however feel it was important to have some schedule in place. I created a visual timetable using printed symbols. Certain symbols are always present – Snack, lunch, free play and others I add in based on what we might do that day. The symbols can be moved around and often if we don’t have time for an activity I move it to the bottom of the timetable to be saved for next time. Sometimes I let the children plan the timetable although they don’t exactly have a realistic understanding of time so we usually end up with far too many activities to get through in one day. It is also a really good way of regulating screen time, this usually goes into the timetable for after lunch followed by outdoor choosing time and if they ask for it earlier in the day I point them to the timetable. I’m surprised at how well the timetable works , the girls really respond to it and look forward to knowing what they are doing next.
How we Plan
I plan, building on the children’s interests to provide next steps in their learning. If I observe the children following consistent patterns of play, enjoying particular materials or asking questions, I record them and consider what I might plan next to enable the children to use this skill or interest in a different way or to extend their learning further. For example, my youngest daughter has just learned to cut with scissors and loves to snip paper into tiny pieces. She also loves gluing so I suggested they use the pieces to make a collage. As an extension to this we are going to look at pictures of mosaics for further inspiration and play with wooden pattern tiles. Only having 2 children to observe means that their learning experiences can be truly individualised in a way that might not be possible in a bigger setting.
Planning for the Learning Environment
In addition to this I also have a plan for the environment. How often this changes is fairly flexible. Using information from the observation into planning, I might decide to include particular materials with the sand or water, put a particular craft activity out, lay out particular toys, set up a new role play area or display materials in a certain way. For example the girls were playing cafes at the play centre so at home the next day I gave them notebooks to take orders and a chef’s hat. I laid the table and I was the customer. This also allowed them to build on some of their other current interests like emergent writing and playing picnics. Sometimes we may just try something new and see if they like it and how they play with it – they are usually good at making suggestions as to what we might do next.
The Learning Environment
There are certain materials I like to always have available to the children
In an ideal world clay and paint also but this is a little messy even for me especially in the winter when we don’t use outside as much.
All these materials however are difficult to manage. I have recently reorganised our playroom but I still feel that there are too many things on view.
Writing table. We also have a pot of pens and pencils and scissors downstairs. Glue sticks, paper etc are in a kitchen cupboard.
Loose parts
outside mud kitchen/potion making
boxes labelled with pictures and words
Our role play area. The drawers contain play food and tea sets.
It isn’t as easy to have the environment you would like when it is your own home but I’m constantly re-evaluating how we display things and adding new ideas to the outside area.
Shadows provide extraordinary educational opportunities. Not only do they raise a spontaneous curiosity in the child, stimulating his imagination and exercising his emerging intellectual abilities but they are also omnipresent (even more than sand, stones, water or “pencil and paper”, because you only need a bit of sunlight or even a candle to produce them). Perhaps more effectively than other things, shadows can nourish the child’s need to do and to experiment given the ease with which the variables involved in their formation and transformation can be manipulated.
( Guido Peter – The Hundred Languages of Children)
My youngest has become increasingly fascinated by shadows. As we walk along she shouts
I can see your shadow
or
my shadow is long
With this in mind I thought it would be a nice idea to make shadow shapes and draw around them with pavement chalk. Some shapes worked better than others, my youngest daughter’s shadow looked a little like an embryo!
The girls drew around them. They were particularly interested by the fact that they couldn’t see the whole of their legs. It was a very hot day so only my 4- year- old wanted to colour in the detail. They were very proud of them and pointed them out to their dad every time he walked over the driveway.
drawing around shadows
The finished outline
pavement chalk
the finished drawing
My 4- year -old has very poor eyesight and needs practice copying and tracing shapes to enhance her perceptual motor skills . I hate the idea of sitting her down with worksheets so I thought shadow tracing might be a nice alternative. We took a number of objects outside to draw around. We even attempted to draw around her bike, which was a little tricky.
Later in the week we were playing with blocks in the house.
My 2-year old declared
I have a shadow, it’s behind me
Where is the shadow coming from? What makes it appear?
Maybe the fan.
Okay, so let’s turn the fan off and see if they disappear. Has it gone?
No
My 4-year-old had an idea
I know maybe it’s the light, let’s turn it off. It’s gone!……………oh hang on it’s still there, it’s just fainter.
Shall we see if we have a shadow outside today?
We don’t have a shadow……. Oh wait, when you sit down there is a bit of a shadow.
No shadow
When we sit down there is a bit of a shadow.
Why do you think that happens?
I don’t know. Let’s see if there are any shadows on the grass. No, not even the dog.
Do the trees have shadows?
Yes and the bushes.
investigating shadows near to the ground
My 2-year-old had an idea,
Maybe the sun has taken away our shadows.
No, that’s not right because the sun makes the shadows.
Maybe when the sun is not there it takes them away?
I know, let’s draw a sun and see if they come back.
drawing a sun to bring the shadows back
I know we can stand in the sun and make it bright colours to see if it comes out.
In the meantime my 9-year-old came to join us. I told them the girls had a bit of a problem that they were trying to solve and wondered if she could work it out.
Why is it that when it is cloudy there are no shadows but when things are close to the ground there is a small shadow?
Maybe it’s because it is darker when you are close to the ground
But there is no sun and you need light to make a shadow.
Yes, but if it was dark I couldn’t make a shadow because it couldn’t get darker.
If we were in the sun and it was too bright what would we do?
Stand in the shade.
What makes the shade?
A tree.
So what is happening to make the shade?
I don’t understand.
I drew a picture of the sun in the sky with a stick person stood underneath and a tree with a stick person underneath the tree.
Oh, the tree gets in the way of the sun.
At that moment as the girls were standing in their picture of the sun, the sun came out.
They stood in the sun and hey presto the sun came out. Look, it worked the sun came out!
I think we might work on reflections as a starting point for our pre-school year . We could
Resurrect the shadow puppet theatre
Use the projector to make and investigate shadows
Place paper on the windows and observe and trace shadows
Continue to talk about and ask questions about shadows when we are out and about.
Oh no, it’s raining, that means we can’t do all our fun things like playing on the trampoline and in the sandpit!
There are fun things you can do in the rain too.
Like what?
You can splash in puddles, play with mud or catch raindrops.
Can we make potions in the rain?
Rainy days are perfect for making potions.
I know we could use the rain water because there isn’t any water in the paddling pool.
Yes and you could use mud or mush up wet petals.
Later that day we went for an appointment and when we came out the girls found a fast drip coming from the gutter.
Why is this bit of rain faster?
Where is it coming from?
The roof
Yes, it usually means the gutter is blocked so the water doesn’t go down the drain pipe it falls off the end instead.
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
Why can’t we catch it mummy?
The rain is coming down very fast. What happens when you throw a ball hard?
It bounces high
Yes and the rain is coming down very hard and fast so it bounces off your hand.
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
Shall we go home now and get dry, you could snuggle up in a blanket.
The girls removed their wet shoes. When we arrived home there was a big puddle outside our gate. I asked my 2-year-old if she would like to be carried or splash in the puddle barefooted. She wasn’t sure at first but then declared – splash!
I’m trying to catch a raindrop but it keeps bouncing
After getting dry and snuggling under blankets for a while we decided to venture out for a while. I took the dinosaurs to the sandpit and encouraged the girls to make a swamp.
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When the rain had stopped a disappointed 4-year-old complained
Oh, the rain has stopped we can’t play in the swamp anymore
It’s alright, it will stay wet for a while.
I think I may have succeeded in persuading them that playing in the rain is fun.
Other Rainy Day Ideas
Take umbrellas outside walk under drips or as my 4-year-old suggested – we could play Mary Poppins.
Make patterns with powder paint on the wet ground or on a wet sheet of paper.
Put different containers outside, cover them with different materials eg. plastic bag, tin foil, kitchen roll, fabric, netting. Find out which are waterproof.
Collect rainwater in containers.
Make boats to float in puddles or take out rubber ducks.
Make potions, give the children dry goods like flour, sugar or salt. What happens when they get wet?
Watch the patterns the rain makes in puddles or as it runs down the window. Have a race – which raindrop will get to the bottom first?
Play a dry land race, you are only allowed on dry land and have to avoid all puddles.
Build a shelter with bricks for small world people or animals.
Right from the Start 