Nursery Rhyme Puppet Show

I cannot begin to tell you just how much we have played with this simple puppet show over the last couple of months. It was something I came up with for Bean one winters day when we were stuck inside and at a bit of a loose end! Bean LOVES anything involving story telling and imaginary play, so this was a total hit with her. Its a perfect rainy day activity for children 2.5 years and older as they can choose the stories and help make the scenery and puppets as well.

To make this we used:

• Old cardboard box (thick cardboard)
• Small sturdy cardboard box
• Cereal box (or other thin cardboard)
• Scissors
• Sticky Tape
• Small googly eyes
• Coloured pens
• A4 coloured paper
• Lollipop sticks
• Blue tack

The 'stage' to hold the background scenery was made by cutting a thick price of cardboard from an old box into a rectangle (must be at least A4 size), and then attaching another small box to the back to hold it upright, using a strip of cardboard and sticky tape. 

The backgrounds are simply A4 peices of coloured paper, stuck to the stage with blue tack, and decorated with coloured pen, pastels, and cut out paper to make the scenery for the story. 

The puppets were cut out from thinner cardboard (we used empty cereal boxes) to make the body shapes, decorated with coloured pens and googly eyes, and then stuck to lollipop sticks with sticky tape. Bean was able to help with decorating the backgrounds and puppets, sticky taping things together, and of course chose which stories we would make. 

It's so incredibly simple to do, and you can make as many puppets and as many backgrounds as you like! We ended up making quite a few over a number of days, and even now we will add on a new story from time to time. We started off doing nursery rhymes, Baa Baa Black Sheep pictured above...

...Little Bo Peep...

...Incy Wincy Spider...

...Jack Be Nimble...

...Jack and Jill...

...Little Miss Muffet...

...Hickory Dickory Dock (made using a paper plate, cereal box clock hands, and a split pin to hold them in place and allow them to turn)...

For this one the mouse and cat were made using small and large coloured pom poms glued together using a hot glue gun, with googly eyes and kitchen string for whiskers...

...and then we moved on to some of Bean's favourite movies, above is The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music (As yet unfinished, few more characters to make!)...

...But the one which has been by far Bean's favourite and most used...The Wizard of Oz!

As you can probably see this puppet show has been well loved, and therefore has seen a bit of wear and tear. If I had pre-planned this activity I might have decided to laminate the backgrounds and even the puppet bodies after decorating to make them a bit more durable long term. It would be particularly recommendable if you have multiple children playing or children younger than 2, and i've already thought of re-making this puppet show with the other Little Beans when we start day care and laminating it to be an ongoing resource. 

I really hope you try this one at home!

Happy Playing!

Sea Treasure - Sensory Box

I have to give the credit for this activity in large part to my husband, who accidentally invented the main material used in its making! You're probably wondering "what on earth are those blue things?"...Well, Bean has named them 'Curly Whirlies', and they're actually the debris from when my husband was drilling holes in some big plastic barrels for planting. They're all sprially and some of them are very springy, Bean found them fascinating so I just had to use them in some way!

We haven't done so many sensory activities over the winter, mostly due to the mess factor as we usually do this kind of play outside. But the weather is warming up and it seemed a good opportunity to get stuck back in with a sea themed sensory box! 

This sensory box is one with a twist, as well as being a sensory activity it's also a treasure hunt game. Hidden beneath the curly whirlies are little glass gems shaped in sea themes such as shell, sea horse, star fish, and I included a small pot to gather the treasure in. 

The materials used are as follows:

• Curly whirlies (you could also use blue aquarium rocks or anything else blue that can get wet)
• Aquarium plants (borrowed from our under the sea playset)
• Plastic boats (borrowed from our water table)
• Plastic anchors (found at op shop)
• Duplo people
• Jar or small container
• Sea gems (found at dollar shop) 

I set this up one night for Bean to play with the following day, and it was very well recieved! I think as much as anything she was just so happy to get back in to sensory play outside, which was a big highlight of last summer. 

She started off with some imaginative story telling using the people in the boats, and was interested to have me explain and demonstrate what the anchors were.

I has already anticipated that she would want to add water to this tub, because I mean...who wouldn't? And of course after a little while she went to get the hose. She enjoyed swirling the water around with the curly whirlies in it, it felt wonderful...and it was then that she discovered the treasures hiding underneath!

Well, needless to say we did a LOT of treasure hunting that day (and the next)! When she was losing interest in finding treasure in the tub, we added the gems to our sand pit and dug for buried treasure in the sand. 

All in all this was a lovely box to play with and a really nice start back into using our outdoor space again :-) Roll on summer! 

Happy Playing! 

Small World - Cardboard Town

This super easy small world play space was something I put together one evening because we happened to have some big offcuts of cardboard lying around and we had been doing a lot of imaginative play with Lego that week.

All I used to make it was:

• Big piece of cardboard (big enough so theres room for the child to sit comfortably in the space, but small enough that they can still reach all sides)
• Blue A4 paper
• Green Pom Poms
• Coloured pens
• Hot glue gun
• Glue stick
• Assorted houses, lego, people, cars, animals etc.

First I drew on the road with coloured pens, then I cut out a pond shape from blue paper and used a glue stick to glue it on to the centre. I drew on some Lilly pads and stepping stones leading to the road. Then I used the hot glue gun to glue together some green pom poms to make bushes and glued them to the cardboard.

I arranged the different buildings around the road as places for the people to visit, I included a fire station, Cafe, Shop, house, vegetable garden, and an enchanted forest. Last of all I gathered up various little people and vehicles from around the house, some Lego, some fisher price, as well as some plastic ducks for the pond and rabbit for the enchanted forest. 

And there you have it! A cardboard small world town. 

It's been a great addition to our lounge room play space and Bean is still playing with it two weeks on. A perfect medium to encourage story telling, imaginative play, role play, and songs (such as The Wheels On The Bus). 

Happy Playing! 

5 Activities With Rainbow Pasta

This is something I've been thinking of making for a while, but kept putting off in favor of other things. But today I was out of other ideas and so I finally made it! I realized afterwards that its actually a really versatile ingredient for a number of different activities, plus It's so simple to make and looks lovely and bright.

How to make Rainbow Pasta: 

You will need -

Dry pasta of different shapes

Food coloring 

Rubbing Alcohol (Isocol - available from pharmacies)

Zip lock bags 

Baking paper and baking trays

First put about a tablespoon of the alcohol into a zip lock bag, and add some food coloring (I used around a teaspoon).

Then add the dry pasta, close up the bag, and then massage the bag until all the pasta is covered in colour. 

Repeat this process with as many colours as you like, I made 5 colours total  - red, pink, blue, green, and yellow. 

Then put baking paper on some trays and tip the pasta out onto them, spreading it out to a single layer for drying.

Leave to dry. Now, the time it takes to dry completely is really variable depending on heat/cold etc. Its spring here and happened to be a sunny day when I did this so I popped the trays in the sunroom to dry and it only took about and hour. If you're in winter and you don't have a warm place to dry the pasta, consider making it in the evening and leaving to dry overnight.

When its dry you're ready to play! You can either choose to mix up the colours in a big tub, or keep them separate in smaller containers or a segmented container - the choice is yours! I chose to mix them together and I think the result is beautifully vibrant. 

So now you've made your pasta what are you going to do with it?? Well, here's a few ways to get you started: 

1. Threading (2 years +)

Threading is a great activity for practising co-ordination and dexterity, as well as being creative and fun with a wearable finished product!

For this activity I took a bunch of ribbons from one of our craft boxes and some kitchen string, at one end I tied a knot to hold the pasta on and threaded one pasta onto each one to get things started.

I also decided to wrap some sticky tape around the ends of each string/ribbon to make the threading a bit easier for Bean, who still finds this task quite tricky.

I set up this invitation to play on the light panel on the floor of our playroom, as I thought the added light element would be nice coming through the coloured pasta.

Bean came to play after her nap, and it ended up being a nice gentle waking up activity for her.

We even had our two little neighbours from across the road come and enjoy this one too, and being older children they made some wonderful necklaces, one of which they gave to Bean who has been wearing it every day since! :-)

2. Play dough prints and pictures (1 year +)

After Bean had finished with threading she requested to make animal shapes with the pasta on the light panel. However, the pasta kept moving about and Bean was getting frustrated so I got out some play dough!

Bean decided to make Dinosaur so this is our pasta-o-saurus! ROAR!

3. Making pictures (2 years +)

The next day we used the pasta to make 3D pictures, using PVA glue (also called school glue or white glue), coloured paper, coloured pens, and glitter...

At 2.5 Bean was able to do this activity all herself with me merely a spectator, and it's always so lovely to see the glow of her independently creating...

...Gluing...

...Sticking...

...making it sparkle!

With some coloured pen added for a finishing touch it turned out beautifully.

Then when she had finished her own picture she asked me if I would like to make one together - naturally I accepted the invitation ;-)

So we made...a rainbow! 

4. Colour Sorting Game (1 year +) 

This is a simple way to use the pasta for colour sorting/matching, which would be a great skill and colour activity for younger toddlers.

I set this one up for Bean after she went to bed one night ready for her to find the next morning, using a basket filled with the rainbow pasta, and clear jars with spots of coloured paper underneath (which I cut out from A4 sheets) that corresponded with the colours of the pasta.

For a half asleep Bean this was an easy activity, because of course by now she already knows her colours inside out.

So after a bit of sorting and matching, the game progressed into something much more fun for her! First she began to fill the jars up with "all colours of the rainbow mama!" trying to squeeze as much pasta into each jar as she possibly could.

She then took the coloured spots from underneath the jars and declared that they were lily-pads for a pond and we were all frogs! So we cut out a few more 'lily-pads' and played a hopping frog game around the lounge!

It just goes to show that when you set up a play activity you never know where it might lead, and in my experience the best fun often happens in ways that were never planned.

5. Rainbow Shakers (6 months +)

The final idea is one that would be perfect for all the very little people, although the bigger ones can enjoy it too! Infants love exploring sounds and colours, so why not combine the two elements and make some rainbow pasta shakers?

It takes away the choking hazard of the small pasta bits, whilst still allowing them to absorb the rainbow colours and different shapes, and make sounds as well. I used two different size plastic containers to make different tones, in the larger container I put a handful of all the pasta shapes mixed together, and in the smaller container I picked out just the smaller pasta shapes. 

Bean loves to do percussion along with music so these were a nice addition to our daily dancing session!

Hopefully I've given you some inspiration to try making some Rainbow Pasta at home! There are SO many things you can do with this one simple material, some other ideas I had are:

• Pasta Sensory Tub - for 1 year +, using bigger pasta shapes, and including some containers and spoons for scooping and filling.
• Pasta Treasure Hunt - for 18 months +, using a full tub of pasta with small 'treasure' items hidden within it. 

Happy Playing!