One of our favourite authors is Julia Donaldson. Christmas 2016 bought our now long time favourite ‘Stickman’ into our little library as an introduction to one of our cherished English authors. With a poetic flow, the words almost dance with rhyme and repetition – two very attractive features for young children. When choosing a book…
Learning how to count is such an important math skill. We use numbers in some way or form every day. Putting our well rehearsed numbers into context will help deepen our children’s understanding of their value. To do this, Miss 4 and I created our very own little game. How to Play To play the…
Learning letters and numbers doesn’t have to be all text books and flash cards. Your child certainly doesn’t need a pencil in hand to begin to build up skills that will assist them in their handwriting journey either! Allow them to begin this journey with some fine motor fun! With this in mind, we set…
We are celebrating all things farming in our play this week. To kick start off the week we did a milking cows activity! There are so many different learning opportunities when it comes to exploring farms. With such diverse related topics, farm theme play appeals to so many kids. Whether it is the machinery, animals,…
It’s that nerve wracking time for many parents. Enrolments into Kindy have been completed. Now it’s the waiting game until the beginning of the next school year. Such a bittersweet isn’t it? Getting your child ready for kindy Getting their children ‘ready’ for their first day of formal schooling is a topic that has been…
Exploring space with your children is so interesting. It’s a great way for them to learn about the universe and how it works, and you also get some cool science experiments out of it too! Our Space themed play for the week has been a hit and we are only at day 1. One activity…
Small world play is always popular at our house. All three children love exploring the sensory medium and the two older ones get lost in a story with influenced by a recent book or their own imaginations. While we LOVE small world play, it can be a bit messy at the best of times. Typically…
Emotions printables and DIY activities are a fun way to introduce your children to learning emotions. Learning how to regulate emotions can be overwhelming even for us adults. These activities are a gentle, effective, and fun way to begin exploring emotional regulation. Emotions Printables and Learning Emotions Activities Is your child struggling with their emotions?…
We found another use for our old egg shells! Introducing Egg-Motions! Another little DIY project that gravitates around our Emotion themed play for the week. After collecting, washing and drying some egg shells, we drew some emotions on the shells and matched them with our emotions flash cards. The shells proved to be a challenged…
Learning how to read and interpret facial expressions and body language is a important social skill. From the very get go, babies begin to look at faces. Did you know that a baby can only see about 30cm in front of them? Coincidentally, that is also the distance from a mother’s breast (where little bubba…
Sensory play is the best! With little Miss 19m getting involved, I am always trying to keep our play medium taste safe or better yet, edible. Here is a flash back to when she was 15 month old. I had been meaning to write this one up but it got lost in the baby brain…
We all know that daily brushing of our teeth is very important for dental health. The recommended three minutes of brushing twice a day can seem like a lot of work for our little ones. This plaque attack activity was just what we needed! Miss 4 was having one of those days when everything was…
Create sculptures, press the dough into shapes, letters, and numbers, run toy cars over the play dough to see the tire prints, roll it out to make snakes, bake it to make beads, hide dinosaurs in it pretending they are fossils, press flowers into it to make potion stones, build landscapes that have never seen…
Scanning and searching for patterns, symbols and objects are known as a great pre-reading exercise. These Discovery Bags make learning so interesting and fun! While I feel Miss 18m is well and truly not ready to pick up a book and interpret the words on its pages, there are some pre-literacy skills that I feel…
When entering the world of measurements, it can all be a bit daunting. There are grams, cups, tablespoons, litres, centimetres, kilos and millilitres just to mention a few! Then there are questions such as how tall are you? How much does your pumpkin weigh? How much water is in your cup? So how can we…
Learning the true value of a number is so very important. This vital skill will give a solid foundation for other life lessons stemming to understanding money, fractions, time and distance to just think of a few. When Letter Basics released their new Watermelon Counting Game, I had it downloaded, printed, cut out and laminated…
I have often referred to learning through play as being so much more than just 123s. While I still completely stand by this statement, I certainly still see the value of teaching our young bugs their numbers and how to count. I feel it is just as important to put these numbers into context than…
Over the years I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk with various early childhood specialists regarding getting our kiddies ready for the beginning of their formal learning journey – Kindy! Water Beads Meet Fine Motor Skills It is interesting and with the increased presence of technology, not all that difficult to…
