Play and Learn Every Day

Halloween Sight Word Reading Sensory Bin

12:00 PM

We are on half term break from school, the perfect time to be spending working on Ethan's sight words that he has brought home. Of course we're also looking to have some Halloween fun, and he doesn't like just reading flash cards, so we've made things a bit more spooky!

What you'll need:

sight words on cards (these can be ones from school or a variety of words that they are struggling with, or fun Halloween themed words!)
a box or plastic bin
black beans
orange spider rings
severed finger toys (only at Halloween, right?!?)
assorted other Halloween toys

This bin was super easy to set up with random Halloween toys that happened to be in our box of Halloween decorations, but a quick trip to the dollar store / pound shop should get you most of these things as well. The most important things to have are the spider rings and the severed fingers, because they encourage young readers to point to the letters as they are reading and sounding out the word. I think all of our reading might involve those bloody fingers from now on (just joking!)

I set the bin up in front of Ethan and asked him to choose a word. He was excited about it straight away, it's not the typical way that we do reading! He chose a word and then I asked him to pick up a severed finger, which he then put on his finger and I asked him to point to the word as he read it. He found it hilarious, but it did get him to really focus on the sounds in the word instead of just guessing.

The next time that he chose a word I asked him to pick up a spider ring and put it on any finger, which he did. I then said for him to point to the letters of the word using that finger. It was a great reminder to keep pointing and something he found fun as well. After that he suggested that he pick up one of the ghosts to read the next word, he used the pointy bit at the top of the ghost to follow along with the word that he was reading.

Once we got through all the words he was then just able to relax a little bit and play with the beans and the little toys in the sensory bin. Give him mind and his hands a bit of a rest by running the beans through them, which is really very relaxing. The feeling and the sound of the beans tapping on top of each other is a great way to unwind after reading. Now the bin is easy to set back up and I can ask Ethan to just choose a few words and one of the pointers any time we go past it and work on his sight words.

2 1/2 years old

Autumn Craft Kits

7:30 AM

2 1/2 years old

Sylvanian Families Doughnut Store Review

7:30 AM

Sylvanian Families have to be the cutest little creatures that are out there to play with, and we have been having lots of fun playing with their little Doughnut Store set.

The set comes with one character, Bear Mother as well as a doughnut stand and a table to fill with doughnuts, tea pot, tea cups, plates and more. I love the attention to detail in the Sylvanian Families sets, they have really thought of every little thing to make it look like a real doughnut store

The other thing that I love about Sylvanian Families is that the fun starts as soon as you open the box. Setting up the scene is all part of the play, and also great for fine motor skills with all of the teeny tiny pieces. Ivy spent ages taking each individual doughnut out of the box and placing it carefully on the stand.

Once it was all set up perfectly and she had each doughnut in its place and each piece carefully laid out on the table she was ready to play and had Bear Mother happily working in her doughnut store.

Of course she did need more customers, so we got out the Stripey Cat family that we already had to join in the fun. They each placed their orders with Bear Mother and took their doughnuts away. It's a great way to bring numbers and counting into the play as well, when asking for a certain amount of doughnuts or how much it would cost.

The set also comes with a couple of teeny tiny doughnut boxes which are probably Ivy's absolute favourite part of the set. She happily fills the box up with doughnuts for her customers, then empties it out and puts the doughnuts back on the stand, another great activity for fine motor skills and coordination.

We love this Sylvanian Families Doughnut Store, it makes a great addition to our collection and would also make a great gift for any little ones you know.

And we are very excited to share the love of Sylvanian Families and give away the Polar Bear family set! Enter below for your chance to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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* This is a review post, we were sent the Sylvanian Families Doughnut Store set in order to play with it and write our honest opinions.*

2 1/2 years old

Design & Drill SparkleWorks Review

7:30 AM

Christmas is fast approaching and we are always on the look out for fun and educational toy ideas to share with you. We have found a really fun toy that the kids can't get enough of at the moment with this Design & Drill SparkleWorks set from Learning Resources.

It is an ideal toy for kids who love to build and create, those who like to keep their hands busy as well as their minds. It's a great balance between physical and mental activity all whilst being fun and not giving the kids any clue that they're learning and developing the whole time.

The set comes with the design board, a drill and loads of sparkly bolts to drill into the board. Both the drill and the board light up, making it lots of fun for those dark evenings after school throughout the winter. The board is also reactive to sound, so if you have music on or even just the sounds that you make while talking and playing the lights flash in time to the sounds. The kids had lots of fun playing with this feature!

We started by just experimenting with the drill, learning how to drill the bolts into the board. This is great for developing fine motor skills and coordination in holding the bolt above the hole in the board and then connecting the drill to it. Ivy found this a bit challenging at times, but persevered and was very proud of herself.

Then once we had put a few bolts in we flipped the switch on the drill the other way to reverse the direction of the drill to take the pieces out. The kids were fascinated by this and just played around putting bolts in and taking them out over and over again.

At first I was wishing that the set had come with two drills as both Ethan and Ivy wanted to play at the same time, but they soon found ways to work together with just one drill. One passed bolts to the other or held the bolts in place for the other and they learned to work as a team.

Once they had mastered putting the bolts into the board then it was time to look at some of the suggested patterns to follow in the book. Ethan was really focused when he was making a pattern, finding all of the pieces that he needed and putting them into place. It was lovely to watch that concentration and how proud he was of himself once he had completed the pattern.

We are really enjoying playing with our Design & Drill SparkleWorks set and can't wait to make some more patterns of our own with it!
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* This is a review post, we were sent the Design & Drill SparkleWorks set from Learning Resources in order to play with it and write our honest opinions.*

2 1/2 years old

Talking Messy goes to Okido Toy Review

9:59 AM

5 years old

Community Helpers Sight Words Game

12:00 PM

5 years old

Ethan's Diver Themed Fifth Birthday Party

7:30 AM

It is unbelievable, but Ethan is actually five years old and has started school. Because his birthday is in early October we decided that the best plan would be to invite his entire class, because we wouldn't yet know who he would end up being close friends with. And of course because it was the first birthday party of the year, most of the children came to celebrate with us and get to know their new classmates as well.

I always let the kids choose their own party theme, so this year Ethan decided that because he wants to be a deep sea diver when he grows up that would be the perfect theme for his party. We decided to host the party at a local sports centre, which meant that the children would have time to jump and slide on a big bouncy castle and inflatable slide before coming into the party room, which we would have decorated, for lunch and birthday cake.

Because the party was on a larger scale than I'm used to (with other friends included we had over 30 children at the party) we really had to do everything in a simplified way. I couldn't go over the top with decorations so kept things very basic with:

tablecloths (we needed loads to cover all the tables so I ordered very plain colourful ones to brighten up the room)
plates and napkins
Happy Birthday banner (my one extravagance as I love a big personalised banner)
hanging fish decorations
streamers
water bottle labels
door signs and food signs
party bag boxes

I was also overwhelmed with the idea of making that many sandwiches and cupcakes myself on the day, so for the first time I actually ordered a lot of the food. Of course this did add to the costs, but it made my stress levels a lot lower on the day and I know it's just for this year and I'll go back to making my own little shaped sandwiches next year. Our party food was:

jigsaw puzzle ham and cheese sandwiches (from Marks & Spencer)
vegetarian rolls (from Marks & Spencer)
veggie and hummus platter (from Marks & Spencer)
apples and grapes
Babybel cheeses and raisins
Goldfish crackers
Kiddylicious Super Snacks
Organix fruit bars
Cupcakes (from Waitrose)
water bottles

The children all devoured the food, I was so glad that they had all built up and appetite from playing and happily filled their plates with healthy food. No one questioned why there wasn't any other sweets and happily ate everything on the table. Of course they all ate their cupcakes after their healthy lunches too!

The only elements of the party that we made ourselves were the invitations, door signs, food signs and water bottle labels that were all simply designed on the computer using PicMonkey and the same little diver clipart. We also decorated the boxes that we stored the party bags in to have an undersea theme. The kids painted the boxes with blue sparkly paint, they made paper plate fish to stick on them and covered them with fish stickers.

The party bags are always my favourite part! Again I couldn't go over the top because we had so many of them to make, but they included:

Activity books (I ordered big packs of Julia Donaldson activity books from The Book People)
fish party bags
Aquabeads
magic bubbles
growing fish
pencil
bouncy ball
Kiddylicious fruit wriggles snacks

Ethan had a fantastic time celebrating his birthday with all of his friends, old and new! I hope that all of the other children had fun too. If you want a peek at Ethan's other parties we have previously had a Firefighter Party, Octonauts Party, Winnie the Pooh Party and Very Hungry Caterpillar Party.

Pin these party ideas for later:

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* This post contains review items as we were sent healthy snacks from Kiddylicious and Organix for the children at the party. All opinions are our own.*

2 1/2 years old

Bonfire Night Small World Play Craft

7:30 AM

It's almost Bonfire Night here in the UK (also sometimes referred to as Guy Fawkes Night), a time when we get together to watch fireworks and warm up by a roaring fire. It is one of my favourite traditions here and I'm happy to be able to take the kids to join in the fun. We also love to make Bonfire Night crafts and do activities ahead of time to get excited for the big night. This is definitely our favourite thing that we've made so far, it's a craft and a small world play set up that the kids can play with and act out the fun we'll have.

What you'll need:

a cardboard box
Bostik white glue
black card
Bostik glitter glue
sticks
red leaves
pipe cleaners
white pony beads
play people (with open hands)

We started by preparing our backdrop and cutting open a cardboard box so that we had a base and a background. We then covered a piece of black card in glue and stuck it onto the cardboard, then left it to dry.

Once it was dry we used the glitter glue to draw on some fireworks in the background. Ethan liked experimenting with the different colours and techniques, and found that he was able to put a big blob of glue in the middle then spread it out with the tip of the glue to make it look like a bursting firework.

Next we started making our bonfire. This was the tricky part, getting all of the sticks to balance on each other! We used the glue to stick them together and kept them balanced inside a bowl until the glue dried and then it was able to stand on its own. It was still a bit wobbly, so I continued to add layers of glue and leave it to dry until it was nice and sturdy.

We then cut up the nice red leaves that we found to look like the flames of the fire and used our glue to stick them onto the sticks of our bonfire.

Finally we used pipe cleaners to be our little people's roasting sticks and threaded one white pony bead onto the end of each one (great for fine motor skills), then wrapped it around to secure it. We then wrapped the other end of the pipe cleaner around the little persons hand to secure it to them as well.

Then it was all ready to set up and play with! Our people are happily watching the fireworks and roasting their marshmallows over the fire. I can't wait to see what else the kids bring into our Bonfire Night small world play scene!