Pretend Food Made with Sponges

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Ness

“Sponge” cake, anyone? Playing pretend restaurant is one of R’s (4 yrs) favourite imaginative games. Sometimes he will “cook” up some fabulous concoction using old expired ingredients from the pantry, other times he uses our plastic play food. Last week, we thought it would be fun to create our own play food using sponges. This was a very simple project using supplies we already had on hand, and we spent the morning “baking” a sponge cake and making “toast”.

Our most delicious “sponge” cake and toast!

The beauty of this project is that you don’t need too many supplies – just a sponge, some paint and a paintbrush, and a pair of scissors or a knife to cut the sponge. We also used some tissue paper (not pictured) to make a cherry on top of our cake.

We began by drawing a triangle shape on the top to represent a piece of cake and, using a knife, I cut a triangle from the sponge. Our sponge was one of those great big thick ones you use for washing the car, which worked perfectly to make a nice high piece of cake. I cut the triangle piece of sponge in half horizontally to represent the top and bottom half of the piece of cake but in hindsight I wouldn’t bother with that next time.

After I had cut out the sponge, R got to work painting and decorating. He painted a white line through the middle to represent cream, and he added some purple “icing” on top. He then scrunched up a small piece of red tissue paper to make a cherry. Finally, he added some more “cream” with some added touches of white paint. Delicious!

There are so many things you could use to decorate the top of the cake – glitter, sparkly cut out shapes that you can buy from the craft store, or even little dots of paint all over the top to look like sprinkles.

The rounded ends of our sponge really lent themselves well to making toast. I used a knife to cut a couple of slices of toast and R painted the “crusts” brown.

We don’t have any brown paint so R had fun mixing black and orange to make a toasty brown colour. He loves mixing colours and all of our painting sessions tend to end up as a colour mixing experiment.

Once R had finished decorating the food, we set them aside to dry. Then it was time for a very elegant afternoon tea! Sponge cake anyone?

You simply must bring out the good silverware for an afternoon tea party, right? How very civilized! We still have quite a lot of sponge left over so we think we might make some cheese next (the sponge is the right colour and it has all those holes!) What types of food would you make?

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Imaginative Play – Dinosaur small world

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Ness

Dinosaurs have been featuring quite a bit in our play lately. We’ve created a dinosaur sensory tub and we headed outside to make our very own dinosaur island. This time we created a dinosaur small world play scene in our living room. We absolutely love creating small worlds and there always seems to be some sort of imaginative play scene set up somewhere in our home at any given time. It’s amazing how many different scenes you can create from the same loose parts such as stones, pebbles, glass beads and leaves.

This dinosaur world was created using many of the same pieces that we used to create our indoor frog pond play scene but an entirely new world was made. I love watching R (4) as he creates these scenes. I usually begin by laying down the “ground” – in this case a scrap of earthy coloured fabric, and then I scatter a few pebbles and leaves around and that’s usually enough of an invitation for R to begin creating on his own.

R wanted to make a fire so I gave him some red tissue paper which he shredded and crumpled together. I love how it turned out.

As usual, there were lots of stories being told by R as he moved the dinosaurs around and set up little paths and homes for them.

In this picture you can see a tree that has been created by placing some plastic fern leaves inside a small blue bottle. A perfect shady spot for a tired little dinosaur!

We mix natural elements with plastic toys in these scenes. Natural stones, twigs and seed pods are mixed with plastic leaves, glass beads and plastic bottles.

This dinosaur is obviously a herbivore – munching on another of our “trees”.

These types of small world scenes are wonderful for fostering imagination. If you’re happy to leave them out for a few days, kids will add to them and change them, creating a constantly changing creative space that can really capture their imagination. Language development and story telling are also enhanced by this type of play. We’ve recently made a small world circus and an arctic scene. I can’t wait to share those with you. Do your kids enjoy making small world play scenes? What are their favourites?

Ness

More small world play scenes:

Dinosaur island water sensory tub

Frog pond small world play scene

Digging for dinosaur eggs – dinosaur sensory tub

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

How to make a DIY Magnetic Fishing Game

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Ness

A magnetic fishing game is a classic children’s toy and something you can easily make at home. We love to use ours with our frog pond small world play. I also recently shared how we use our fishing game to learn colours, numbers and size sorting. You can read about the various games we play here.

Here’s a brief tutorial for how I made our fishing game. If you would like to extend the learning opportunities with your own fishing game, and play the games that I talked about in this post, then here are some tips to keep in mind.

For size sorting games, make the fish different sizes.

To learn about colours then make each fish a different colour.

For counting games, embellish each fish with a different number of beads.

You will need:
Pencil
paper
scissors
felt of various colours
Sewing thread and needle
buttons and beads for decoration
Washers or paperclips
Wadding for stuffing the fish (Optional)
A twig or piece of dowel (for fishing rod)
String or wool (for fishing line)
Magnet

How to make a DIY Magnetic Fishing Game

1. Use the pencil to draw some fish shaped templates onto the paper and cut them out. I just drew mine freehand and made each fish slightly different.

2. Hold or pin the paper templates onto the felt and cut around the template outline. If you are planning on making stuffed fish like I did, then cut out two layers of felt for each template. If you don’t want to fill your fish, simply cut out one layer of felt.

3. Use the sewing thread and needle to attach beads and buttons to each fish. I used a small button for the fish eye. Add a different number of beads to each fish if you want to play number games with the fish.

4. If you are making single-layer fish, then skip ahead to step 5. If you are making stuffed fish like mine, then attach the two layers of felt together using buttonhole stitch. Before completely enclosing the hem, fill the fish with wadding and then sew shut.

5. Attach a washer (or paperclip) to the mouth. I added the washer after I had completed each fish but if you could add it on while you are sewing the buttonhole stitch around the outside of the fish in step 4.

6. We made our rod with a twig we found in our yard. You could also use a piece of dowel. Simply cut to size, attach some string (we used some pretty multi-coloured wool) and tie a magnet to the end.

You’re done! Happy fishing!

There are so many ways to make a magnetic fishing game and you certainly don’t have to sew the fish or even use felt. You could simply cut out some fish using coloured paper and attach a paperclip to each one. You could still make them different sizes and colours, and to use them for counting games, simply draw a different number of dots or shapes on each one. Here are some more ideas for creating your own magnetic fishing game.

Go Fish Maths Game – Nurturestore

Fishing for Words – 3 Dinosaurs

Pretend Camping with Bailey Goes Camping – 2 Big 2 Little

Fishing for Letters – Growing a Jeweled Rose

Science Math and Reading, All in One – Creekside Learning

Quick DIY Fishing Game – Glittering Muffins

Water Table Fishing – In Lieu of Preschool

Fishin’ In The Kitchen – Sugarsnips

How to Make a Jet Pack – easy DIY dress up for kids

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Ness

I’ve received several requests for a tutorial for the jet packs we made for R’s spaced themed 4th birthday party. There are loads of different jet packs on Pinterest which is why I didn’t initially post about ours, but you’ve been asking, and we did make ours slightly differently to the ones I’ve seen (read: we cut a few corners to save time!) so, you asked for it, here it is! The first jet pack I ever saw on Pinterest was this one. It is absolutely adorable but there’s a little too much gluing and waiting for it to dry. We had about two days to make twelve of these things so we changed things a bit to make them as quickly as possible.

We made twelve jet packs for R’s birthday party. That’s a lot of jet packs! Now when I say “we”, I actually mean my hubby. All credit goes to him for these.

YOU WILL NEED:

2 empty soda bottles for each jet pack
duct tape
tissue paper (we used red, orange and yellow, but just one colour would be fine)
Grey strap fabric
silver spray paint

STEP 1. Spray paint the soda bottles. We used spray paint because we had so many of these to make and this meant we could paint them all at once. We found that one coat was sufficient.

STEP 2. Using duct tape, bind two bottles side by side to form the jet pack.

STEP 3. Using duct tape, apply two straps. We used some fabric that was just like the straps on a back pack.

FLAMES METHOD 1: Now you are ready to make the flames. This is the fun bit! When hubby made these for the party, he used the method shown in the pic above. He cut three different colours of tissue paper to three different widths. He then cut points along one edge of each colour, and lay them on top of each other as shown above. Next, roll the three layers of paper together so that the shortest layer (in this case the red) is on the outside. Stuff one end into the opening of the bottles and secure with duct tape. I can’t believe hubby did this twenty four times! They looked amazing though and the kids loved them.

FLAMES METHOD 2: This is the method I use (ie, it’s quicker and simpler!). R didn’t end up with a jet pack for himself after his party was over. They were so popular that a few of the children took extras home for their siblings. I had to make another one for R and this is how I made the flames. Fold a length of tissue paper in half. Tear strips up to the fold, but do not tear all the way through the fold. Yes, I tore these strips, I didn’t even bother with scissors. I like the way they look not being perfectly even. I used two colours, red and orange, because that’s just what we happened to have left. You could use one colour or as many colours as you like. Roll the paper and then stuff it into the opening of the bottles, and secure with duct tape.

That’s it! I really like the shredded paper flames because they have so much movement when R is running around. They also make a great “whooshing” sound too. It all adds to the fun!

For another cute idea for making Jet Packs, check out this post from Boy Mama Teach Mama. This is a great option if you don’t want to have to paint the bottles (Stephanie uses foil instead) and I love how she uses ballons for the flames.

Imaginary Soup – Outdoor Sensory Pretend Play

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Ness

I am so excited to welcome the lovely Melissa from Julia’s Bookbag here today as a guest writer. I’ve mentioned before just how much I adore Melissa’s blog. Melissa has a knack for finding the most delightful children’s books, she shares wonderful family recipes, and sweet musings on motherhood and family life. My Pinterest boards are full of images from Melissa’s gorgeous blog. You can also find Julia’s Bookbag on Facebook and Pinterest. Thank you so much Melissa for being here today!

IMAGINARY SOUP

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Create a Dinosaur Island Small World Play Scene

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Ness

Two of R’s favourite types of play are small world play and anything that involves water, so yesterday we combined the two and made this small world play scene. My initial suggestion to R was to create a frog pond with an island in the centre. R loved the idea but said we should create a dinosaur and frog island, so that’s exactly what we did. This provided a whole morning’s worth of fun and we even managed to squeeze in some science fun exploring porous and non porous materials – more on that below. So here it is, our dinosaur and frog island small world play scene.

We have a collection of pebbles, glass beads, twigs and leaves that use to make all sorts of imaginative play scenes. You can see the same materials used in our indoor imaginative frog pond and also our magnetic fishing game. For this dinosaur island, I used a large plastic tub (normally used to hold R’s train collection) and we made an island of sand in the centre. Then R got to work decorating it. He also gathered a few leaves and twigs from the garden to add to the scene.

Next, he filled the tub with water.

Then R added some blue and green food colouring to the water to make it appear like the ocean. (These were obviously tropical dinosaurs!)

R loves mixing food colouring into water and we incorporate this into his play quite often. He spent a lot of time getting the colour just right.

Then it was time to add the dinosaurs.

After some time creating stories with the dinosaurs, he then added his plastic frogs.

R enjoys experimentation and exploration in his play and this day he spent a great deal of time seeing what would happen if he added food colouring to the different elements in the scene. Here he is adding colouring to one of the wood blocks. He was fascinated to discover that the colour seeped all the way through the wood to the other end of the block.

He also experimented with adding colouring to the sand and then to the plastic dinosaurs. We observed that the colour did not soak into the plastic but it spread through the sand and even stained some of the pebbles. We talked about porous and non porous materials.

Whenever I mention food colouring in my posts, people always ask about mess and skin being stained. Generally R’s skin doesn’t get too stained but yesterday – well just take a look! This washed out quite easily.

If you are looking for inspiration for other imaginative play scenes then you might like to follow my Imaginative Play Scene board on Pinterest.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

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5 ways to play with a Magnetic Fishing Game {teaching math, language, size, colour and imagination}

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Ness

Indoor fishing games are a classic toy for imaginative play. I made one for R when he was about two years old and two years later it still comes out when we are playing with our frog pond small world. There are so many ways to play with this game and I designed ours so that it could be used for teaching colour and number recognition. This game was very inexpensive to make and it has really grown with R. As he has grown, we’ve been able to adapt and change the way we play with our fishing game to suit his various stages of learning. Here are 5 ways to play with an indoor fishing game and the benefits/outcomes of that play. Later in the week I’ll share a tutorial for how I made our magnetic fishing game. It’s really simple to make and can be adapted to suit your level of craftiness and can be easily made with whatever materials you happen to have on hand.

FIVE WAYS TO PLAY WITH AN INDOOR FISHING GAME

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{Ice-Skating in the Living Room}

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Ness

One evening last week, R(3) watched a TV program, I’m not sure what it was exactly, where the main characters were skiing. He began sliding his feet around the living room pretending to ski and repeated over and over that he wanted to go to the snow. I immediately had an idea. I couldn’t make it snow in the living room. I could however, turn the carpet into an ice-rink! First, R would need a pair of ice skates.

I took a plastic shopping bag from the cupboard and used a pair of scissors to cut two large rectangles from the bag. I wrapped them around R’s feet, and used lots of adhesive tape to secure the plastic “ice-skates” in place.

I was working fast to keep the momentum of R’s imaginative play going so they were not fancy to look at. This was just about getting something happening quickly and making his feet sliiiiiide over the carpet like he was skating. He loved it!

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Sometimes a walk in the garden is all it takes

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Ness

The photos in today’s post are not all that exciting, but they show a truly lovely part of our day and that’s what this blog is all about. We had reached the witching hour this afternoon. You know the time of day that I mean, when everyone is tired, patience is an effort, the dinner needs to be made, and no-one is at their best. I knew what we needed was to just re-group and get some fresh air and sunshine. We headed outside with no particular plan in mind.

We began by watering our vegetable patch. R(3) has been carefully tending some carrots and celery that he planted with his Daddy a few weeks ago. As he sprayed the hose over the garden, he said “Just soft and gentle, like Daddy said. We don’t blast them.” He continued watering the garden, declaring that “hosing is fun” and at one point “Hey Mummy. Guess what?” “What darling?” “I love you.” I knew heading outside was a good idea.

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Fine Motor Skills Practise with Play Dough

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Ness

R(3) wanted to play with our Play Dough today. We haven’t brought it out in a long time. I spend so much time looking for new and exciting activities for R to try that sometimes I forget about the more “ordinary” things like Play Dough which is a shame because we always have so much fun with it and it has so many benefits:

It’s a fantastic sensory play experience
Strengthens fingers, hands and wrists
Develops hand / eye co-ordination
It’s great for developing fine motor skills if you add elements like cutters, popsicle sticks or tooth picks
It is a truly open ended play experience, sparking imagination and creativity
It can help to develop language skills as you discuss colours, shapes, textures, the items being created etc

One day I will make my own home made play dough but today we used the store-bought variety. R received a set of 10 colours for his last birthday. After it has been used, I store it in zip lock bags and it seems to keep for ages when it has been stored like this, much longer than if it is stored in the plastic tubs that you buy it in. Consequently, we just never seem to run out of it and I haven’t had any need to make our own yet.

This is what I put out for R this morning. As you can see, we don’t really care about keeping the play dough colours separated in this house! I love that big glob of orange/red/yellow/pink. It reminds me of an Indian Sari. I laid out a tray with som googly eyes, coloured toothpicks, and some coloured pasta that I made for a previous project.

R quickly got to work, adding bits and pieces, declaring he was making a porcupine.

He was very particular about exactly where each toothpick should be placed.

R then declared that the toothpicks were candles on a birthday cake and that he had made me a special green porcupine birthday cake. I quickly grabbed a plastic knife so that he could cut our birthday cake and we could eat some! What a great opportunity for some fine motor skills development and cutting practise! R has been really keen to start cutting his own food at mealtimes but handling a fork and knife is tricky for little hands. This was great practise. He concentrated so intensley on what he was doing and was so proud of himself when he cut that first piece.

“Here’s your piece Mummy!”

After we enjoyed or pieces of cake, R rolled the play dough into logs so he could do some more cutting. (Look at those hand muscles getting a work out! So essential for the all-important pincer grip.)

Then the cutting began. Look at that concentration!

R was fascinated by the pattern on the cut pieces, created by the serrated edge of the knife.

This activity held R’s attention for longer than anything has in quite a while and he played happily for almost an hour. He learnt a new skill (cutting with a knife), developed his fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination, he added some new words to his vocabulary (serrated and serration), and used his imagination. Perhaps most importantly, his self esteem soared when he used the knife so proficiently and his smile was beaming.

What simple, back-to-basics activities do your kids love? Let’s chat in the comments.