Learning with Lego

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Ness

Lego and play dough are two of R’s (4 yrs) favourite ways to play. What could be more fun than combining the two? Lego bricks provide a fun and creative way to explore play dough. This activity began as a sensorial activity, then quickly moved into imaginative play and story telling and even included some sight word practise. Just like our recent Lego math game, this activity was another fun way to learn with Lego.

Lego play dough invitation to create

I set up a very simple invitation to play with some play dough that was left over from our recent Easter play dough activity, a wooden rolling pin and some Lego bricks. This was a completely open-ended play invitation. R was free to explore and take it in whichever direction he chose.

Sensory play. He was thrilled to see the Lego on the table and began pushing it into the play dough. He kneaded the dough and hid the pieces of Lego inside declaring them to be hidden pirate’s treasure.

Imaginative play. When all the pieces of Lego had been hidden, he began pulling the play dough apart as he searched for the buried “treasure”, making up stories of pirates as he played.

Literacy play. He eventually rolled the play dough out flat and pushed Lego bricks into it to make an impression. After adding the two red bricks shown above he declared “Look Mummy, I made a V!” This led to him wanting to make other letter imprints in the play dough and he had fun determining which pieces would work best.

R has been learning sight words recently and he used Lego bricks to make the word “you”. The square Lego brick was a perfect “o”!

This activity was great for fine motor skills, literacy and spacial awareness but best of all, he was having fun!

After making a few more letters with his Lego bricks, R brought in some of his Lego Star Wars characters and the play became about imaginative story telling as he re-created a scene from one of the movies. Everything ends up being about Star Wars around here lately!

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Click on the image below to see our fun Lego Math Game.

Easter Play Dough

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Ness

I really love Easter (and Christmas and New Year’s Eve and birthdays and….you get the idea). All of the pretty pastels that are around at this time of year make me smile and today I made a few batches of home made play dough in soft shades of lemon, strawberry and lime. They looked like gelato (I see some ice-cream parlor imaginative play in our future!) R (4 years) enjoyed our Christmas play dough activity so much that I decided to set up something similar for him today.

Play dough is always such a calming activity – perfect for late in the afternoon when I’m cooking dinner and need something to keep R busy. I set out the play dough along with a rolling pin and some bits and pieces for R to use to decorate his play dough creations.

The tray of goodies included pom poms (for bunny tails of course!), toothpicks and pipe cleaners (for bunny whiskers), some googly eyes and various sequins for decorating some play dough Easter eggs.

Just as I did with our Christmas play dough, I gathered our Easter themed cookie cutters and the Easter play dough fun began.

After rolling out the play dough, R cut some shapes out with the cookie cutters.

Lots of fine motor skills being used here!

Love these cute little bunnies! I also love that R added pom pom bunny tails to the eggs as well as the bunnies.

These colours are just so delicious. Home made play dough is so soft and smooth. It lasts for such a long time as well.

This is how I store my play dough. I put each colour into a zip lock bag. I flatten the play dough as much as possible and then I store it in the fridge. Since the bags are flat, they don’t take up much space at all. When we want to use it again, I let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes, then knead it for about a minute and it goes right back to being lovely, soft and squishy.

R had lots of fun with this activity and his Easter creations are now on display on in our living room. It makes me happy every time I look at those lovely colours and the cute little bunny tails.

Looking for more Easter activities and crafts? Here are a few of our other fun Easter posts.

Play Dough Birthday Cakes and The Weekly Kids Co-op

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Ness

R (4 years) has been getting creative with play dough quite a lot lately. Earlier this week we made our Halloween play dough and today R said he wanted to do some pretend baking with play dough. It was great messy fun! We make our own play dough using this home made play dough recipe. It really is the easiest, fastest play dough recipe I’ve ever tried and it leaves your hands so soft – a definite plus for a child like R who has sensitive skin.

I set out some cupcake cases, birthday candles and a bowl of sparkly foil shapes for decorating the cakes. Before long, R had whipped up some delicious smelling chocolate cupcakes. I coloured the “chocolate” play dough with cocoa so it has the most wonderful aroma.

R used some green play dough to ice his cupcakes. It was all going along pretty smoothly, until….

R decided he wanted to mix a pretend cake. He requested the biggest mixing bowl that we own and in went some pulses that we’ve been using for more than two years now for various sensory tubs and pretend play like this. These are a mix of split peas and black eyed peas. They are so smooth and silky to touch and have kept well for two years. Now they just have some sparkly foil shapes mixed in with them….

Lovely sensory play, running his hands through the “cake mix”.

That’s when things started getting very messy, which is the best kind of play!

The split and black eyed peas were sprinkled over the play dough cupcakes (and all over the table and floor).

The green play dough that R is holding was a pie, of course! This kept R engaged for almost an hour. We sang Happy Birthday to each other and pretended to blow out the birthday candles. I love play dough because it provides an opportunity for R to develop his imagination, practise some fine motor skills, and enjoy some sensory play. What’s your favourite way to play with play dough?

Now it’s time for The Weekly Kid’s Co-op. To join in the fun, you might like to:

1. “like” The Kid’s Co-Op Facebook Page where you’ll find a complete list of all the amazing blogs who co-host this link up each week. Throughout the week we also highlight some of our favourite posts that have been linked up.
2. Follow our Kids Co-Op Pinterest board
3. Bookmark or pin this post and check back throughout the week to see what else has been added to the link up.
4. Link up your post featuring a child friendly activity.

I can’t wait to see what fantastic ideas are shared this week!

Halloween Play Dough

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Ness

Now that R has turned 4, he is really into the idea of Halloween this year. We’ve had lots of fun this week with (not too scary) Halloween activities and today we made Halloween play dough. I made several batches using the home made play dough recipe that I have shared here before. It is seriously the BEST recipe we’ve tried and we’ll never go back to store bought again. For the brown play dough, I added cocoa powder instead of food colouring – the smell is divine!

I made orange, black, green, white and brown. They all look so lovely and smooth and wonderful here, but scroll to the end of this post to see how it all ended up! It was one big ball of Halloween rainbow by the end of our play time.

This is what we made together and they are now proudly displayed on a tray in our living room. Such a fun Halloween decor idea!

I just love our Jack-o-Lantern!

To make the Jack-o-lantern, R rolled some orange play dough into a ball and then we used the blunt side of a plastic spoon to draw the lines down the sides. I cut out the face shapes from black play dough and R stuck them on. It was so lovely to create and play together.

R made several Jack-o-lanterns. I think they were his favourites to create.

Our witches hat and broom. The broom bristles were made by squeezing the play dough through a garlic crusher.

Boo! What’s Halloween without a ghost or two?

These are the pieces that R created on his own. Love that spider!

Squeezing the play dough through the garlic crusher to make the broom bristles – great for fine motor practise!

R made a witches cauldron. Yesterday I was reading him the witches “Double Double, Toil and Trouble” scene from Macbeth (with a couple of the scarier lines removed). I Googled pictures of cauldrons for him as he hadn’t heard of them before. He was particularly interested in one that had a green potion bubbling out of it, so that’s what he created today.

“Double, double toil and trouble! Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

This is what I was referring to at the start of the post – Halloween rainbow play dough! As we were packing up, I asked R if he wanted to keep the mixed up play dough and he was emphatic that he did want to keep it. “What will we make with it?” I asked. To which he replied “We will make art with it!” But of course.

What are your plans for celebrating Halloween this year?

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.

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Exploring play dough with kitchen tools

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Ness

This week, Nurturestore, The Imagination Tree and Sunhats and Wellie Boots are hosting the Play Dough Pledge – a week long play dough play date. To join in the fun, all you need to do is try something new with pay dough. Yesterday, I took the pledge and made home made play dough for the first time and it turned out to be the most delightfully soft and wonderful play dough ever. Today, I’m sharing how we played with this gorgeous stuff!

I set out some kitchen utensils for R (3) to use with our freshly made play dough. We started out with just a few items - a garlic crusher, a potato masher and a potato ricer.

I think this was R’s favourite of all the utensils that we tried. It took all his strength to push the play dough through the holes but he was determined to do it and he was rewarded the longest, wiggliest strings of squishy goo!

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Easy Home Made Play Dough {Tips and Tricks}

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Ness

This week, Nurturestore, The Imagination Tree and Sunhats and Wellie Boots are hosting the Play Dough Pledge. All three sites will be sharing fun and creative ways to have fun with play dough and on Saturday June 16 there will be a link-up where you can share your play dough posts. What’s the play dough pledge? It’s simple. Just try something new with play dough this week.

We love play dough, but until now, we’d never made our own, so we took the play dough pledge and gave it a try. I’m so glad we did! This was SO SOFT and wonderful to play with and it was VERY quick to make. I whipped up three batches in around 30 minutes and that included clean up time. This was seriously the BEST play dough we have ever used!

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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.