Tag: rainy day

101 fun ideas for half term

If you’re running out of inspiration then have a look at our 101 ideas!

Inside
1. Read stories
2. Make a den under a table
3. Give dolls a bath
4. Wash the dolls clothes
5. Have a teddy tea party
6. Have a tickle fight
7. Play dressing up
8. Dance to the radio
9. Have a film screening
10. Transform a cardboard box
Outside
1. Run races
2. Have a sack race
3. Skip
4. Draw on the drive/patio with chalk
5. Have a water fight, even if it’s raining
6. Play football
7. Go for a scoot or bike ride
8. Eat a picnic
9. Make a daisy chain
10. Jump in puddles
Days out
1. Go on a train to a different town
2. Take a bus to a different park
3. Go to the zoo
4. Take a long walk in the country
5. Visit a ruined castle
6. Go to a museum
7. Visit a farm park
8. Go to soft play
9. Have fun at the seaside
10. Go to a planetarium
 In the kitchen
1. Make bread
2. Bake and decorate a cake
3. Build a gingerbread structure
4. Master meringues (egg white + sugar = magic)
5. Make your own butter in a jam jar by shaking whole milk
6. Make jam
7. Ice biscuits
8. Create fruity cocktails
9. Freeze (and eat) your own ice lollies
10. Invent a herb or spice mix or a marinade
Constructing and modelling
1. Make a skyscraper from toothpicks or cocktail sticks and marshmallows
2. Create a Lego or Duplo town
3. Get the railway track out and take over the floor
4. Junk model
5. Create and paint figurines or jewellery from Plaster of Paris
6. Make a marble run
7. Build an outside den
8. Make and sail paper boats
9. Have a competition to build to the tallest tower from a newspaper and roll of sellotape
10. Challenge yourselves with a 3D jigsaw
 Messy play
1. Cook rainbow spaghetti
2. Make playdough
3. Play with gloop (cornflour and water)
4. Mix mud pies
5. Blow bubbles
6. Play with jelly
7. Fill a box with shredded paper
8. Make potions, from anything!
9. Play with diggers in a tray of compost
10. Make glittery cloud dough
 Painting and drawing
1. Fill eggshells with paint and throw them
2. Paints with forks, spoons and other kitchen utensils
3. Cut fruit and vegetables to make prints
4. Roll cars through paint on paper
5. Be inventive with hand and foot prints
6. Make your own natural paint from spices
7. Make self-portraits
8. Make a cartoon in a flip notebook
9. Play Pictionary
10. Draw blindfolded

Science
1. Put an egg into vinegar and watch the eggshell dissolve
2. Now see what happens when you put an egg into Coca-Cola
3. Experiment with chromatography
4. Grow cress-heads
5. Inflate a balloon by mixing bicarbonate of soda and vinegar in a bottle
6. Go on a nature hunt and identify the plants and bugs you see
7. ‘Rescue’ playmobile figures from a block of ice
8. Grow salt crystals
9. Make a rainbow on a sunny day
10. Experiment with shadows
 Crafts
1. Sew a dress for a doll or a quilt for a teddy
2. Weave a table mat on a home made loom
3. Make candles
4. Create a bowl from papier maché
5. Make pom-poms
6. Mix up some bath bombs 
7. Learn to knit
8. Make a drop spindle
9. Decorate sock puppets
10. Make a necklace or bracelet by threading beads on ribbon
 Around town
1. Have a grown up ‘coffee’ in a café
2. Visit the library
3. Draw a sketch map of the town
4. Go on a treasure hunt
5. Learn about architecture
6. Research your area’s history
7. Learn to read an OS map
8. Take a different route every day
9. Search the town archives or the internet for old photographs and drawings of the town and talk about how it has changed
10. Take photographs and make a guidebook showing all your favourite places

Top Tips to Encourage Physical Activity in Children

Encouraging your child to be more physically active isn’t as hard as it might at first seem. First of all, children are generally full of energy, much more it seems than adults and so all you need to do is guide them into using that energy.

Physical activity is extremely important for children. It helps to build muscles, coordination, and concentration whilst also helping to maintain mental and emotional health.

It’s never too young to begin fostering a love of exercise and activity in children as it can become a habit that helps them to stay healthy and active throughout their entire life.

According to the NHS, young children (under the age of three) need around 3 hours of physical activity each day, with children older needing at least 1 hour per day.

With very young children, simply using things like a baby walker, walking around and playing is good enough, but as children get older, it can feel more challenging, especially as they start to play video games that can lead to long periods of time without movement. That’s why we’ve put together these top tips to help get your children up and active:

  • Explore the outdoors – Whatever the weather, try to explore the outdoors a few times each week. This can be as simple as visiting the local park or playground, but don’t forget to take advantage of any other outdoor areas around you such as open fields, nature reserves and woodlands to help your child burn their energy. You don’t even have to worry about structured play, so long as it’s safe to do so, let your child roam and explore, they’ll soon wear themselves out whilst benefitting from fresh air and making their own choices.
  • Meet up with friends – Bringing other children into the mix is a great way to boost energy levels and activity. Arranging a group meetup at the playground, park, swimming baths or soft play centre is a great way of getting your child active and keeping it social. Children are usually more excited to play with others and won’t notice they’re even exercising. It’ll also give you time to socialise with other adults.
  • Bring it inside – Remember that exercise isn’t limited to outside. There’s plenty that you can do inside whether it’s a dance party, home yoga class, a game of twister or simply doing the housework. They all count as exercise, so get moving.
  • Join a class or group – How about a swimming class, gymnastics or dance club? Check your local schools, community centres and Facebook groups for classes near you that your child might enjoy. Not only will they stay active, they’ll learn new skills and make new friends.
  • Set an example – Children often copy what they see, so be a positive role model. Go for walks together, do yoga or an online fitness programme at home, go swimming. Simply being active yourself is often enough to encourage your child to follow suit.

How do you keep your children active? Share your tips and advice in the comments!

Why You Should Visit Your Local Library This Summer

The summer holidays can be stressful for parents and nannies alike. Trying to find new and exciting activities to keep the kids entertained every day is no easy feat. When you consider the many rainy days experienced in the average British summertime, you might find that you and your children are going a little stir crazy.

Over the summer holidays, libraries all around the country will be pulling out all the stops kids entertained by putting on various activities including hosting character visits and read-a-longs to craft or computer sessions, and much more.

Continue reading “Why You Should Visit Your Local Library This Summer”

A Halloween sensory poem and touchy feely game

Blindfold the children and then say the rhyme as you guide their fingers to the appropriate bowls. Take the blindfold off just as you say the last words so they see their fingers covered in ‘blood’.

I went to a graveyard and dug in the ground

Here are some of the things that I found:

Continue reading “A Halloween sensory poem and touchy feely game”

Seven pros of sensory play

Sensory play is a catch-all term for activities which focus on stimulating a child’s senses : hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. It can involve messy play, singing and dancing, cooking or gardening to name just a few activities which have maximum sensory input.

 

  1. Children learn best when multiple senses are stimulated.  Songs are more easily remembered than poems because of the additional sensory stimulation the music provides. Memories can be provoked by smells or tastes. Sensory stimulation makes abstract ideas concrete.
  2. Sensory play allows children to experiment. Experimentation is crucial for developing advanced cognitive skills such as analysing and predicting. It allows children to explore cause and effect and allows them to find solutions to problems.
  3. Children control sensory play. By giving children materials which stimulate their senses and letting them get on with it they are able to make decisions and follow their own path, which gives them confidence to take control in other areas too. They may initially be afraid of slime or gloop but giving them time and space to experience it safely they are in control of the experience and will participate in their own time.
  4. New experiences means new words to describe them. Sensory play is a goldmine for vocabulary and linguistic development. Children learn the meaning of adjectives such as warm and cold, sticky, smooth, slimy and hard as well as comparatives (bigger, smaller, runnier, rougher) and
    lots of words to describe actions.
  5. Sensory play enhances physical development. From dancing to music to trying to kneading dough or trying to pick dinasours out of slime, sensory play can be adapted to focus on specific motor skills or enhance overall motor development and hand-eye coordination.
  6. You can do sensory play anywhere, any time. You don’t need a special table with a waterproof cloth to take part in sensory play. Even mealtimes can be an occasion to stimulate senses by identifying colours, smelling the different foods and experiencing taste and texture.
  7.  Sensory play is fun for adults and children alike. Make a bowl of gloop and try not to play with it. We dare you!

Get into the Christmas spirit with our top 5 festive books for children

Christmas is the perfect time to rekindle your child’s love of books and reading.

Children’s Christmas books are filled with happiness, wonder and strong morals. Reading is a simple, easy activity that can be enjoyed by children of all ages, no matter the weather.

Encourage them to learn by reading aloud or helping them to read along.

What are you waiting for? Pick up a book today and spark their imagination.

See below for our recommended top 5 festive children’s books!

Continue reading “Get into the Christmas spirit with our top 5 festive books for children”

How to make activity a part of daily life

How active are your children? Did you know that only 10% of under-five year olds are meeting NHS guidelines for daily activity?

The NHS recommend that children are active for at least three hours per day to encourage physical and mental health and wellbeing, which is why we’ve put together our top suggestions to help get your children up and active each and every day, even in winter.

Continue reading “How to make activity a part of daily life”

Puddle jumping

It’s springtime, it’s a tiny bit warmer but it’s still pretty darn wet! What better way to make the most of this than to go puddle jumping?

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappopriate clothing” – Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Many parents and nannies believe that every day, rain or shine, children can get out and about. With a good set of waterproofs, plenty of layers and some sturdy welly boots everyone can get out to play. If you do get wet then when you get home dry off, change clothes and warm up with a hot drink. Hot chocolate tastes even better when it’s going into a chilly tummy.

Jumping in puddles is just a natural childhood instinct. It’s also a way for children to see that they can have a big effect on the world around them. They can spend ages jumping in and out of puddles, watching the water fly everywhere and then return to its tranquil state or examining reflections or making water muddy and watching it settle again. This is the start of science, in a playful way.

Puddle jumping a universal game. There’s a little spark of childish glee in all of us when we see a puddle and we get to jump in it. Don’t hold back! Children thrive on experiencing fun alongside adults and are encouraged by adults participating.

“Childhood is a state of mind which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle rather than an opportunity” – Unknown

So what will it be? Obstacle? Or opportunity?

Last one to get their welly boots on is a banana!

Baking with children

The return of the Great British Bake Off has got us all in a bit of a bakey mood and what better activity to fill those occasional wet summer days than a spot of baking?

Baking is great for children. It incorporates key skills such as literacy (reading a recipe and identifying ingredients) and numeracy (weighing and measuring quantities, or doubling a recipe if you’re feeling greedy), and introduces children to scientific concepts (mixing, melting, solidifying and why does it do that?), healthy eating (yes, really), and food hygiene. All that mixing and pouring, spooning and decorate works those motor skills to, so it’s not just about having a tasty cake for your afternoon snack, although that is obviously very important.

You can start baking with children from a very young age, as soon as they can hold a wooden spoon they can get involved in the process albeit mostly by banging on a saucepan but they’re seeing, and smelling, and learning, and it gives you a lot to talk about. Obviously it gets a lot more interesting, and messier, when they can start stirring for themselves, and even more interesting, and messy, when they can start weighing, pouring and spooning. But then they learn the important life skill of Clearing Up After Themselves.

If you’re a baking novice, never fear! You can learn along side the children, so here are some Really Easy Fairycakes to get you started and then you can graduate to Mary Berry GBBO standards. Happy baking!

 

Frances Norris is a former nanny and mother of two, whose children aged 3 and 8 months are in training for GBBO 2028.