Activity and images provided by WAHACA AT HOME
Make your own Piñata
Looking for the perfect way to stop your kids smashing up the house? Here’s our step by step guide to making your own Piñata.
STEP 1: Assemble your equipment
You’ll need
Right now we are in unprecedented times, with households across the UK going into our second month of ‘lockdown’ due to the Corona Virus outbreak. This break from the norm can be quite stressful for children – we don’t know when this situation is going to end, when we will see our families and friends again, or what our new ‘normal’ is going to be once the lockdown starts to lift, and that can be a lot to process for little minds.
As parents are trying to juggle working from home, with homeschooling, feeding the family and just getting everyone through the day – the importance of play has never been more vital.
“We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing.” -Charles Schaefer
Playing with your child helps with their confidence, development and overall wellbeing. Many parents make the mistake of trying to take the control of how their child plays. However, you should let them experiment with unstructured play, which allows them to go at their own pace and usually revolves around their interests at that moment.
The desire to play starts at toddler age, all the way through to early adulthood, however, babies, toddlers and young children have the instinct to play, which should initially be shaped by parents. As they move through the different phases of their life, the way they choose to play will change. Not all children find it easy to play.
Here’s how you can help your child’s development through play during the different stages of infancy:
Entertaining children is one of the toughest tasks. In order to maintain their full attention, they have to be mentally and physically engaged, but the task can’t be too challenging from the get-go. Initiating entertainment and maintaining entertainment is a challenge, no doubt, but it can be done.
In a time where instant gratification is the norm, many children indulge in screen time as their main source of information. TV, movies, tablets, and video games provide entertainment, but little more.
Enter card games. These might seem vintage to some, but a simple, two-player card game has just the right balance of physical and mental engagement, while challenging children enough to keep them involved.
If you’d like to switch out screens for a deck of cards, keep reading. I’ve got a few of the most loved card games that will keep kids entertained, no screens attached.
I’ve always enjoyed doing fun educational activities with my little ones at home, to help them develop their skills and just as a nice way to spend some calm and quiet quality time together. My Little Learner has a great range of products that make it easy to spend a few minutes doing this with your child, whether that may be helping them to learn to write their name, match their colours, or develop their vocabulary with picture flashcards.
I was sent a few products to try out with my two year old N, and she has had lots of fun exploring these at home.
Name Writing and Matching Mats
With the name writing mat, these are all personalised so of course you order your child’s name but you can choose whether to have first name and last name, or first name only. You can also choose what to have on the back of the mat as they are double sided, and you can choose what design you would like around the edge of the mat.
For N we went for a princess design around the edge, as that fits in with her interests so makes the mat more appealing. The writing mats are all wipe clean, whether you choose a name writing mat, or other mats such as shape writing, pen control with lines to follow (like wavy, zig zags and so on) or an ABC or number writing mat. This makes it easy for your child to practise over and over again without any pressure, as it can be wiped off and re done as many times as they would like. It also saves on paper!
Board games are meant to provide fun and creativity during playtime, so why not create your own board game. They are one of the great ways to develop social skills in early life. Boards are quite expensive, so it will be cheaper to create one using recycled materials. When designing the board, it is good to consider the age range of the players. The target age influences the game rules and the complexity of the game board. For example, good board games for 6 year olds that are fun to play, both educational and easy to understand are ideal for children.
Jumping, climbing and running are all important ways for kids to engage in physical play, which is important for developing gross motors skills and promoting other developmental milestones. However, an equally important means for development is through imaginative play.
Imaginative play is essential for children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. This type of play includes make believe games and role plays. Studies have shown that imaginative play improves development across many important areas,such as self-regulation, language skills and problem-solving. Pretending to be different characters also helps kids to experience the lives of others and develop empathy.
You don’t need to spend big bucks to make a big impact. With just a few simple materials, you can create these amazing DIY make believe costumes to keep your kids entertained for hours.
Wooden railway is an absolute classic toy – popular in most homes and nurseries. It was a huge hit with my boys particularly when they were younger, and now that N is moving out of the baby stage into the toddler years, we’ve started to reintroduce it again. Wooden railway is really open ended and can be played with many ways. The versatility is one of the reasons why we like it so much!
We were sent a great bundle of new wooden railway items from woodenrailways.co.uk to refresh our collection. We have various wooden tracks already, but some of it is quite battered from years of play so it’s always nice to start again with some fresh ones – plus wooden railway tends to be compatible across brands so if N wants to expand her tracks with some of our older accessories then that won’t be an issue.
We all know that spending time outside is good for our children. So, many parents try to take their kids to the park or for a bike ride. The problem is there is not always enough time available to do this as much as you would like. So, you have to do what you can to encourage your kids to go outside and play on their own more. A great way of doing that is buying them toys that are more suited for playing with outdoors than inside. Here are a few suggestions.
Radio-controlled toys