Creating a sea with liquid watercolours on light box

 Creating a sea with watercolours on the lightbox

Ladybird Playdough Provocation

Children love Ladybirds. Here's a great playdough provocation to inspire them further. 

Spider Playdough Provocation

Whether you're investigating insects or its Halloween - this is a great playdough to make! 

Creating a mini pond and bog garden

Make a mini pond and bog garden to attract wildlife into your garden.

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A great project for all the family to get involved in. 

Duckling Playdough Provocation

With Spring here, its a great time to learn about new life with a focus on ducklings. Why not start a topic off with some duckling playdough. 

Caterpillar/Butterfly Playdough Provocation

Make some beautiful playdough to create caterpillars and butterflies with in the spring time.

Counting with Buttons Provocation

This provocation is great for practising counting skills. All you need is some eye catching buttons and some number cards. 

Block Play Provocation

Block play involves so many different areas - problem solving, imagination, creativity, mathematics, science and fine motor skills. 

Baby Doll Hospital

The Girl and The Boy are loving playing babies so we set up a baby hospital. The children had a wonderful time making casts for their babies. 

Number recognition, order and counting.

A lush way to get practising maths skills

Pegging Pegs!

A very simple way to practise fine motor skills. 

Chick playdough

Spring chick playdough provocation

Sunflower Playdough

Scented playdough to inspire Spring time planting

Winter Penguin Provocation

Perfect for a project on penguins, this invitation uses loose parts and cloud dough.

Watercolour Provocation

The Hubby and The Girl made this gorgeous stand for our watercolours. 

Pompom match

Can you pick up the pompoms using the tweezers and match them by colour to the correct section?

Pattern sticks

Can you create a pattern from the sticks and loose parts?

Coin Match Padlock Provocation

Can you match the coins to their values?

Rhyming - 'Oi Frog'

Can you match together the words/pictures which rhyme, to unlock the padlocks?

The Gingerbread Man Playdough Provocation

Why not team up a fairy tale with playdough?  A great way to introduce a story. 

Spring time playdough provocation

A perfect provocation for spring time! 

Clay on Lightbox

 Clay is such a beautiful material to work with. Combine it with a light box and it seems even more stunning. 

Home Grown -Adventures in parenting off the beaten track, unschooling, and reconnecting with the natural world.

This book is great for showing us that wherever we live, learning at any age is a lifelong process and that the best education is never confined to a classroom. 

Magnetic characters!

Creating characters from loose parts on tin cans! 

Shaving foam on black paper with mirrors

Inviting foam provocation!

Word building with wooden Montessori letters

These wooden Montessori letters are really beautiful and great for word building.

Fantastically Great Women who Changed the World.

A perfect introduction to a few of the incredible women who have helped to shape our world

Rhyming padlock and keys

This padlock and key activity can have so many different focuses.

This time I've linked the padlock and key activity to the book Oi Frog. This book is fantastic. If you haven't come across it yet then please take a look! Its great for focusing on rhyme. 

I've printed out pictures, and I also wrote the words on the back of the pictures. The idea is to find the pictures which rhyme with each other and see if the key unlocks the padlock! 

Addition on the wooden block

 Using natural materials just seems to make things so much more appealing

Word building on the lightbox

Activities seem so appealing on the light box

Bringing Reggio Emilia Home

Definitely well worth a read! An inspiring book.

Button Patterns on Mirrors

 Mirrors are so appealing to work on. Add some buttons and it's even more inviting! 

Fantastic Foam Fun!

Create some quick and easy foam for lots of fun.

The Troll

This light Cube is a great for conversation starters and asking questions. 

Cotton Wool Snow Fun

If you are still waiting for some real white stuff - have a go at this fun pretend activity whilst you wait!

A Raft for the Billy Goats - STEM

Can you choose suitable materials to build a raft for the Three Billy Goats Gruff to get across the water on?

Maybe this way they can avoid the Troll! 

Cats Birthday Party - for a cat!

The children have talked all year about throwing a birthday party for our cat. We thought at the grand age of 17 she deserved something! 

Fizzing Snowmen

Lack of real snow has lead us to creating some of our own. And its so easy! 

Valentines Playdough and Loose Parts Provocation

How many pots of love can you create?

A Reggio Emilia Approach

'Child led investigations, open free spaces to play, a deep connection with nature and an emphasis on exploring and creating.' 

'Children are ...detectives, gifted with the capacity to utilise clues, to hypothesise "missing" explanations and to reconstruct facts. From the very beginning, their curiosity in learning refuses simple and isolated things. Instead, children love to find the dimensions and relations of complex situations ...create analogies, metaphors, anthropomorphic meanings, and logical meanings.' (Bringing Reggio Emilia Home 1997)

What is Reggio Emilia? 

Reggio Emilia is a town in Italy. Loris Malaguzzi and parents in the villages around Reggio Emilia developed an educational philosophy following the need for a new way of learning. They believed that children form their own personality during early years of development and that they are given 'a hundred languages' meaning they have many ways of expressing themselves. The Reggio approach sees children as strong and capable. In a Reggio appraoch the educator is seen as three things. The teacher, the child and the environment. 

Here is a link to a lovely little video which explains it really simply! 

https://youtu.be/cvwpLarbUD8

Time Padlocks

Can you unlock the padlocks by matching the times to the clock faces?

Gingerbread Boy Playdough

Can you build a Gingerbread Boy (who does not run away!)

STEM Bridge Building for the Gingerbread Boy

Can you build a bridge for the Gingerbread Boy to get across the river with, using sticks and marshmallows (without eating them before it is built?!)

Exploring 3D Shapes with Kinetic Sand

A selection of beautiful coloured transparent geometric 3D shapes placed on a mirror tile with kinetic sand ready to be explored.

Floating Buttons - A STEM activity

How many buttons can you float on your boat?

The Girl was showing curiosity about things which float so I set up this provocation.