Mining for jewels

Ever heard of smurf village for I-pad?  I have it, I love the smurfs. They're so cute, it's a bit like FarmVille & those games on Face book (that I've never got into) but with smurfs they grow crops of fruit, bake cakes and build a hidden smurf village.  In my smurf village I have miner smurf and a game where you mine with a pick, finding gold, silver, rubies and jewels in rocks....
Dimples loves it, he always asks if he can check my smurf village just so he can mine for Jewels,  this was the inspiration for the mining activity I put together for him!



Using a small chisel and hammer, dimples mined for treasure just like mining smurf.  Days in advance I prepared his rocks using homemade play dough that had almost had its day. I got a palm full of dough and inserted a lucky stone, a pretend jewel, a marble or a foam shape in the centre and rolled it in so it was completely covered. once I had a dozen I put them on the window sill to dry!



After a few days of full sun, the dough rocks were hard all the way through and ready to be mined.
Miner dimples used his chisel and hammer to chip away at the rocks until he found a jewel. He told me he would mine out a crown for me as this is the highest scoring treasure in the smurf game that we haven't been able to find!  Unfortunately for me there were no crowns but he enjoyed mining the hidden jewels and imagining what could be.

 

 

 

 

My little miner found some treasures, cleaned them off & put them away in his treasure box.  It was good fun and a good activity for pretend play, imagination, hand/eye coordination & spatial concepts. Not to mention messy outdoor play



Happy Adventures  :)