Outdoor Play - The Spider Cave Maze

Creepy Crawly Spider Cave Fun

  Try not to get caught in the web!

Spiders hanging from all around.

This Outdoor activity was a great physical fun way to get active, get moving, have some imaginary pretend play and build on those all important gross motor skills. Dimples mastered the way he moved his body to trick the hanging spiders, creep, crawl, duck down low and climb around the web without getting caught. He had to stretch his legs and balance as he climbed through and move in all different directions as the spiders danced around above his head trying to get him.

 

Over the past fortnight, as Dimples has been enjoying some Spring time outdoor play, I have been carefully spinning an intrinsic Web. I initially started with 2 posts, a large hoop and some wool. I strung the hoop in the centre and weaved the web around it, locking it on and securing it with wool up to the 2 posts that i had firmly whacked deep into the ground.

Then I randomly added some connecting bits of wool so it resembled a web.

I hung a very large, prickly spider down through the hoop and Dimples made a fun game of jumping through the hoop without getting touched by the Spider.

This went on for many afternoons and he enjoyed it so much that I decided to belt another post into the ground so that there were 2 connected walls (in the shape of a right angle). 

With the second one, I used a small hoop that he can through balls through and i left a open space on the bottom so that he can crawl under.

Dimples chilling out under a spiders web

 Dimples spent lots of time playing in his web, trying to jump through the hoop and crawl under the web without getting caught by the spiders. It was a great imaginary game he had going on.

I would rest the large spider up in the web, and just as he went through I would tap the post so that the spider swung down, launching itself towards Dimples. He thought it was hilarious and wanted more. The way the spider quickly swung down after him must have been so realistic from his view and he would excitedly squeal that he had tricked it, and that he was too quick for it, and "You missed me! ha ha!"

It didn't end there!

 

A large Hoop is on one side of the structure, with a very large hairy spider covering it.

I added one more side so that there were now 3 web walls and one open side. With this web, i just used wool, making sure a majority of the web was down the bottom and some was up the top, i then strung the connecting centre pieces of web (wool)  so that there was a large gap pulled open. Large enough that Dimples could climb through.

With the left over wool I strung it up over the top, zig zaging and connecting all areas like a web roof. Some pieces were up higher to a near by Shade Umbrella.

I dangled 30-60 cm pieces of wool randomly through out the roof of the web and near the openings and hung plastic and rubber spiders and scorpions.

 

Jumping through the hoop without getting touched by a spider can be tricky.

We made a few games up with the maze, one where Dimples had to use it as an obstacle course, climb through the hoop duck under the other side, through a ball through the small hoop and carefully climb through the other web opening without touching the web all the time staying clear of the spiders.
Another where I would shake the top of the web so that all the spiders shook around like crazy and he was a distressed fly, trying to find his way out of the web with out getting eaten by the spiders.
Then he got some stuffed toys to join in and he would try and throw them through the large hoop without hitting the spider that dangled over the centre.
Dimples loved the Spider Maze so much that we left it up for the Halloween Party we had over the weekend and all the kids enjoyed jumping through it and tangling things in the web.
They kept busy and active manoeuvring around so that the spiders couldn't get them.

Room to crawl under the webs... WATCH OUT!

 

I couldnt capture the entire web in one photograph so this is the design of the 3 sides with the back wall completely open.

 

 

Happy Outdoor Adventures :)

Ice & Salt Reactions - Halloween Theme

Spiders in Ice castles and a Salt Melting Experiment

 

Another Halloween themed play treat. This time Dimples had a play date with his good friend Miss K. I had prepared some Ice castles (using sand castle molds) with some spooky plastic spiders and flies frozen inside.  I set out the Ice castles, some salt to help melt the formations and some coloured water with a dropper each.

 

Dimples and Miss K went to work sprinkling salt over their Ice and trying to master the squirt droppers.  Its not working, they both exclaimed slowly adding more and more salt, but it was. The salt reacts with the ice and as the ice melts it speeds up the process, so as the salty water runs down the castle is causes cavities, rifts and small trails for the coloured water to flow through. 

 

It is a slow process but it looks really cool when the colours start running down the crevices. I think these two 3.5 year olds were just a little impatient and wanted to get to the spiders straight away. They stuck with it, adding different colours on top and watching it flow down the sides. Dimples the extremist tried to speed things up by dumping handfuls of salt on top.

 

It looked vibrant and some what spooky but it wasnt what he had in mind, so he tipped amore and more colour over the top.  Slowly he seen it start to melt down the sides and he seen some spider legs poke through.  Miss K successfully removed a fly and decided to taste the ice. Hmmmm yukky she said to the salt covered ice.

 

The two friends mastered how to use the droppers and the syringe squirts by observing me and each other, Miss K found it easier to do it one handed pushing with her thumb and Dimples mastered the skill using two hands to fill the entire tube then squirting it with his pointer finger. Both got the hang of it though. This intruquit technique helps develop the muscles in the hand needed for writting skills and develops hand/eye co-ordination.

They also got a lesson on colour mixing; as our yellow and red colours mixed together we got a nice bright Halloween Orange, and the yellow and blue = Green. The friends noticed that all of the colours pooled at the bottom of the tray into a black colour.

 

Happy Adventures :-)

Projective Inkblots

Anyone who knows me will know that I am studying a Psychology Bachelors Degree, I am no where near my goal and it is seeming to take for ever but I am determined to get there & be labelled a Registered Psychologist. What I do from there is still unknown.

I recently went away for my on-campus residential for the subject Psychological testing & Assessment, one of things that popped up was the development of the Projection Test as one of the first Personality tests. Developed initially by Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalytic Theorist, Inkblots soon developed further and The Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) were coined, if you have any interest in Psychology who may have heard of these as they are the two most widely used Projection tests, and they were both important milestones in the clinical field.

The test assumes that the person being tested is projecting their personalities into the inkblots.  Further, the test assumes that since the person is focusing on the inkblot in order to identify what it resembles, they would be removing the attention of themselves and therefor remove their usual psychological defences. Since the same inkblot could seem like everything and nothing, any object or idea that the subject claims to see would be a product of the subject’s unconscious projected onto the inkblot.  That is the history.

Now, I am not a fan of Freud and anyone who has read about him may feel the same, he is often seen as a creep with sexually deviant desires and his theories surrounding early childhood are very radical and some what disturbing. None the less, he is a major player in Psychology and I do understand the basis of Projective tests.

Out of curiosity I made some inkblots with Smiley. I still have ink left over from our experimental Marbling in November.  So I got that out to use. It was a fun process and a learning activity for him as he got to see how the ink transferred onto both sides when folded in the paper and how the colours smeared together.

I cut A4 White printing paper in half and did about 10 inkblots.  I asked smiley to choose his colours, splash some dots on the paper and then we folded them in half. Using the same technique you would if you were making butterflies with paint. Open them up and put them up to dry.

Once they were dry I asked smiley what they looked like. What do you think that is,  and what is it doing?  I did this purely out of curiosity, and of course for the process of making them, i didn't intend to perform any type delving technique and I wasn't going to look into what he said for some underlying hidden meaning. 

He is nearly 3 and that would be totally inappropriate, so I did it purely to see where his imagination took him and how well he could attend, listen and talk about the pictures. Through open ended questioning I thought it would also help develop his language and conversational skills. But most of all, they were fun to make and they do look pretty unique and interesting.

He did really well and he is suprising me a lot lately with how grow up he is becoming. Time has gone so fast and he isn't my little baby anymore he is becoming a little boy.  All grow up he says "OK, Show me this one!" and took the inkblot, as the tests are ambiguous they can be seen in any direction or angle that the viewer wants them to be in and this is funnily exactly what he did.

He twisted and turned it around, hummed & hared tilting his head at all different angles then announced this one is a Big Camp Fire, like the one out the bush!  (we had a bomb-fire that day but if it were a real adult projection test the psychoanalyst might have said that represents a hot temper or signifies anger rising up - PFFtTt so the tests as you can imagine aren't really that popular these days)

It was very humorous to me, my little man so grow up telling me stories about what it is. "Lets see" he would say & squint, with a real serious look on his face. "This one has huge Antennas" he said, and then from there on it was an insect theme.

There was a Spider eating his food. There was a cranky biter cricket with huge antennas.  A squashed frog with a fat belly that a car had run over, A beautiful butterfly of course and an explosion in the water from what i gather. There were lots of sound effect, boom, splash, pachoooow and lots of cute facials!

The last one, which was totally out of the theme was Poppy with his glasses on which surprised me because he hasn't seen Poppy for a couple of weeks and the picture was, well very ambiguous but I can see where he got the glasses from (it was 2 big yellow blots that looked like round eyes, or glasses).

Here are some below; The fire, the spider eating his food & the cranky cricket 

Halloween ideas for little ones to enjoy

How to Celebrate Halloween with the Under 4 yr old.

We don't get into Halloween as much as Americans for obvious reason but I love it! I have great memories of trick or treating when i was young but here in Australia a lot of old fogies don't like the concept of Halloween and refuse to answer their doors for trickers going around. I clearly remember when I was 12 we did our usual knock - knock trick or treat and an old lady screamed violent abusive language from her rocking chair, banging her walking stick on the wall and yelling that she wasn't American and doesn't believe in it.... Fair enough but Geez, we avoided any house from there on in that we knew had elderly persons living there.  Besides that incident,  I love the spirit of Halloween and think it is one of the funniest Holidays of the year BUT my son is not yet 3 yrs old and a little young so I thought of some more appropriate ways to teach him & get him involved in the tradition.

So What do you do with children who are too Young to go trick or treating, or in the example above for younger Australian kids who you want to shield from such negative reactions and for those who are too young to understand the concept of Hallows eve?
Well here are some ideas we came up with.......

Surprise Trick or Treat at family & friends houses:

We will still go trick or treating but more as an excuse to visit family & friends in dress up (Shhhhh they dont know this yet & will be completely un-suspecting of who the little trick or treater knocking on their door really is).
We plan to visit grandparents, Aunts uncles & close friends, of course Mummy will probably be dragged to every door for the surprise but it will be a nice surprise for our loved ones and it gives us a chance to stop in for a chat, S gets to dress up and join in the fun, we get to take some family pictures along the way & all in all it will be a fun learning experience that will provide some good laughs in the future & maybe some embarrassing 21st photos to hold on to for when my little one is all grown up  ;-D

Halloween Decorations:

Great for FUN, great for Guests, parties or to Welcome trick or treating children.

We were having a guest over so we decked out the entrance with spider web & streamers.  My little boy was running around frantic, so excited saying that he was running from the spiders & he had a ball looking at the spider webs while he waited near the door for one of his best friends to arrive & when she did it was  "Look look" -  I think i will leave the decos up on Halloween in case we do get some trick or treaters. Were I grew up there were a lot of children roaming the streets in cool costumes & we did know what we were celebrating but where I am now, I have lived here for years  & only ever had 2 lots of tricksters come to the door
(Most of them didn't know what to do when i asked for their Trick, they just looked at me blankly as if to ask where the lollies were)

We especially did the entrance, this big web & spider was on the door.

I used a non stick tack dot to stick the streamers up so that they wouldn't wreck the paint & hung fake spiders/scorpions and Bats through the web. Most toy shops have an abundance of supplies that will give you some great ideas.

Most of it got run through ripped and torn down by the end of the evening but my little man & his guest did enjoy it, maybe a little too much!

I also used non-stick reusable stickers of spiders and webs that i got from the local bargain shop. These will stay on the walls also in case some older kids come door knocking on Halloween.

Food ideas & Recipes:

Bat sandwiches

Bat shaped Sandwiches (I used a Bat cookie cutter You can also get pumpkin or ghost shaped ones that would work just as good) Nothing spectacular but they were gobbled up first, we just had Vegemite ones and Devon/sauce ones seen as it was only ourselves and another close friend.

Eye balls on Slime

These are canned, pitted Lychee's stuffed with strawberries on blue jelly.  I hadn't tried my little one with lychee's before and seen as our kids are so young and sometimes fussy I did this more for the cool look, they were intrigued and picked a little but i am unsure if they actually ate a full one. My mates little angel loved the slime (jelly) and thought they were pretty weird looking so I succeeded in that department!

They would look great stuffed with green Olives also.

Mummies dipped in blood

Continental Frankfurt's mummified in thin strips of puff pastry & baked, served with tomato sauce.

Gruesome Floating hand Punch

In a doctors glove, or a clean un-dusted plastic glove fill it up with water and add a drop of food colour, tie the top up then freeze it for at least 12 hours.

Then as your guests arrive make the punch. Because our ones are still babies we used a natural fruit juice (apple & guava) diluted with water.  I also had a ice tray of star shapes so i did some black stars.

You could put fruit in as well or normal ice cubes.

At the last minute get your frozen hand & cut it from the glove, make sure there is no plastic left on it & be careful not to break the fingers off (like i did).

There you have a floating hand. The colours do drift into the juice quiet quickly as it melts so it is better to use high contrast colours & place it in quickly to that  it isn't left melting in the glove as you hold it :)

Other ideas I had - 

 Witches fingers in green snot  (aka cabonossi, bread sticks, carrot & cheese slices in avocado dip)

Bowl of watermelon balls.

Bowl of pineapple pieces

Chocolate Spiders (chow mien noodles in melted chocolate & cooled on baking paper in fridge

Snakes or spiders in jelly (mix your jelly & as it is setting add some plastic bugs, snakes or spiders)

Marshmallow ghosts (marshmallows with icing drawn ghost faces

goblin eyes in spaghetti (Meatballs with an olive in the centre in spaghetti & sauce)

yum-yum

Activities:

If you were hosting a party or making a day of it with friends there are plenty of things you could do.

I had printed some Halloween themed stencils out so they could colour & draw

You could make our foam-bags-to-learn-about-colour-mixing in a Halloween theme as we did before

You could have a monster sensory box to play in click here 

You could make spiders like what we did here 

You can google the meaning of Halloween and teach older kids where it derived from

You could make goody bags.

Goody bags:

This was our first Halloween theme and seen as there were only two 2 year old kiddies to amuse we didn't go all out. They shared a treat with each other & that was enough.

They got a plastic see-through cup each for the gruesome hand punch

A glow stick bangle

A glow in the dark scorpion & a Black bat

A fake spider in some web

A little devil mask

& some appropriate lollies to take home



Foam Bags to learn about Colour mixing & a Halloween treat

These Sensory Bags are great for learning the concept of colour mixing. We went one step further & turned them into Halloween Sensory bags

All you need is Shaving Cream/Foam, food dye & a Sealing Sandwich bag.

*Fill the bag from the bottom up with shaving cream, mush it around & get as much air out as possible.
*on a flat surface part down one side, this is where your first colour will go. We did Yellow
*Again, do the same on the opposite side & pour your next colour down, we used Red.
*Seal it & let your child mix the colours around. Gradually you will see the shades mixing. What colour do they make?

 They feel like a pillow to begin with, they are real puffy & filled. This is our colours to begin with.

 Mixing, moving, squishing, poking..............    wearing it on your head maybe? However you like to play with them will end up combining the colours!

There you have it, my little one learnt how red & yellow combine to make a bright Orange colour.  Because it is Halloween soon, we used the bright orange bag for a Halloween Sensory bag.

Carefully open one corner up & add some Black spiders, bats or snakes for Halloween. Make sure to push the foam down a little near your opening because the seal it bags wont work if they have the shaving cream in the sealing run.

Now you have a Spooky Halloween Sensory Bag.

We also did a big one with lots of colours, which made lots of different shades of green, pink, orange and it ended up looking like one big Rainbow Paddle pop inside (well i thought so,  i still feel like going to buy a rainbow paddle pop, YUM).

Spider Webs & the very busy spider

THE VERY BUSY SPIDER ~ Web/Glue paint activity.

After reading the Very busy spider by Eric Carle & noticing that my little one loved the feel of the spider web embossed we did this Art project using Glue & black paint, then he painted his webs & made spiders on wool web to hang off his Art.
He was so pleased with himself when he had his finished & dried project, spider & all, which felt just like the busy web in the story.

First you need PVA glue or similar & some cardboard or card stock.  If you have an older child they could help with this bit if they are patient enough to leave it dry overnight but seen as my little man is only 2 I pre-glued his web & put them out to dry.
Black glue:  Glue with black paint, or you could do red if you wanted, clear or any colour depending on what you wanted to use it for.

We tried a black web & a clear web.

Once they were dry (the next day) I got out the paints & some rollers, brushes and sponges. With a variety of colours I let my little boy pick & choose how he wanted them to look. I'm still trying to get him out of the habit of smearing, he loves to get a bit of green on his brush, then red, then yellow, then blue & so on before painting with it, mostly his art turns into a big smear of brown ha ha, but the rollers seem to do the job. He enjoys it!

One was yellow. I don't know how that worked so well, i think because I had a cheaper full paint tube of yellow. . . So I stacked the yellow on & it was his first choice, he had a little help with this one. Initial encouragement to show him the ropes, that's all! Then i let him at it.

This one above was a fence post, tree & a web through the sky. He did really well at painting the fence palings.  The one below was just a random experiment I did with the black glue on normal A4 printing paper to see if it was too thin but it worked fine, the glue also worked fine so i held onto it so he could use it up after he did his webs.

After all our paint sessions there must be an outburst of hand painting & messy prints on the left over newspaper, that's his new thing!

Then he helped with the spider making. These are our drying spiders. All they are made from is a large pom-pom with 2 eyes & 4 matchsticks criss crossed & glued on the underside.

Then a thread of wool is also glued to the under side. Easy peasy. I am sure their are some much more creative & better looking craft spiders out there but this is what i had in the junk box & it was something he could lend a hand in making. He chose the colours & put the eyes on, then the hardest bit was waiting for them to dry!

Once the base/background was dry on the yellow web we got a mauve coloured paint & a sponge, then only lightly smeared it over the web. This was in the aim to only brush over the intruding glue web that you can feel, just to make it stand out a little. This was his final task & here it is below.....

Once they are dry I scewed a hole threw the cardboard for the wool web to be threaded into, taped it  secure onto the back from one corner so the spider was hanging from the front of the web. Now that i am reflecting, it would possibly have a better effect with a shorter thread attached through the centre of the web!  This is web #1 that got given to Nanny, he was so happy to give her his master piece.

#2 web got kept. I asked who this one was for & he said it was a present for Daddy. I'm glad, I wanted to hold on to it, we'll put it into our under bed container of Art pieces & memories after it has been displayed for a while.