DIY Dramatic Play Theatre

Dimples loves to dress up, he has an insanely large collection of dress ups for a 4 year old. Over the years I have collected any dress up outfit, pretend play props and funny looking piece of clothing I have come across into a toy box and it got to the point that we were hardly getting them out because there was just too much. So I decided to designate an area for the dress ups and make a play area to encourage Dimples to role play and make use of his collection. Here is the DIY Theatre I made in our lounge room. 

It was so easy, and its the lazy Mums DIY play space. I do have a sewing machine but I had 5 minutes to spare so I grabbed a red sheet, cut it down the middle and laid it across the floor then I put a string across the middle of both 'curtains' and doubled them over so that the string remained in what was now the top. I grabbed a stapler and stapled it about an inch from the edge (making sure the string wasn't in the way and was in the top side. Ok so its not ideal and you may want to sew it but it was easy and any one can do it.
I put a small hook on the wall which is opposite a baluster railing at the top of a stair case, I then tied the strong with the curtains hung from the railing across to the hook, making sure that they open and closed.

You could do it from wall to wall or across a corner of a room I guess, or if you had one of those portable clothing rails that could work. All Dimples dress ups were put in a couple of toy boxes behind the curtains and he started to do performances. Mission Complete.

Its pretty funny!
He is quite the drama King. He starts his performance with the curtain shut and counts down, then he claps three times before he rips the curtains open and springs out into action. He does high energy dances, sings and jumps around the place, he does comedy performances as a clown and falls down over and over and over laughing at him self. He always remembers to do a bow when he is finished.

Dimples tells jokes and because the height of the curtains is head height the DIY theatre also doubles as a Puppet show. He ducks down and uses props to put on a puppet show with his stuffed animals.
Its great for Family Fun. Miss Cherub sits and watches his performances excitedly and on the weekend we had a screen free day where myself, Adventures Dad and Dimples had to take turns doing performances. We spent the afternoon laughing at each other and being silly together.

Dimples has utilized all the dress up gear more in the past two weeks than he has in the past two years.
He has a Monsters Inc suit which is a favourite and a Monsters inc toy that he was talking for as if he was a ventriloquist.  He has developed quite a laugh, he always cracks me up.

Learning Concepts:
Pretend Play
Imagination & Creativity
Role Play
Being Active
Vocabulary
Imitating people, things and animals
Developing a sense of humor
Confidence in self

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Happy Adventures :)

Sensory Material Surprise - Baby Play in a Box

Baby Play is so much fun, when baby first starts playing it becomes apparent just how much they're learning through play. My minds going crazy with play ideas.

This little baby activity introduces  sensory learning by providing textures and different feeling materials that are visually appealing, while cognitively developing a babies understanding of objects and object permanence.

Babies learn through their senses so a great way to introduce a baby to play is through different textured materials. First, gather a bunch of material swatches trying to get different feeling materials, look for different materials, different textures, things that you just want to touch that are visually appealing as well. You can then "hide" them folded or rolled up into a box; I have used an ice-cream container with a hole in the lid and a stocking over it so that Miss Cherub can see through into the hole and stretch it to fit her hands in. You could easily use an empty tissue box.

Once all the materials are in the box leave a little corner poking out so they can see there is something to grab out. With no assistance Miss Cherub pulled the materials out one by one, she looked at them, flapped them around felt them and then tried to put them over her head and rub her cheeks on them, then they got thrown to the side as she put her hand in to see if there was more.

As she continued I put the materials in and out of the box so she could see them go in, or see a small end hanging out. This encouraged her to keep seeking out the materials whether she could see them or not.

Between the ages of 4-8 months babies develop what is known as the secondary circular reactions stage of object permanence; this begins by exploring objects, reaching and grasping objects and understanding that it is a real thing that can be handled, they learn distance and that objects right in front of them can in fact be touched, they learn that the object moves and start to reach for objects that were in a position or can partially be seen, then they learn the permanence of an object (that the object exists inside the box, whether they can see or hear it or not).

A great example of this is the game peek-a-boo and a great way to encourage this skill is activities like this.

I had some cool materials; fluffy pieces, leather, pvc, felt, shiny materials, sequined material, bright stripped materials, a New scourer dish cloth, lace, knitted wool daisies, a clean glass cloth, a small piece of outdoor course carpet, a small square of outdoor fake grass and her ribbon tickle toy.  Use your imagination & go on a texture hunt; If you have an older child get them to seek out funky materials & textures to fit in the container. 

Learning Concepts:
Learning by Touch
Exploring textures
Visual discrimination
Object permanence
Pulling, Pushing, Passing materials
Seeking out hiding materials

Ideas to extend:
Make a DIY Ribbon Tickle toy
Use a really large box with scarfs and other large materials
Tie or stitch materials together so they just keep coming out in one trail
Finish by making them into a texture book to keep

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Happy Adventures 

Mint Choc-chip Ice Cream Play

Does this look real or what?

After seeing some Ice-cream Dough Pinspiration Here I started craving for my favorite flavored ice cream; Mint Choc Chip. 

I thought it would be pretty cool to make this play Ice cream dough, that looks so realistic your kids might try to taste it in a minty green mixtures with choc chips, looking through my play supplies I also found a large tub of ground coffee so I decided to make a coffee scented ice-cream dough as well.

Working with corn flour can be difficult and messy (just a warning) what you need is a bowl with 1 1/2 cup corn flour, then you add 3/4 cup of cheap Hair conditioner your colour and your extract. Here I used a green food dye and a peppermint essence. For the coffee flavour I simply added ground coffee with the conditioner. Depending on the shop your at you may find some suitable conditioner that smells like.... Berries for instance if you were doing a berry ice cream dough. Then Mix; Its a good idea to get some little hands in there mixings it up for a bit of extra sensory experience. It smells so good!

As stated by the creator Play, create, explore, the secret to make it look real is to scoop it roughly and break it off, if you roll it in a ball and use it like a play dough it goes Super smooth and silky. It looks really cool and feels soft but not like real ice cream. See the original ice cream dough post by play -create -explore here: http://www.playcreateexplore.org/2013/01/ice-cream-dough-new-play-recipe.html

For our Choc-Chips in the Mint flavor I added some black and brown beads. 

Then a selection of pom-poms, straws, cardboard cut into triangle wafers for decorating our ice creams.

Using scoops and ice cream bowls Dimples played with the dough and put together some funky looking Ice creams. They look so cool & they smelt really yummy. He put one into the fridge and when Adventures Dad came home from work he looked very puzzled as he opened the fridge and Dimples laughed Hysterically "I tricked you!"

I have tried this several times and failed, but we wont go there! Many bottles of conditioner have been sacrificed. The key to getting the mixture right is don't be like me, don't try and "wing it" you need to go off the recipe and have the cornflour in the bowl first. No water & measure your conditioner, if you have too much liquid it goes more like a goop than a dough. 

So now you have a super yummy scented Ice cream dough that looks very realistic, pop it in the fridge while you set up your pretend ice cream parlour, just long enough to chill it. Once the children are ready to play you will be providing them with an awesome sensory play experience; smells good, visually interesting, feels nice and cold. the only thing they cant do with this stuff is eat it.

Learning Concepts:
Measurement
Mixing
Creativity
Sensory exploration
Imagination
Pretend Play
Imitating Real Life

Ideas for Exploration:
Make your own wafers and ice cream cones from cardboard
Experiment with different flavors; chocolate (cocoa), berry (red color & berry conditioner)
Try our Ice-Cream Sprinkles Dough
You could make real ice cream, search pinterest or google for ice-cream in a bag
and Of course after all that ice cream play you could go ice cream taste testing at a real ice cream parlor.

Happy Adventures

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A Coloured Rice Quarry - Pretend Construction

Last week I colored some rice, adding some Peppermint essence so it smelt super Yummy. 

I had no idea what I was going to do with the rice but Dimples hasn't had a Tactile Play tub in a while so I dyed some red, yellow and green. I dyed the rice by getting 3 separate bowls of dry rice, adding a smidgen of water and some color, mix it all around and let it sit for at least half an hour, then spread it evenly out on paper toweling and let it dry for a day. 

Dimples had seen it and asked to use his cars in it, so I set up a mini Construction Quarry. I kept the rice in a tray on top of a spill mat and laid it out separately (knowing that it would get mixed up- but that's part of the fun), collected some dump trucks and construction vehicles, trailors, some plastic trees, traffic cones and traffic lights. It looked very bright and visually appealing but it smelt minty and fresh also.

Dimples transferred colors dumping one lot on top of another color then he used the roller to flatten piles, and the snow scraper to clear a path. He went through and worked out which vehicles made the best tracks and which ones carried a trailer full of rice. It was a pretend quarry and there was lots of clever narration from Dimples being heard as I let him play freely.

He had his go at mowing the green rice and eventually all the colours got mixed together, he made a huge pile that was a hill then rolled it flat. He did try to separate and sort some colours out into dump trucks once they were all mixed up but it proved to be too time consuming.

Dimples did a great job at containing the rice in the tray, even after lots of trucks had to have a go at making burn out tracks and " skids" through the rice, then he parted the rice down the center. All the tipper trucks got loaded up and made a big pile, they were dumping and hauling rice from one end of the tray to the other, Dimples was pretending it was a Dangerous Construction site and had his sign at the site of danger.

Dimples keep mentioning how yummy it smelt, at one stage the little plastic trees were pine trees because it smelt so nice. The pretend construction quarry, clever and cute narration and imaginary play went on for a hour or so. He thoroughly enjoyed it and when I left him to have free play it was nice to listen to his little imaginary world come to life.

Learning Concepts:

Colour identification

Tactile/Sensory Play

Developing imagination

Imitating real life through play

Fine Motor

Colour sorting

Ideas for Extension:

Large Construction Play in Corn

 Pretend Rally Car Tracks in Mud

Car & Construction Ideas:  Playdough tracks, Tire Paint Printing, Dirt digging & more
A pretend play car wash

DIY Ribbon Tickle Time Baby Toy

Babies just adore having things brush over their face. A classic Baby play game that everyone has done before is to get a sheet or light scarf and throw it up over a baby letting it slowly drift down and brush over their face, or playing peek-a-boo with it - Lots of first giggles here! 

Miss Cherub loves these type of games and I love playing them with her because she giggles and smiles and coo's in excitement, she throws her arms and legs around as if she's going to take off. It is so funny to watch.

The other thing she loves doing at the moment, which shows her developing pincer grasp and fine motor skills, is to " read" the tags on any toys; carefully grabbing and inspecting with great focus the writing on tag and flicking back and forth if there is a few together. I remember Dimples doing this as a baby and I thought it was just so clever & adorable to watch. 

This DIY tag toy was made to conquer both the fun of tickle time and the sensory aspect of having soft things fall and brush over babies face and the fine motor aspect of flicking through 'tags'.

In her treasure basket shes been exploring a bunch of different materials and textures. I added this DIY taggy toy that she loves and plays with each day. It is a new favourite. 

It is a Link with ribbons tied to it. 

So easy- Make sure the link is baby safe and make sure all ribbons are double tied and of course, be aware that any long ribbons pose a strangulation hazard. I recommend always supervising and interacting with the baby as they play, its a great opportunity to foster a connection through play and watch them imitate you and learn through play. 

I limited the ribbons to about 10-15 cm long and I tried to find a variation of ribbons. 

Different colours, widths, textures, patterns, sizes and styles of ribbons make an interesting toy to explore. 

Miss Cherub had such a great time with it. She shook it and pulled it apart, swung it around, put it over her own head and then slowed down inspecting each ribbon in details, trying to grasp the ends and pull them into individual lengths, she passed it back and forth in her hands watching the way the ribbons fell. 

It was all so interesting time after time.

Peek-a-boo Baby!

We also used it as a tickle toy while she is both sitting and laying down; While Miss Cherub was sitting i put it over her head and she tensed as it tickled the back of her neck, she giggled and tried looking around. Her facial expressions were so funny to watch.

While she was laying she fluttered her eyes as it gently brushed over her face, then she was excited and kicking around in anticipation waiting for it to fall again. Lots of fun.

Baby Learning Concepts:
Sensory Play
Anticipation
Developing Pincer grasp
Fine motor skills
Exploring different colours, texture, patterns and size ribbons
Laughter & fun in play

Happy Adventures

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