Stimulating Sensory Baskets
This activity is perfect for your under 2s in order to
help them understand the world around them but older children love to explore them too.
What you need:
• A basket
• Household items
• Natural items
• Materials and clothing
• Craft items
What to do:
1. The list for what to include in your
sensory baskets really is endless! Prepare
the basket with interesting, differently
shaped items for your wee ones to explore.
2. For the youngest, you’re best to start
off with around five items so as not to
overload them, but there really is no limit
as your children get older.
3. The items will help your youngest to
explore different materials and to start to
understand the world around them.
Let’s Get Physical!
Create a mini indoor or outdoor obstacle course to get your wee ones physically active and burn off some energy.
What you could use:
• Tents
• Tunnels
• Ramps
• Toys for inside
• Whatever you can find!
What to do:
1.Start by laying out an obstacle course.
You can use things like tents, tunnels, and
ramps, or get creative and just use whatever
you have lying around your home or garden.
2. The activity really can work for any age.
If they can crawl, then you can run a little
simple obstacle course. You might need to
make it a little more complicated if you have
older ones though!
3. If you have younger children who are reluctant,
you can try using toys in the tunnels and
ramps to encourage them to engage.
LEGO TOWERS
Create towers by following your own homemade guidelines. This helps with pattern recognition and counting.
What you need:
• Paper cards
• Coloured pencils
• LEGO blocks
What to do:
1. Prepare some suggestion cards by drawing
and colouring LEGO block towers on
pieces of card with specific colour patterns.
2. Leave them by your LEGO resources, and
encourage children to try and recreate
the patters with their own real-life LEGO
block towers.
3. Great for pattern recognition and counting,
you can get the children to help
make the cards to begin with too.
Kids Gone Wild
Kids Gone Wild latest online outdoor learning link is below, this week is Move with Murch.
Daily Doodle
Today’s Daily Doodle
LEGO CHALLENGE
Andy’s Wild Workouts
Andy travels the world to amazing places and learns to move like the animals he meets on his wild adventure.
Time to Tinker
Got access to a dead old computer or keyboard?
Whatever it is, tinkering with real-life tech is a fabulous
thing for your curious children. When you allow your child to take something apart, put items back together and figure out how things work it encourages them to problem solve, try another strategy or use different materials or tools.
What you need:
• An old computer
• Different kinds of screwdrivers is the best
thing for your curious preschoolers.
What to do:
1. For children of this age, an adult will most
likely need to remove the larger components
from the computer.
2. Once you’ve got some smaller components
out, allow your children a bit of free
reign with the screwdrivers.
3. The focus that you’ll see in children with
tasks like this is like nothing else, and
there’s nothing more fascinating for a
curious tinkerer than to get to see the
inside workings of a giant computer.
Wildlife Woodpile Wonders
Create a simple woodpile in order to attract more wildlife
to the garden. Centipedes, ground and rove beetles are great visitors. If you would prefer not to have animals making your woodpile their home, you will need to raise the pile on a log rack or a foot or so off the ground.
What you need:
• Wood cuttings
• A shady spot outdoors
• A bucket (optional)
What to do:
1. Take some wood cuttings and sticks from
trees, shrubs or other herbaceous plants.
Logs about an adult fist-wide with the
bark still on are perfect.
2. Find a shady spot and pile the wood up.
You don’t want the spot to be too cold,
but the shade will help keep everything
damp.
3. Over time, the decaying wood will start
to attract insects and other wildlife into
your garden, a great way for your little
ones to explore nature in any space.
4. If you’re particularly short on space, a
bucket with holes in can be loaded up
with small twigs and leaves and it’ll do a
good job of attracting insects too.
