At Complete Childcare, we are committed to providing a safe and nurturing environment for each child in our care. Across our 15 nurseries and pre-schools, our staff focus on progressing children’s social and emotional development, speech and language development and motor skill development. For early years children, play is a central means of learning. In this article, we share five activities for you to try at home with your child. Each provides a focus to initiate learning through play, leaving plenty of scope for imagination and creativity.
- Dressing Up
Imaginative play encourages creative thinking and communication skills and creates an environment where children feel able to test out new ideas and behaviours. Dressing up doesn’t need to mean buying costumes, making your own can be lots of fun. Use old sheets to make a ghost costume or use cardboard boxes to make hats. Cereal boxes can become masks – check online for some free, easy-to-use templates. As you make, paint and decorate costumes with your child, ask them about the character you’re making. What foods do they eat? What do they enjoy doing? Where do they live and what is it like there? This helps children to address their own thoughts and feelings as well as their characters.
- Scavenger Hunt
If the weather allows, getting outside for a scavenger hunt is a great way to encourage your child to get some fresh air. Scavenger hunts can be easily adapted to be done anywhere, from a trip to the supermarket, a visit to the park or even in the car. There are always things your child can be searching for – choose colours, shapes, letters, or objects in nature. Set your child the challenge of finding certain things and allow imaginative answers as they learn. As you encourage your child to become more aware of their surroundings, they’ll become more confident making observations independently.
- Masking Tape Car Track
An easy and inexpensive activity that often leads to hours of fun, use some masking tape to create a track for cars, or any object of choice. Stick masking tape to carpet, hard floors or soft furnishings, and it can be easily removed when you’ve finished with the activity. Encourage fine motor skills by using two parallel lengths of tape to create a track to put cars on and challenge your child to keep cars within lines, or to choose cars which can fit within the lines. Ask your child where the cars on the track are going and use household items, cardboard boxes or other toys like Lego or Duplo to build around your track.
- Rice Play
Fill a shallow container or tray with uncooked rice and add objects or favourite toys to encourage imaginative play. To colour rice, add uncooked rice to plastic food storage bags, add a few drops of vinegar and food colouring and shake the bag to mix the rice and food colouring. Encourage your child to pick up grains, pass handfuls from hand to hand, or scoop and pour. Manipulating and exploring materials in this way helps to develop the fine motor skills required for writing and improves hand-eye coordination. Children also develop language skills while they play, as they experiment with new words and make sounds.
- Chalk Painting
A fun and interactive way to get children outside, chalk paint can be made from corn starch and water, with food colouring to create colours. Easily washed away with water or rain, chalk paints can be used outside or on stones and rocks. To bring some focus to the activity, or to give your child a starting point, use activity cards with options for different things to draw - letters, numbers, or shapes. As confidence grows, encourage your child to create whatever they like, and let their imaginations and creative thinking flow.
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