Birmingham Public Library (AL)

Listening to audio is a skill that’s not confined to just car journeys. There are many times when we need to add some downtime or slow the pace down.

Listening is a very active form and a really easy way to provide imagination, inspiration and entertainment.

Here are 3 go to places for active listening

Listen and Play

This is part of the BBC school programming and is published on a Tuesday. They are available on demand for 7 days after broadcast.

Each programme includes familiar songs, rhymes, stories and sound discrimination games to develop children’s phonological awareness and confidence with spoken language.

Each show has kept my little one interested and we’ve subscribed via iTunes so can listen again to older versions. if you live outside of the UK access to the BBC iplayer is restricted but you can subscribe via iTunes and download as a podcast.

Listen and play

Playtime

P-L-A-Y-T-I-M-E …It’s PLAYTIME! P-L-A-Y-T-I-M-E………

With the current interest in letters and singing of the ABC song along with the phonic game on the fridge this show is perfect for my soon turning preschooler. It’s full of energy and emotion that he’ll stop to listen. We pretend together and with siblings as well.

Songs, stories and movement activities for pre-school children inspired by popular themes.

This is also part of BBC programming for schools.

Playtime

Barefoot books podcast

I’m a big advocate for diversity in book and literature with my family of boys we just love the Barefoot Books as they have a range of stories both traditional and from different cultures. We always have lots to talk about seeing the people and places in these books. Now you can read along or just listen to your favourite books.

Barefoot books publish a huge range of stories and many of them for the over 5s so watch out for the themes.

Barefoot books

We’ve been experimenting with audio and listening recently and have tried them at our family dinner time. Instead of the usual hustle and bustle we listened to a story and then discussed it afterwards. It was really a different way to celebrate dinner together.

We’ve tried the traditional sit down and listen but this doesn’t work as well for us . It’s been great tidy up ‘music’ and listen to in the morning music before everyone is awake.

Photo credit: Birmingham Public Library (AL)

When do you listen to audio and what do you listen to?

3 must have places to bookmark for preschool listening is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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10 Tips for a Fun Family Evening That Won’t Break the Bank

In a tough economy, one of the smartest choices a family can make is to stay in and have fun at home. Here is a list of my favorite money saving ideas for an evening with the family that won’t break the bank.

1. Make Hot Fudge Sundaes

Rather than spending a fortune going out to a restaurant, why not make dinner at home and then enjoy some homemade hot fudge sundaes? All it takes is some ice cream and a few toppings, and your kids will think they have died and gone to heaven. Special Note: This can also serve as a great reward children can earn for good grades or behavior.

2. Make Up Funny Stories

Kids really seem to love it when parents join in on this one. One person simply starts a story, and the next one adds a line, and so on, and so on, until everyone is laughing too hard to even finish the story. This can make for one hilarious evening.

3. Sock Puppets

Sock puppet performances are always a hit, no matter what. All you need are a few old socks(or new ones if you wish) and some random craft supplies. Have each member of the family create their own character and then act out a story involving them all. This is a fun activity for everyone in the family, especially when everyone really gets into it.

4. Draw Family Portraits

Drawing family portraits together can be a fun way to get the artistic juices flowing in the home. Kids will love this time to be creative, and it is always interesting to see how each person perceives the family as a whole. Besides, whose refrigerator couldn’t use a few more masterpieces?

5. Sing Karaoke

Singing karaoke is something that any family can enjoy. All you need is a radio and a makeshift microphone.(I find a wooden spoon or a hair brush works great for this!) And the best part is, it doesn’t matter how great a person is at singing, because this simply makes for a more memorable evening. Usually, the worse one is at singing . . . the better!

6. Act Out Family Stories

Retelling some of your favorite family stories is always hilarious, but acting them out is even better. Kids enjoy the ability to relive their favorite stories, and everyone gets a chance to work together while acting out the scenes. A nice twist is to allow the person telling the story to act as the “director”. This can make for some pretty hilarious moments, and it always makes for one incredible evening.

7. Dress Up in Halloween Costumes

Dressing up in Halloween costumes is a hilarious activity to do as a family, no matter what time of the year it is. It is so much fun to have a contest as well, to see who can come up with the best costume. As a spin-off into more family fun, the person that wins the costume contest then gets to pick the next game for the family to enjoy together. Kids love playing this game, and it can get quite competitive.

8. Paint a Room Together

I know it seems a bit like it may violate some sort of child labor laws, but it can be an amazing experience to paint a room together as a family. If you have a room where you can spare a wall, one of the best things to do is allow your kids to paint whatever they want on a wall. This can be a fun way to get a job done and also make kids feel like they are truly contributing to the family as a whole. Kids get to leave their mark on the family home, a task gets completed, and everyone enjoys an evening of laughter and bonding.

9. Have a Tea Party

Although it’s primarily a great game choice for families with young girls, families with boys shouldn’t count out the idea of a tea party. It doesn’t have to be all dresses and dolls, and it provides a great way for kids of all ages to learn proper manners. Girls go nuts over this, and if there are snacks involved, your boys will love it too!

10. Organize Family Photos or Scrapbook

If your family has a lot of random unorganized photos laying around, consider working together as a family to get them arranged in a photo album. Another option would be to create a scrapbook that highlights family events or specific memories. Either option will provide everyone with an enjoyable evening of reminiscing about the memories captured in the photographs.

These are ten things that any family can do at home and that don’t cost a lot of money. My family has enjoyed these activities for years, and hopefully, now your family can enjoy them too.

Byline: Sally is an avid guest blogger who enjoys informing and educating parents about cost effective ways to spend their family leisure time. When she’s not busy writing, she enjoys bonding with her husband and prepping her home for their soon to be newborn child.

10 Tips for a Fun Family Evening That Won’t Break the Bank is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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When you look through your books do you see a diversity?

Do you have a range of many different types of books?

I had an opportunity this week to look at my bookshelf  and share some of them with my children. Yes lots of ladybird books and Mr. Men books. I never had though many non fiction books. What’s on your children’s shelf? Sure enough the books we buy are usually fiction. The books we borrow are often non fiction.

Let’s look wider. Do the books I have available show a diverse world? How do I share cultural hertigages from around the world or talk about friends in my neighbourhood who are different?

Poetry is a lot of fun but often not on many shelves. This week on Raising Playful Tots you’ll find some ideas about introducing poetry all in time for Poem in your pocket day in April.

Bookstores and libraries are better than ever now about displaying a wide range of books for the under 5s but they do put centre stage the most popular. This perpetuates the popular status. We notice the displays but what displays do we see?  We have spring- new life- Easter right now but I don’t recall seeing many displays on losing a pet or family member. All things that often happen during a young tots life. We have a display on people who help us in the community but children want to know why that person is holding a cane or walking with a dog or why that child is in a wheelchair.

Let’s take a wider look at our books and actively find new genres and styles for our little ones in April.

Photo credit

Here’s a new place to me that I wanted to share!

“Passion For Knowledge is a non profit organisation whom aims to inspire young people, particularly those from inner-city and minority ethnic backgrounds, to read more.We provide an array of topics and themes to reflect today’s diverse society. Our aim is to promote a love of reading and an understanding of the world we live in, and to inspire young people to live their dreams. ”

Passion for Knowledge “have complied a recommended reading list for key stages 1-4 which offers you the chance to purchase 25 books in each key stage that have been picked by our celebrities and a panel of members that are in touch with today’s “Multicultural Britain” to select and provide young people with titles of interest which they can relate to enabling them to explore and enjoy reading. Books can be bought as a bundle or individually.”

Find out more about their book bundles and choose a new title for your Key Stage 1 ( 4-8 year olds) child.

Click over to Passion for Knoweledge

Have you found some unusual books or found a new genre this week?

How do you choose which books come into your home?

Share your ideas in the comments

Diversity in books is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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Play everywhere- Play-Activities.com/blog

This year has been another busy year of play. Has it been for  you?

If you are new here welcome and here’s a chance to explore some of my favourite  play ideas and activities we’ve had this year. We don’t record all our play moments and activities.But we use this space to journal our play activities using mostly things you would find around the home.

We started the year with 1.5, 4, and 6 year old boys.

January starts with a play evaluation via Raising Playful Tots Podcast. We look back at our finances and plan our holidays but do we look at play for our family. Is  play on your priority list this year? I talk about how we can ease play into our lifestyle without having to buy lots of things. After an article and discussion about young boys and writing we had a lovely fun afternoon of mark making

February is my first trip to Blissdom where I meet some amazing blogging friends. We work on an ABC spy bottle, and with a birthday comes the nod to the boys current obsession with superhero activities. We celebrate our 18month old with a range of activities he loves.

We worked on finding extended periods of time to play with building in time of unstructured play and teaching children perseverance during March. The  winter weather often gave us long periods of time to fill.

With the weather changing we were travelling more in April and visiting restaurants. We also joined the fun meme We Play =8 things to do when stuck in traffic with the kids We Play 6 boredom busters when waiting for food to arrive

During May we experimented with play activities from around the web and mused over perhaps having a left handed child.

Best of 2010 is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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Christmas has come and gone but most likely you have a huge pile of wrapping paper to recycle. Dig them out and start a tradition.

What shall we do with all this wrapping paper?

5 ways to reuse Christmas wrapping paper

Make them into Festive placemats for next year

Squeeze them and mold them into animals

Make them into balls and have paper ping pong across the table

Tear them into strips or shred them to make a sensory tub

Use the back of them as scrap paper to draw on giving texture

Sort them into colours

Keep them all in a box and add some small items to find by touch only- lucky dip.

What do you do with your wrapping paper?

5 ways to reuse Christmas wrapping paper is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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The popular song at Christmas is  the 12 day of Christmas .From what I understand, the song was said as a round during celebrations after Christmas. Each person had to remember to add a new verse and remember what came before. If you forgot you had to do a forfeit. Sounds like a fun game!

During the long days of Christmas holiday we’re looking for a together family activity. There’s a lot of imagination at Christmas time with Santa, Christmas movies that many things seems magical to the little ones and perhaps a little far away or beyond them. They are creative too and we can encourage them by providing fun opportunities to be silly as well as use their environment.

It’s that looking at everyday things around us  and playing with them in our homes and area that we want to cultivate in our children. Let them problem solve by finding things and using them/seeing them for use in other ways.

Think of the Swiss engineer, George de Mestral who while out walking his dog one day saw his dog return with lots of sticky burrs on him. Taking sticky burrs off a dog must be one of the most tedious jobs around. But he saw something past the inconvenience. Using observation, creativity, problem solving , using his environment, perseverance, trial and error, time ( lots of time) and flexibility he invented what we now know as Velcro.

He played with his idea .

Where would we be now without the hook and loop fastener?

Try this scavenger hunt or game to get us all moving:

Hide objects around the house that represent the 12 days. You can get really creative. Alternatively you can use post it notes of pictures or words around the house in unusual place. For older children no need to hide things but let them find things especially with a visiting relative.

Here’s our  possibilities list ( Things they can find in our home if they look)

….the nice thing is they are bound to find different ideas themselves. ( My back up plan)

12 Drummers Drumming

::  drum  +stick- Coffee can/formula can and wooden spoon

11 Pipers Piping

::  play saxophone, pretend flute

10 Lords-a-Leaping

:: leap over 10 cushions one at a time in a long row with space in between to land between jumps.

Can they make it to the end without crashing?

9 Ladies Dancing

:: 9 individual dances or dance for 9 seconds.

8 Maids-a-Milking

:: stoop and pretend to milk a cow with the left and right hand alternatively

7 Swans-a-Swimming

::  using a your winter sensory tub push your pretend bird/swan across the “waters” or pretend swimming with big arm movements and move across the room.

6 Geese-a-Laying

:: have them find an egg. Make a nest with a scarf. Get creative

5 Gold Rings

:: Masking tape circles. Watch them walk around the circle without falling off

4 Colly Birds

3 French Hens

^{::( flap like a chicken)}

2 Turtle Doves

:: represents love- bring the favourite teddy/family member for a hug

And a Partridge in a Pear Tree. ( Pear)

Assemble all the items and have a presentation during Christmas time.

Photo credit and make your own photocube

Photo credit

Any ideas for  No.4?Share your Scavenger hunt activities and ideas- what would you do?

12 days of Christmas family activity is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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This is what we’re doing during half term….again. It’s been a crazy couple of months. While we are offline, here are some links for calming activities that you will want to do between the mad moments or high energy of children at home.

Make your own family | Play-Activities.com

Why scribbling is fun!

Shaving cream fun | Play-Activities.com

Sensory Play with Rice | Play-Activities.com

Tuesday: Pasta and An Empty Water Bottle | Fun with Mama

Crayon and paint

Autumn Craft and Activity Ideas | Mum in the Madhouse

Monday links is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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Hope you had a playful weekend. Now we’re into the week and you’re planning your play activities, I ‘d love to show you some favourites from the last week.

• Have Fun at home | How to Engage your Preschooler and your Toddler at the Same Time
• The Adventures of Bear | Artists and Art Week 5 – Paul Klee Part 2
• Frugal Family Fun | Owl Family Play Set
• Memetales | Paint with bubbles – Water theme craft and books
• The 2010 Children’s Book Week pack Download the 2010 Best Book Guide
• Don’t forget the September Raising Playful Tots Index is ready.

You’ll find 100 amazing play educators from all around the world. There are lots of new entries and movement in the list. Bookmark the index for the holidays. You’re bound to find some play activities that quick easy and fun. Thanks to Planning Queen who co created this list.

Keep on playing!

Photo credit:spookyriggs

Monday links is a post from: Play-Activities.com
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