Pretend Play: Dandelion Soup

We've been having a lot of fun sharing images over on Instagram lately, so you may have already caught a preview of this activity earlier this week.

It's dandelion season, and despite my husband's best efforts, they are popping up all over our yard. I'd been waiting for a hot day to set up this pretend play invitation with a nature connection. It was also great water play for a hot afternoon on the deck.

I love finding simple ways to play with things we have on hand. Before we started playing I set up a bunch of kitchen materials that the boys could use to pretend to make soup with. I also had the boys pick a large container of dandelions, including stems and some leaves. 

Invitation to Build: Create a Dam

As Big Brother is getting older it's really interesting to see both his interests and skills develop into more specific skill sets. Lately he's been really interested in the building of things (mostly stemming from a love of Legos, Magnatiles, and our wooden railroad track.) As he leans that way I'm finding myself looking for other creative ways to develop those interests and skills.

A few weeks ago he had the chance to observe a beaver dam up close with my husband on one of their nature walks. This lead to some great questions. A few days later I followed up with a drive to a local man made dam which he was able to inspect from a distance.

When we came home I set up this building investigation in the yard. It was inspired by a great tinfoil river activity we did last year from the amazing book 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever by the team over at Kids Activities Blog. 

Simple Play: Paper Boats in Water

We were intrigued recently when we heard that NurtureStore was hosting a month of "Simple Play." Their resolution to go back to basics and engage with simple materials in a playful way connected to how I envision our afternoons being a little less chaotic this month.

To kick off the series today's theme was water play. On this frigid January day it was a little hard to imagine playing with water, but we decided to set up a small container and some paper boats on the kitchen floor.

Ocean Alphabet

As we continued with our Ocean theme this week I knew I wanted to tie in some literacy skills practice. With the warm, almost perfect, summer weather, it was also a great time to be outside and the kids were definitely interested with playing with water. That inspired the creation of our "Ocean Alphabet" activity.

Big Brother has done alphabet fishing before in our alphabet sensory bin. But this was the first time we created something outside in our actual pool. It was a huge hit with both Big Brother and Little Miss H!