Easy home-made pretend role-play food from every day items

Want to know how to make some quick and easy home made, pretend role-play food from every day household items? 

This post will show you how to make some fake Battenberg cake, pretend sponge cakes, fake ice cream, pretend spaghetti and meatballs, chips, crumpets and more....

The Day the World Stayed At Home | Poem

The Day the World Stayed at Home - Poem

How to make Needle Felted Number Hearts for Loose Parts

Needle felted loose parts are a lovely tactile resource for children to use within their play. These rainbow felted hearts with numbers 1-10 are great when used alongside numicon and other natural resources and loose parts on a play tray - adding in another sensory element with different textures and weights. They are SO easy to make, simultaneously calming and stress busting as you focus on producing something achievable with a repetitive stabbing movement to get rid of any internal angst!

This blog post will give you some step by step images and instructions for how to make your own needle felted hearts, as well as an accompanying video to demonstrate and a list of resources you will need in order to make your own felt hearts with numbers...

60+ Play Ideas for when you're stuck at home

Whether you're stuck at home due to a rainy day, feeling under the weather yourself or having to self-isolate due to a global pandemic (Corona Virus COVID-19 I'm looking at you!), you'll probably find that cabin fever sets in pretty quickly without some quick and easy play activities to keep your little ones entertained!

Most of these play at home, indoor activities are super simple to set up, and utilise resources that you will likely have at home anyway. Just in case you don't, I'll include some relevant links to order online for home delivery. (Some of these links may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small amount of commission on qualifying purchases, but it wont cost you any more to buy them).

Cheap Carpets and Wipeable Walls - Preparing for life with kids

Are you currently looking to redesign your home, rethink your interiors or switch up your flooring? If so, then the first question I have for you is this: Do you have children, or plan on having children at some point in the near future? 

 If so, then I implore you - put away the expensive shopping list, ignore the calls of a luxury walkway and go and grab yourself a cheap carpet and some wipeable wall paint. I promise you will thank me for this later. 

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There is nothing that screams 'unprepared!' quite like the chic and fashionable parents-to-be whose houses are adorned with mirrored tables, crystal vases, velvet furnishings and a fluffy, cream carpet that you dare not even breathe on. They haven't yet experienced sticky fingers. They don't know how a stream of wiped snot can make fibres clump together. Let's forgive them for believing that they won't mind Hinching the shiny surfaces every.single. minute....but the fact of the matter is, raisins get mashed into carpets and end up looking like something much, much worse. Save the luxury one for when they've left home and for the love of sanity - buy a cheap carpet for now.

Mud Kitchen | Ideas & Accessories for Outdoor Play | EYFS

Would you like to understand more about what a mud kitchen is? What the benefits are of having a mud kitchen in your outdoor area? How can you you effectively use a mud kitchen and plan for activities? Where can you buy a mud kitchen and accessories and what are the learning outcomes? 

This post aims to give some useful ideas and inspiration for using your mud kitchen effectively for outdoor play...

 

For young children to really benefit from outdoor play, the outdoor area should be an extension of the indoor area - not a simply a separate place for 'limited' playtime, a reward for hard work or somewhere to simply 'have a run around'. I have talked before about this separation of indoor and outdoor play, and the negative consequences that this can have in my post about the importance of learning through play outside which can be found here. One of the key pieces of equipment for an outdoor learning space, which will tie into lots of different areas of learning is to have a mud kitchen. Whether you are looking to encourage role play, speaking and listening, relationship building, mathematical concepts or simply to create a space where children can learn and explore and play with what they know - a mud kitchen provides endless possibilities...

Valentine's Day Tuff Tray | Sensory Play | Playdough Recipe

Whether you celebrate Valentine's Day or not, this sensory tuff tray is sure to provoke some language and discussions around love and kindness whilst offering lots of learning opportunities in a very child-led and open ended exploration...

This sensory play opportunity actually starts before the tuff tray activity, in making the Valentine's Day playdough together with your child/children! This post explains and demonstrates how to make this together, and then moves on to the resources and the learning opportunities this provides....

Ikea Flisat Table | Skadis Pegboard | Desk Hack

Are you looking for some inspiration for the Ikea Flisat desk? Perhaps you would like to use this for smaller Tuff Tray activities, or maybe, you would like to combine the table with the Ikea Skadis pegboard, but are unsure of how to do this and which resources you need?

This post will tell you everything you need to know about the Ikea Flisat table / Skadis Pegboard desk hack...

(NB: Some of the links in this article are amazon affiliate links - it wont cost you anymore, but I may make commission on qualifying purchases.)

We have this Flisat table and Skadis pegboard in our Child-Led playroom at home, set up specifically for independent learning through play. This hack does not involve fastening the table to the wall and so this can be moved around the room easily...

Dietbon Diet Plan | Ready made meals for a busy lifestyle?

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DietBon are a French company specialising in diet plan ready made meals, which are 100% natural, delivered straight to your door- tailored to your needs. The name, translated literally, means ‘good diet', and so we arranged for a weeks worth of meals to be sent to my husband to try out. He has a busy working life as a Leeds based Lawyer, which involved lots of travel, early mornings, late nights and office desk dinner dates! Ease of use and speedy preparation were key here, as well as a tasty meal of course!
 

First of all, DietBon make sure that their diet plan regime is right for you by scheduling in a call with one of their dieticians. Thomas had a call with an English speaking dietician based in France, who talked him through how the plan works and realistic expectations for the 7 day review plan. She explained that the diet plan is particularly popular amongst  Lawyers for its ease of use within a busy working lifestyle as the plan is made to be as simple as possible.  Weight loss expectations are roughly 3-4kg a month, depending on what his usual intake was like and how much exercise he does.

When Arthur was still 2 yrs old - I spent almost my entire Christmas Eve sat on his bedroom floor trying to help him get to sleep as he was afraid of Father Xmas visiting our house!! I had a bit of time to kill, so I wrote this poem... I'm hoping that we don't have a repeat of this in a couple of weeks, but I am absolutely certain I wont be the only one if so....

Christmas Eve Poem for Parents

'Twas the night before Xmas and all through the house, 

not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse....