This imaginative play set up is easy to put together and loads of fun! Make a river in your sandpit that really holds water!
Sand and water play ideas and inspiration. From sand pits and trays to water walls, pumping stations and gutter stands.
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. It's not long until Easter! Here's a round up of some of the play and craft ideas that we love at this time of year. I love making our Easter celebrations extra special with lots of play and craft. There's so many ways we can build special memories, introduce fun family traditions and explore the Easter story with our kids. I hope the activities below provide a bit of inspiration for you. Many use household items, but any additional resources featured can usually be found via my online Amazon storefronts. Amazon UK Supplies Amazon US Supplies In amongst the cute crafts and Easter play we also love to share the Easter story! Here is an animated version below. And if you'd like a home-based Easter Egg Hunt you can download our free printable here. Easter Play & Craft Activities Easter Play Dough We love play dough and had such fun with this Easter play dough invitation last year! Home made play dough is so easy to make and is so much nicer than shop bought stuff! Find our play dough recipe here. To make pastel colours like these, just add a very small amount of food colouring to each batch. You can find these play dough cutters linked in my Amazon storefronts. Pasta Eggs This is a fun craft for toddlers and pre-schoolers involving pasta shapes. I prepared this painted pasta ahead of time (see my how to colour pasta post) and then provided white glue to stick on the various pieces to the cardboard egg. I helped my toddler by squeezing out the glue in lines across the egg and then she placed the pasta on-top. It was a great work out for her fingers and the results were lovely Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now Chick Small World Play If you have any of these cute little chicks that are everywhere at Easter why not set up a little world for them. Small world play is great for encouraging story telling and imaginative play! Easter Bunnies with Nature Often the best activities are free! Why not have a scavenge in the garden or on your daily walk and collect some things from nature. Then use it to make some cute bunny pictures! Pompom & Easter Egg Tray My kids have loved playing with this tray full of pom-poms and plastic Easter Eggs. There's so many opportunities to practice counting and teach number in this set up. Add some scoops and tools and it's also brilliant for practicing fine motor skills. Shaving Foam Easter Egg Wreath This Easter wreath was made using shaving foam art. It’s such a fun technique and it works well for sibling groups. My tips are to have a towel ready and somewhere close by to wash hands and wash the trays down. Shaving foam is messy but relatively painless to clean up! Here are the instructions, but if you’d rather watch the technique in action I made a reel awhile back using the same process but making Valentine’s hearts. 1. Add drops of food colouring to the shaving foam in your chosen colours. 2. Use the end of a pencil or paintbrush to make patterns with the food colouring or leave it as blobs of colour (each will achieve a different look) 3. Next place a piece of photo paper or card on top of the shaving foam and press it down gently. 4. Once the paper is covered in shaving foam lay it face up on a tray and scrape off the excess using a ruler. You should be left with a beautiful, unique pattern every time. You can have a few goes at this before needing to add a bit more food colouring. We did several trays of shaving foam with different colour food colouring each time. Once everything is dry, cut out the Easter eggs, arrange them in a circle slightly overlapping and glue together. Then string it up with a ribbon. Alternatively you could make bunting or Easter cards. Easter Cutting Tray I set up this cutting tray for my 4 year old last week and it was such a hit! She spent ages cutting these up and returned several times! It's a great way of using up scraps of paper and practicing cutting skills at the same time! If you don't fancy lots of prep we've made lots of Easter scissor skills resources available on our sister website - Playful Printables. You can find out more here. Easter Garden Every year we make an Easter garden as a way of exploring the Easter Story. For this one we used a flowerpot and stone to show the empty tomb and bound some twigs together to make a cross. We then gathered lots of foliage and flowers to make a beautiful garden. Magnetic Easter Eggs Hide some magnetic letters or numbers in plastic eggs and they become 'magnetic'! Great for a little treasure hunt or 'lucky dip' activity. Pom-pom Painting Clipping pom-poms to pegs is a fun way of doing art. Either draw lines across the egg to follow or leave it completely blank for them to design their own. For more precise designs you could also do this with q-tips (cotton-wool buds). Tin Foil Chicks These little chicks are so easy to make using scrunched up tinfoil. Paint pieces of kitchen towel and once dry rip into small pieces before gluing onto the tinfoil body. Add a beak, eyes and feet to finish off your cute chick. Wooden Easter Egg Decorating These gorgeous wooden eggs are linked in my Amazon storefronts. Last year we had a lovely time decorating them with acrylic paint pens and then using the eggs for an Easter Egg Hunt. Easter Pebble Painting We love pebble painting! You can paint on pebbles using acrylic paint pens. We recommend Posca Pens for older kids and adults, and the Colorful Art Co. as a cheaper brand with chunky tips for little ones. Other alternatives are to use paint sticks or ready-mixed paint, though the colours won't be quite as vibrant. There's so many ways you could paint pebbles at Easter time. Why not paint some Easter Eggs and hide them around the garden for an Easter Egg hunt? Or paint some little chicks. You could also make some Easter story stones to use to retell the Easter Story. Sticky Easter Eggs This has been such a popular idea over the past few years! This activity uses a piece of contact paper (sticky-backed plastic) stuck onto a cardboard surround, with an egg shape cut out. Draw lines over the egg using a permanent marker and provide a selection of craft supplies to decorate the egg. This activity is great for developing fine motor skills. Easter Nests This is a classic Easter Activity! Find the instructions on the BBC Good Food website. Pom-pom Animals My 6 year old made these cute pom-pom animals. We used two different sized pom-pom makers (linked in my Amazon storefront), but you can also use a couple of cardboard disks instead. You can watch a useful tutorial here. Easter Tablecloth It has become a bit of a tradition of ours to make a tablecloth to use on Easter Sunday. For this particular one I drew eggs all over the paper cloth and then the girls decorated them using q-tips. The girls spent ages on this project and each one was so unique! If you can't get hold of a paper tablecloth you could make a table runner using a roll of paper or make Easter placemats.
Interest Area Poster with info on how specific interest area benefits children while they play. It also links the EYLF Learning Outcomes and QIAS principles.
When Cakie was a small baby I used to take her every week to a lovely Sure Start play-group that was run by an early years teacher. The group was fantastic in that it had some very well planned activities for toddlers, such as sand and water, play-dough, puzzles, puppets etc as well as incorporating...Read More »
Why does the frequency of your music matter?
I take thousands of pictures in the classroom every year. The ones you see are almost exclusively from the sensory table. My pick for clas...
Encourage open-ended natural loose parts play with our pack of 30 Bamboo Offcuts. Your little ones can use the pieces to build and create towers or huts. Or create a water channel during sand and water play into a Tuff Tray.Bamboo is a highly versatile resource that can bring hours of fun in your play setting. Bamboo is considered to be a highly sustainable renewable resource.It’s the fastest-growing wood product in the world!One of the other biggest environmental benefits of bamboo is its ability to absorb more carbon dioxide and produce more oxygen than other plants.Therefore making it the perfect eco-friendly material for us to work with”Features:•FSC Certified Bamboo•Loose pieces of bamboo in all shapes and sizes for open ended play •Multi Use •Can be used indoors or outdoors Set Contains: 30 x Pieces of BambooMaterials: BambooSize: 6cm - 8cm Wide x 10cm - 30cm LongAge: Suitable from 3 Years +Please Note: Product requires adult supervision Product is natural so some discoloration may occur.Pack contents may vary to image shown.
The outdoor Sensory Table with Removable Bins allows children to explore and discover, using touch, sight, hearing, smell, and yes sometimes taste.
Did you know that you can make almost any art and play material that is sold in stores?
Sand play dough paired with loose parts.
We have been playing with sand in all sorts of ways , a nd we have been having so much fun!
Sensory Discovery Bottles for Baby/Infant or Toddler
There are so many ways to explore light in the classroom with your students I have a small light table that is always out and available for play in my classroom. I use this light table for simple activities and try to keep something out and available for light table play every single day...
Beach small world for pretend play, sensory play, and learning about the seashore.
Many DIY or Do It Yourself Water Play with Kids - Sand and Water Table, Water Phonice, Bottle Sprinker, Ice-Cavating, Sponge Balls,and Water Pinata
Water play – it conjures up visions of children scooping and pouring, floating things and sinking them, measuring and washing and splashing and laughing. Huge fun, and there are a thousand things …
by Joaquin Sorolla-Ninos A La Orilla Del Mar, Kids playing in sand at seashore, swimming in srt, water sports, 8x10" canas art print Colors will vary due to your monitor settings Free ship US You frame it! This art print was taken from a vintage painting, print, postcard or digital source. It is in the public domain in the US because the copyrights (if any) have expired. All quoted shipping costs are USA only. NOTE: Our watermark will not appear on your print NOTE: Our prints are taken from an antique/vintage paintings, greeting cards, post cards etc.. Much of the time, these were originally printed on a soft and porous paper, which softened the images. They didn't have the technology back then to photo-shop and fix these images. That is why I chose to reproduce only antique art in it's original content (no photo-shop). I love the old school art. These are also paintings and drawings, and so the styles vary. The papers we use today, have special coatings so that they attract the inks or dyes well, and stop much of the seeping of the inks. Our new technologies print exactly what is on the scan of the original image. If you purchase canvas, it is made of cotton, and even though it also has this special coating, it is textured, and softens the look of the final result. It is archival, and of the highest quality, but is best for paintings since they were mostly created on artist canvas. It is important to note that if you are buying on your phone or tablet, the images you see are only tiny thumbnails, and so you can't really see the detail in the scan on the listing. If you can look on a computer, you can then see the depth and detail of the image you want. Artwork is not created equal, and sometimes there are clear and distinct lines, and other times the style is less detailed. Lastly, Colors will vary slightly, due to the difference in your monitor settings. Please zoom in on the image to see the detail. I will ship to your country, via first class intl. USPS, but please contact me for a quote before you buy. All art prints are custom designed to fit into a standard, modern frame. The openings on these frames are smaller than the listed size. Your print will be slightly larger than the opening. You can carefully trim it to fit your frame, and pop it in, with or without a mat. Each print is made as it is ordered. Please convo me if you need a specific size. I use real cotton artist's canvas, and the newest technology to enlarge the images, pixel x pixel. There is no stretching or skewing, Cotton canvas is textured in tiny squares, and produces a soft finish like a painting. Since it is fabric, it grabs the color for an extraordinary presentation. I use archival canvas, and special dyes to print each image. They will last 100 years under normal circumstances. Your monitor settings will vary from mine, so colors may look different to you than they really are. Color match technology produces exact colors to the image file used. Satin canvas is also textured, but it not as dense. It has a semi-gloss light and moisture proof finish. It is great for posters, too. NO stretching or mounting is needed. No need for expensive, custom framing. I use special, secure packing materials, to insure that your item arrives safely. I have been collecting and selling art prints for many years. I may have just what you are searching for. Just ask, and I will create a special listing, just for you. Thank you for your interest. Carol@ just4allkids [!at] yahoo.com We carry hundreds of hard to find collectibles, and canvas art at Etsy.com. Please visit my store at justartrageous3, or email with any questions.
This is another thing that I've wanted to sort out for the kids for a while, but it wasn't until recently that the right container came ou...
Kids have a lot of misconceptions about capacity, and they can really only be cleared up through hands-on exploration. Sadly, I don't think they get opportunities for this like we did when we were kids. Instead of playing in a sand box or with cups and bowls in the bathtub, kids are playing with iPads and Wii's. And so many districts (mine included) are taking away sand and water tables from kindergarten, in favor of more "rigor." Because of this, kids are not building the schema necessary to understand more abstract concepts about capacity. So please, please give your kids lots of time to explore by filling up cups with water, sand, rice, beans, cubes...whatever you have! If you are lucky enough to still have a sand or water table, it is the perfect excuse to use it. Don't let anyone tell you it's not "rigorous"! Day 1 I start my unit by showing a quick little powerpoint, to get a discussion started. You can download the PPT by clicking the link below: Download Will an Elephant fit in a Bathtub The kids are able to quickly give the correct answers. But I push them--I want to know why! (Because...
My girls love kinetic sand , but it can be pretty pricey. So, when they were asking for a new batch the other day I thought, "Why...
I-Spy bottles are a lot of fun to make! I personally liked the colors and shape of the Walmart flavored water bottles so we used those.......
This file gives you 7 pages of benefits of childhood play to help educators with their programming and language for Early Childhood Education Benefits of Library Area Art Area Kitchen Area Water Play Outdoor Area Construction Area Playdough Home Corner Puzzle Play Dramatic Play Sand Play Sensory Play Painting
Explore schtephie's 243 photos on Flickr!
Extend block play and reignite interest in construction and block corner with these simple tips and open ended play ideas. Free Factsheet download.
