Activities

Your child will be very keen to explore the world around them.  This is a stage where children are naturally quite inquisitive.  Encourage your child to figure things out and to try new things. 

Taking the time to talk to your child, play with them, and get creative together is great for all aspects of their development, and will give them a head-start at school. Here are some suggestions to help you begin your journey of discovery...

Make musical instruments

Example: Make your own musical instruments using a variety of different tubs and fillings.  Beans, rice or lentils work well.  Also, try putting softer items in the containers.  Let the child play with the different sounds objects can make, and try concepts like faster and slower, louder and softer. 

The Benefits: Children love making noise and experimenting with the different sounds they can make.   This will also help your child develop a sense of rhythm and beat. 

Dress up box 

Example: Give your child access to old clothes, hats, jewellery, scarves and whatever else you can find.  Let your child have fun dressing up and pretending to be different people and characters.  Have fun role playing while in costume.

The Benefits:  This will encourage creative play.  Children love trying on new clothes and putting together their own characters.  Role playing is an important part of children demonstrating their understanding and view of the world.

Chunky bricks and blocks

Example: Your child will love making sculptures out of chunky bricks and blocks.  Practice making models together.  You can build bridges to race cars over, or see how tall a tower you can make. 

The Benefits: Children will love learning how to balance the blocks. One benefit is that it helps to improve their logical thinking, because they will quickly learn about gravity and balance after trying to stack the blocks higher and higher.

Potato Stamps 

Example: Cut a potato into slices about ¼ inch thick.  Trace a shape on to your potato slice and cut it out –try hearts, stars, circles, or squares. You can also try letter shapes!  Let your children dip the potatoes into dishes of paint.  Use thick paint for making pictures or cards, and fabric paint if you want to decorate t-shirts or pillow cases.  Children will love making art with potatoes!

The Benefits: This kind of activity helps develop good fine motor muscles, because the child is using the arm and shoulder muscles. These skills require time, patience and plenty of practice.

Treasure Hunt

Put pirate hats on and hunt for hidden treasure! 

The Adventure: Hide some items around your house, and ask your child to find them. You could even draw them a map to follow, or give them some clues to work out.

The Benefits: Children this age love a challenge, and an afternoon spent indoors is the perfect time to create a mystery for your child to tackle.

Make a telescope together

The Adventure: Cardboard tubes from kitchen roll or tin foil make instant telescopes for pirates – get creative with glitter and glue and go for a trip to the beach to see if you can spy any ships or sea-monsters on the horizon!

The Benefits: Creating the telescope boosts your child’s creativity and gives them a chance to practice their coordination skills. At this age they love nothing better than pretend play and make-believe, so creating props to help them in their pirate play will be the cause of much excitement!