Set out a variety of items on the kitchen table (best if it's covered with a vinyl tablecloth for easy cleanup) along with tape, glue, craft items like popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and construction paper. But don't forget the one essential ingredient: resigning yourself to the mess as you leave the room.
• Children have an innate affinity for 'wild' animals that should be nurtured, no matter how annoying city creatures might be to grown-ups. Kids love to whisper to them, pretend they can communicate, and most of all they love to feed them – it gives them a sense that they can make things happen. Spread a pine cone with peanut butter then sprinkle bird seed on it, tie it to a tree branch and wait for the birds to come. Give your kids some shelled nuts to leave out on a paper plate for backyard squirrels, they can even decorate the dish with non-toxic paint or markers. Take some bits of bread to a local creek or river to feed the fish and ducks (it has to be a relatively healthy waterway to support life of any kind). Even a plate left out with some crumbs near your garden can fascinate a child as it gets spotted black with ants.
• Puppets can be as easy or as complicated as you want. For cheap and easy ones, start with finger puppets. Cut off the tips of an old pair of winter or rubber gloves. Then use materials from in and around the house to create eyes, nose, mouth, hair and ears. Bits of yarn, cotton swabs, sponges, tape, flour, leaves, twigs, grass, needles, bark, pebbles are all acceptable materials. Or, for the easy way out, just use markers. You can act out your child's favorite stories, nursery rhymes, or finger plays like This Little Piggie, Thumbkin or Two Little Blackbirds.
Almost anything that can be done inside, can and should also be done outside. Today, kids spend 90 per cent of their time indoors, thanks to traffic and fears of abduction. Recent research shows a lack of outdoor play, especially unstructured free play, takes its toll on everything from risk management, to creativity, to cognition, motor skills, self-reliance, just to name a few. Set up a craft or water table in the yard, provide them access to a patch of dirt in your garden with pails and shovels to dig and make roads and rivers, let them take some of their toys outside, have them decorate any trees in your yard for the holidays, collect seasonal items like pine cones and acorns to serve as art projects or feeding stations for city creatures, have a tea party outside. If you don't have any trees or shrubs, let them help you plant some. And whatever you do, don't neglect the nighttime, sip hot chocolate by flashlight under the moon.
Read more:
• Plasticine art
• Slumber party fun
• Incredibly cool clays
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