Activity—
Some activities for your tamariki on those days where getting outside is a little harder!
There really is something magic about freezing things for kids to break free again! Add droppers, warm water, containers & scoops. This is great for fine motor skills and also provides opportunities for colour sorting, maths, exploring freezing and melting and lots more!
Freezing some water in a shallow tray makes a great canvas for some process art. You can paint on the ice with regular paint, paint sticks, watercolours or dilute some food colouring and drip the colour on using droppers. Each will achieve a slightly different effect. This is a brilliant one for encouraging kids to explore and experiment and a great opportunity for some colour mixing theory too.
Don’t throw away those cards! Why not recycle them into some DIY puzzles? Make these as simple or challenging as you like to suit your own child. Or increase the challenge gradually by cutting the pieces in half each time they complete it. Obviously this isn’t just limited to cards but is a great way of reusing them! The benefits of puzzles are numerous… problem solving, reasoning about shapes, fine motor skills and concentration to name a few. And best of all this activity takes minutes to set up and is totally free.
To make skating penguins, fill a muffin tray with water and cover with tinfoil. Using iceblock sticks, carefully push them through the tinfoil so they are standing upright in the water. Place in the freezer overnight. In the meantime print and cut out the penguins. If you have a laminator, laminating them will give them better protection from the water. Once the water is frozen, remove the tinfoil and tape the penguins to the sticks. Remove them for the muffin tin and you are ready to play! They will glide easily over the glossy surface of any plate, platter, tray etc.
Download printable penguins here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0401/4024/3101/files/penguin-dance-2.pdf?v=1666363453
Making artificial snow can be so simple! Combine roughly equal amounts of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and shaving foam. It has a great texture and is cool to touch initially, just like snow! If your snow loses it’s ability to form snowballs over time you can revive it by adding a squirt more shaving foam. To fill your tray, use 4 cups of bicarbonate of soda and roughly 4 cups of shaving foam. You can buy bulk baking soda from Bulk Barn for about $4 a kg.
What you need:
• A jar or bottle
• Water
• Ready mix paint
• Cotton wool balls
• Bio-glitter
Method
1. Fill your jar about a quarter to a third full of water.
2. Add a generous squirt of paint and some bio glitter and mix.
3. Pull apart or unroll cotton wool balls and place them in the jar.
4. Use a paint brush or similar to press them down into the paint mixture. Keep adding more cotton wool until most of the paint has been absorbed.
5. Now add more water, choose a contrasting colour paint and repeat the process. Continue until you reach the top of the jar before replacing the lid.
Children love to rescue anything frozen! One of the great positives about this activity it takes a loooong time to get through!
Though penguins are used in the photos, any objects can be used.
Here’s how to prepare them:
1. Blow up some balloons and let the air out again to stretch them.
2. Place your objects inside the balloons. This can be a bit tricky but with a bit of patience you can actually get quite large things inside.
3. Place the balloon over a tap and fill with water.
4. Tie the balloon up and place it in the freezer.
Once they are frozen snip off the top of your balloon and it should be easy to peel off.
you can make a bit of oobleck to go at the bottom of the tray (2 cups of cornflour, 2 cups of water and a drop of food colouring). It’s not necessary but adds another sensory element to it and offers something else to play with when the penguins have been rescued!
If you have them, fill spray bottles with warm water and any add in any hammering type object (could be a spoon, a block, anything that they can bang!) for the objects to be freed!
Place little animals (or other objects) into a tray or cake tin with water and a bit of food colouring and pop them into the freezer. Once frozen use warm water and a dropper or a spray bottle (because this is always a hit!) to help melt the ice. You can also use a spoon for chipping away at the ice and some tweezers for removing the penguins. It can always be re-frozen and taken out again.
Fill containers of different shapes and sizes with water and leave outside on a cold night to freeze. Use the ice like building blocks to create a castle, using shaving foam as cement! To decorate the castles you can use droppers to squeeze coloured water over it and also use paintbrushes to paint the ice. This can be messy but also incredibly fun! If you can, wrap up warm and do it outside. Also, having a bowl of water to clean hands can be handy!
