Action Archives • Rainy Day Mum

Kids Winter Holiday Hop – Teaching Children About Giving

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Thursday, 15th of November 2012 at 11:40:00 AM

We’re really gearing up for the Winter Holiday Season – for us that means Advent, Christmas and New Year and one of the things we start off with is thinking about others and those less fortunate than ourselves. So we set about teaching children about giving to others especially at this time of year.

As a family it seems that Winter brings us a similar sense of clearing out that Spring does for other families we declutter and make space, possibly because we move inside and realise how we haven’t used the space for such a long time to

Action

Mirrors, Making Faces and Mr Men

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Wednesday, 3rd of October 2012 at 01:24:10 PM

We were lucky to recieve a box set of Mr Men Books to review recently and as a blast from my childhood I couldn’t wait to get them out and look at them with J (T is still a bit too young and I really want to get the Little Miss set for her). If you haven’t met Mr Men they are by Roger Hargreaves and are a fun set of characters with names like Mr Bump who is always having accidents, Mr Messy – who is a funny scribble and Mr Happy.

I really love the simplicity of

Action

Back to Basics – K is for Kicking

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Saturday, 15th of September 2012 at 07:00:00 AM

Back to Basics and this week is K is for Kicking

Such a simple activity – kicking a ball around. We have soft balls that we use inside and then various size of balls for the garden. J loves kicking and has turned our swing into his goal posts – we’re still working on the not picking up the ball and running around the garden with it part way through a game but it’s a lot of fun.

It’s great to work on gross movement and eye cordination as well. With J walking late (18 months) this is something that

Action

Science of Music

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Thursday, 30th of August 2012 at 07:00:00 AM

Today is the first of a series of Guest Post on Rainy Day Mum from some of my favourite Bloggers from around the world. Today I’m handing over to Carolyn from The Pleasantest Thing a regular contributor to Tuesday Tots linky and some Science of Music.

Hello, Rainy Day Mum readers! I’m excited to share with you a fun music activity my boys (4 1/2 and 1) and I did recently. Little kids love creating music. Anytime I bring out our instruments, the kids dive right in, surrounding us with bangs and quavers and ringing. During our last

Stones and bottles

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Monday, 27th of August 2012 at 07:00:00 AM

Sometimes you just have to leave children to discover their own play – J sat in our garden this week with one of the many bottles that we use in our water table and paddling pool with some stones and started posting them into the opening.

As he sat he picked up the stones and sorted them declaring them to be “TOO BIG”, or “WRONG SHAPE” to fit in the whole – the pile at the side with a few stones grew as he played. Guessing whether a stone would fit and then trying it out to see whether

Back to Basics – J is for Jigsaws

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Saturday, 25th of August 2012 at 07:00:00 AM

Another back to basics post and we’re on J is for Jigsaws. Here are some simple ideas for jigsaw play – Jigsaw play helps children in so many ways with attention span, working on problem solving and also how to deal with challenges.

Store brought puzzles

We have simple jigsaw puzzles ranging from ones with pictures underneath the pieces to upto 10 piece more traditional puzzles at the moment. They live in a box and at least once a day the box will come out. It helps with quiet time in the house and J in particular is starting

Action

Pirate Party

By http://rainydaymum.co.uk on Saturday, 18th of August 2012 at 11:27:10 PM

J turned 3 this week and we celebrated today with a Pirate Party for him. It was glorious weather, sun shining and the temperatures VERY hot. So you saw the party invites and masks here’s how the party went.

At 3 J and his friends aren’t ready for full party games yet – we set up some “play stations” around the garden -

A pirate small play in our water table

Decorate your own Treasure Chest – yes the Dad’s were in charge of this.

Our own ocean with ball monsters and tug boats in our