We Play – Childhood 101

I recently discovered the childhood 101 blog, full of fun ideas and activities and serious thoughts on bringing up children put together in such a fun and accessible way. Today I’m joining in with their ‘we play’ section for the first time.

Christie talks about invitations to play, that is setting up enough of an activity for your child(ren) to inspire a play activity. Here was my ‘invitation’ for yesterday.
I find this is something I do frequently, but I am always wondering how much direction to give, and how much to leave to Beth who is 27 months, she is really starting to enjoy imaginative play, but still seems to need a little prompting. My littlest however, is happy as long as she can chew on the odd cow, or car, or whatever she can reach.
I got one of the cars and one of the people out which prompted Beth to head off and find more. Then the cars had to be joined together to parade down the road, and grandpa had to go for a swim in the pond.
You can also see in the corner a small collection of pebbles, seed pods and leaves which we collected a couple of days ago and I added to the scene. She was very excited about the ‘stones’.
The basis for this play was a small play mat I put together, I’ve been wanting one of those big rugs with roads and rivers and houses on in, but not wanting to bring anything else into a space that is already overloaded with toys and ‘things’ decided to make a table sized one. A large piece of grey/silver cardboard, some green felt and some sparkly blue for water, a pair of scissors and a bit of spray glue and here it is. I hope it will offer the basis for some good play activity over the next few weeks and if so I will work on making it more permanent. It fits into a large Ikea storage box so can be stored away with all the creatures in tact.

To see how others are playing this week visit childhood 101.