The pen is mightier than the sword… but only if held by a very strong hand.

Like his Daddy, No1 child has squiggly writing. It’s not easy when you’ve a had full of ideas, yet a single word takes so long to write that by the time it’s done you’ve forgotten what comes next. So I’m very lucky to see him getting some extra help at school in a thoroughly playful way (Thnx E, welikeplay is indebted).

The rational goes like this: writing - and in particular penmanship - is not purely a cerebral activity, rather it is the body doing what the brain wants in moving a pen through the arcs and loops on a piece of paper in front of you. If it is so much to do with the body then perhaps exercise to build up the writing muscles will help. I’ve a hunch that the link between early walkers and later dyslexia is due partly to the lack of crawling and the building up of muscles around the upper body.

So, to build up strength and coordination to allow children to sit at a desk and grip a pen with less hassle here are a week-ful of playful exercises to introduce.

Stair slithering. Ok, you’ve spent the last 5-7 years teaching them to go down stairs, now its time to let them slither down on their tummy. Explain that you’re all to use your arms stretched out in front of you to hand-walk down; and when they’ve got that, to hoist them selves up again.

Putty squashing. Mix up a pot of Homebrew Snot to squish and stretch obsessively whilst watching TV for big strong fingers.

Tunnel your house. For a day or two take the cushions off the sofa, grab all blankets, clothe-racks and pegs, play tents and old cardboard boxes and create a castle/fort/warren inside your house that everyone has to use. Take tunnels from the kitchen through to the living room and even to the loo to encourage an awful lot of crawling.

Be mermaids/men. Visit a charity/thrift store for a too big pair of tracky-bums (that’s englandish for track suit trousers); tuck one leg in and down the other to make a tail. Add shells and flop around the house all day. If you’re feeling brave/playful, get a pair for every member of the family. Hang shredded kitchen foil from the lamps and have an underwater tea-party.

Hang off the sofa for a bedtime story. Together stick your shins/thighs on the cushion of the sofa, place hands on the ground either side of the book for a story time. To take it further a bed time snack can be chopped up in a bowl to be eaten from the floor.

Do the ‘Hand-wash only’ laundry. Fine, less of a play and more of a chore, but I’m constantly surprised at how much kids enjoy inclusion in mundane tasks. And with the added benefit that wringing clothes out and pegging them still heavy with water on a line really exercise those grippy muscles.

Find a grassy hill, roll down. Rolling down hills teaches, very quickly, the art of not ploughing a furrow with your forehead. This is done by using tummy muscles to keep the head up at the right time… and it’s good fun for grown ups too; last time we did it we got an audience.

Do not let these exercises become a chore, reward enthusiasm with attention, reward success with praise. Don’t let the above become limiting, invent your own (and leave them in the comments below). Join in, giggle and get it wrong, let your kids stumble upon you doing them by yourself… and above all

…enjoy.

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Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a. Pancake day, really crept up on me this year; probably something to do with a full moon on the spring equinox, and so a really early Easter with a chance of mad bunnies. So his morning I’ve trialled a few pancake making devices, some things that you can rustle up around the home to help kids learn to flip them like a pro.

You will need
frying pans - though big heavy ones are great for cooking the real pancakes in, for kids to help they need one they can lift
old bits of cloth and cardboard
an easy-to-dry kitchen

for the pancakes (makes 12-ish)
100g plain flour, sifted
2 eggs
200ml milk mixed with 75ml water
50g butter

Get the kids to mix up the flour, eggs and milky bits as soon as they come in from school… this kind of batter can be used straight away, but works better if you let it sit for an hour or so before frying up.

Now it’s time to make your pseudo-pancakes for practice time.  Draw and cut out circles of fabric/cardboard roughly the same size as the base of your frying pans.  Take these bits of material and soak them in tepid water… or chilled if you’re feeling mean.  Now teach the kids to flip them with a deft forward-up-and-back motion of the wrist.  Do it well and the water won’t spray; too quick or too hard and everyone starts to get wet.  High arcing flips to land the damp pseudo-cake on ones own head are to be commended.

After a little experimentation I recommend using the thighs of old jeans as the material of choice.  It gets good and damp, yet slides well out of pans.  Felt is a tad too sticky when wet, old flannels are a too crumply, art-foam sheets form little suction cups on the pan, whilst thick cardboard - though initially good - starts to come apart after 10 minutes or so.

Mop the kitchen floor and attempt with real pancakes.

Pancakes are a great way to introduce kids to safe stove top cooking.  As you have to hang around the cooker it gives them more time to watch and see what happens to the flame/halogen top, than your usual stick on a pan and bring to boil.  So get one pan good and hot, drop in a lump of butter until it sizzles.  Then take the batter mixture and pour out a couple of tablespoons, I’ve always found this is best done from a ladle so it all arrives at the same time whilst giving a long handle for littler hands.  Cook for less than a minute until you can pull back a corner and see that the bottom has gone all brown.  Now it’s flipping time.  Hot pan, check for others, two hands, flip and catch.  Award points for any pancakes that make it up to the light fixtures or maybe give a special topping for the most fragmented, so that all feel encouraged.

Depending on age you might like to flip with both you and the child holding the handle, or perhaps you might pre-cook a handful and slide them off into a cold frying pan to be slung around with abandon.

Enjoy (with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of sugar)

tag... play for today, 2up, 3up, 5up, 8up, be helpful, cooking, enjoy and achieve, stay safe

I’ve been spending the last week or so knee deep in playdough. It seems to be everywhere, in the kitchen, at nursery, in the carpet, in my pockets… everywhere.   Little kids seem to love the stuff.  And as they start school it is worth a little effort to keep their interest in all kinds of modelling going, for particularly as they start writing they need those squeezing muscles that dough helps develop.

But playdough does bring its problems.  Learn these tricks and become a playdough pro.

Make it
Shop bought stuff isn’t the cheapest, though it’s worth buying at least one set for the nifty airtight tubs it comes in.  Then you can make you own, adding colour or glitter to please.

Brush it
Playdough will end up in the carpet.  It’s one of those universal truths of childcare.  But fret not, it can be fairly easily removed.  First remove any lumps as best you can then wait for it to dry.  If you’re in a hurry DO NOT take a hairdryer to it, you’ll cook it in place forever.  Once it’s nice and crunchy go and find an old tooth brush and start combing the carpet in towards the middle of the offending smear.  Have a quick vacuum, repeat if necessary.  Should there be a coloured stain left try first with a little water (again moving from the outside to the middle of the stain), I’ve yet to have to break out the big guns, but should all else fail fetch the carpet cleaner.

Scratch  it
If you’ve got the stuff engrained in the knees of your trousers don’t wash it in hot water until you’ve left it to dry and given it a really good scratch and pick.

Poke it
It’s like removing mud from the soles of your footy-boots, or from the treads of your trusty but elderly hiking yompers.  There is something quite tranquil about poking around removing playdough from your shoes.  It’s one of those funny little activities that you do with your kids; sitting out on the porch, pokey stick in hand, talking through the day that’s been, and those that are still to come as the sun comes down.

Enjoy.

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It’s not often I pass on plays I’ve seen rather than done. But I saw this sitting outside my boys’ old nursery and had to find out more. They’ve been collecting 4 litre milk cartons from their parents to build igloos. This one stands about four foot high, and seems to be able to take three of four kids inside.

You will need
at least 150 4 litre milk cartons
a hot glue gun and a couple of those rubbery refills
a meter ruler/ thin plank to serve as the lintel

You might want to run the milk-cartons through a cool dishwasher to stop the slightly cheesey pong that could develop. Make a horse-shoe of twenty to thirty bottles, bottoms outwards, making sure that the doorway is narrower than your lintel beam. Hot glue (a growed-ups job) spots together somewhere away from any carpet you wish to keep. Then lay and glue the next ring in between the ‘bricks’ of the first… I believe brickies call this regular stagering a ‘header bond’, though I always have it classed as a ‘my first duplo’ wall. Now build up layer by layer, perhaps starting to shape it over into that classic igloo shape, until you get to the top of the door where you add in the lintel and build across. Then start to make the roof come in in earnest until its all glued up. Now, after you’ve been good and recycled any spares, it’s time to crawl in and read books to everyone’s hearts’ content.

Enjoy

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Despite the recent problem with bears and major world religions, I’m planning a teddy-bear nativity on the sofa (though I may still leave the twin soft toys Hal and Al to one side*).

You will need
as many little children as you can muster, (this is a wonderful activity when it goes astray and descends into chaos)
as many stuffed toys as you can find
a good nativity book
some hankies and elastic bands

Start with a little story-time. My top recommendation for books for little ones is the touchy-feely Nativity, while for just-started-schoolers the The Christmas Gift is really indispensable. Then set up a nativity scene together; choose which bear will be who, perhaps use a box for a manger or a side-table for a stable. See what happens, answer questions; ask how characters are feeling and what are they thinking. step inside the story along with the kids.

and enjoy.

*Hal and Al are a fictional creations because Har and Am don’t work as names.

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… a way for kids to photograph, frame and learn to like the dark.

At 6, No1 child knows how to change themes. Opening the laptop is interesting as he has a DaVinci thing going on, the old Ubuntu box has been tripped out in hippy-trippy-ness, and now the PS3 has been tweaked too. But the new theme is so cool, it’s got these light doodle things that I last saw on the Chili’s Fortune Faded vid.

Being enquiring minds we trawled the interweb to find that these things in animated form are part of the Pikapika Project. So we set about cooking up a welikeplay kid friendly way… and it’s so much fun.

You will need:
to get your paws on a digital camera with a night picture setting and timer
a tripod, or in our case a stool on top of the kitchen table
the night or really thick curtains
a led torch or two
some cheap balloons

Prop the camera up, set it to night mode for a slow shutter speed and press the timer. Run round to the business end and start drawing pictures in the air with your torch over and over again. When the camera goes beep, bleep, pause, ker-click (well ours does), run back to see what the piccy looked like. Repeat to your hearts desire, using baloons to cover the led to get different colours. Crop & keep, and…

enjoy.

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…really, I’ve now got a suspiciously clean patch on the carpet from trying.  Masking tape works just fine, and is east to remove after your kids art is done.

I’ve just spent a very pleasurable half an hour sitting on the sofa with a roll of masking tape, dolling out  strips to No2 child.  He’d then scoot off, arrange them on the floor and come back for more.  And slowly a kite emerged, so we had to grab the camera and do some kid-floating-off-into-the-distance imaginary shoots.

tag... play for today, 3up, 5up, enjoy and achieve, makes

I’m starting to amass a fair old collection of play hats. From pirates (yarr) through builders’ hard hats and princess’ tiaras to those doctors head mounted cd things. Over the years of childcare I’ve found play-hats to be an invaluable resource for getting inside the kid’s head.

Hats, perhaps more than any other piece of costumery do allow kids to be someone-else for a while. It’s roleplaying in one simple step. You see your average child doesn’t have such a concrete notion of self as us encrusted grown-ups. You may have noticed this if you’ve been feeling a little grumpy and your kids have come bundling in. They’ll pick up and mirror your mood back to you with out pause (at which point you could choose to grump back at their grumping… but that way madness lies, doesn’t it?)

As they enact these other roles you may hear then saying things you’d not expect. No2 child in his copper’s hat became a young dictator, despite his usually mild self. Add a tiara and they become imperious, a cowboy stetson makes them crusty whilst an astronaut’s helmet makes them adventurous. Children are incredible things. To do roleplay like this they must have absorbed the roles these hats imply, whilst usually never even having met cowboys or princesses. Very clever little beings even if they struggle to tie their shoes. Taking on such roles allows them to say things that they’re thinking, but which their usual role of child forbids them from saying. The child in a police hat may voice authority over the parent whilst the doctor cd thing or nurses tricorn puts them in a caring role for their carers. So much can be learnt through this play.

The trick, if there is one, is to buy some big costume hats too. Being a little pirate captain is no fun unless you’ve a hulking growed-up crew. A ward sister is no fun without a bandaged patient. Builder work together to build and fix the house. Policemen need parents in trilbies to occasionally become a detective to give the wee ones clues to capture the cookie thief. Even a simple folded newspaper hat make you a Little John to a diminutive Robin Hood.

So what would be in your ideal hat collection?  What would give your kids a voice?

Enjoy.

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… and yes it does have that delightful misharmonic squeaky quality of Oz. But it’s still so much fun. A month or so back I introduced my boys to Youtube’s Potter Pals; and the simple multi-voiced rhythm of “Ticking” became our collective ear-worm. Now No1 child divides up the parts to start some acapella with Mrs Welikeplay, No2 child and anyone else who happens to be visiting (young Uncle Welikeplay looked quite astounded this weekend).

For your entertainment, and in the possibility of introducing sung simplicity into your play, we present “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”:

Enjoy.

tag... play for today, 3up, 5up, 8up, musicality

AJ at Thingamababy has posted “How to Host a Garden Snail Race“, and - in doing so - has provided me & my kids with a future ‘rainy week’ activity.

Many of the molluscs will be too skittish to come out of their shells. You want brave snails. Wait until one peeks out of his shell and starts moving. Grab that one and, while holding the shell in the air, press a racing number onto the shell. DO NOT apply the number while on the ground because you’ll smoosh and possibly injure the snail.

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