… 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.

tag... play for today, 3up, 5up, 8up, enjoy and achieve, makes

Children find making snowflakes rewarding. Not only are they getting to mess with the urban legend of dangerous scissors, but they get to display their creations around the home as an early precursor to the celebrations. I am also starting to think their may be an alternate reason for their enthusiasm, the summoning of winter. Children think symbolically. Reason is elastically plastic for them. Whenever we’ve made snowflakes the whole, the ‘will it snow for Christmas’ conversation loops by again (its not been a proper white Christmas in London since 1970; ‘cos the one lame flake on the Met roof in ‘99 doesn’t count). There is a fledgling cargo-cult building around paper snowflakes; if we build them perhaps… just perhaps, they’ll fall.

This week, in particular, we’re in that betwixt and between time of the advent season. When, arguments about the ‘Christmas creep’ of shops aside, it’s actually still to early to get a tree if you want it to have pines come Christmas Day. So to fill the week, and keep the kiddywinks anticipation bubbling on the stove of excitement, we’ve been cutting up the paper recycling.

I’ve stuck together snowflake folding crib sheet - no nativity pun intended - for folding a six pointed snowflake. If you’re doing this with 5 yr olds, you may need to show then how to fold it a few times or you’ll get squares which don’t ever seem to be quite as fulfilling.

And should they be natural born snowflake geniuses, let them try this, and perhaps… just perhaps they’ll fall.

tag... play, 5up, 8up, enjoy and achieve, makes

…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 like water bombs, boys like water bombs, Mrs. Welikeplay isn’t quite so fond. But these aren’t the ones you chuck around, theses are little inky explosions in the safety of a jam-jar.  The boys in the welikeplay labs love doing this one, to the extent of rearranging the kitchen furniture so as to hang around upside down to give it a little nuclear mushroom effect.

You will need:
1 jam-jar
a pipette (or use a straw by taking covering the end to pick up droplets)
a little water
a little oil
some vibrant food colouring

Make a mess.

Enjoy.

tag... play for today, 5up, enjoy and achieve, geeky

I was browsing through some of my own favourite feeds (hey, you can get mine too), when I came across [mck] posting about a cool new flash site.  Papercritters allows you and your kids to make printable paper people.

Sure it sucks up bandwidth, but it’s so cool; you grab and drop eyes and mouths and tats onto your template, print and cut and stick.  You can go further and upload your families visage onto generator; possibly to create a small army of carboard clones to lurk around the house and spook the unwary.

It’s really easy to create; No1 child created some sort of urban-skate monster in a few minutes, though the construction may well take him a while longer.  The sense of achievement is palatable.

Enjoy.

tag... play for today, 8up, enjoy and achieve, geeky, makes

As the welikeplay tribe is going nomadic today I spent some time with No1 child drafting a motorway bingo sheet. It had to have, I was instructed, some easy things to spot while on the road and some harder things to see.

We’ll be testing the sheet later and should it be worthy, more will be produced and posted at our welikeplay printables

Do download…

and enjoy.

Play test
This sheet gets the big thumbs up from No1; though it got dark too early to finish a whole line, it’s been squirreled away in a seat pocket until next time.  And perhaps I can dig out some of those self contained and self inking stamps to use with it.

tag... play for today, 5up, 8up, enjoy and achieve, printable

I love crunchy autumnal walks. The cold crisp air, small children bobbing like balloons through the trees, the colours and the sounds; it’s childcare bliss. The only down side seems to be the pockets full of collected treasures that are presented to me. Yellow and red leaves, conkers half shelled, sycamore and pine and bits of interesting bark. Collecting isn’t the problem, it’s the storage. These things will pocket-compost if left; not nice.

These treasures have to be kept special though, so I’ve been racking the grey cells and come up with the Autumnal Scan. Once we’re back from the walk we’re going to polish up all the treasures and drop them artfully onto the computer’s scanner. Voila, one printable picture to stick up. While the detritus can be happily fed to the worms.

Enjoy.

tag... play for today, 3up, 5up, be healthy, collecting, enjoy and achieve, geeky, out and about

This is a simple ‘play for today’, but one that has found a recurrent place in my quiver of play.  Small children love stories and, in particular, stories that they can engage with and become part of.  Perhaps, at a deeper level, its because us humans are some sort of narrative machine, or maybe its just ‘cos its fun.

You will need
a small table, I often use an ikea stool and child’s chair
the toy box
15 minutes to half and hour

Simply start to pick and gather toys up to the table, the toddler may well join you and select some of their own favourites.  Sit with them and start to enquire after names for the animals, dolls and cars.  Ask how each toy is feeling, and what they want to do, and if they’re doing it by themselves or with other toys.  It won’t be long before a story emerges, if you’ve time and the inclination, jot down the tale to be retold the next day.  Continue until it peters out.

Enjoy

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

Simple small close up magic tricks are great confidence boosters for kids. My personal favourite - which can be picked up by most 8 year olds within an hour - is the coin switch. It only needs two coins and a bit of practice, but is quite impressive when done properly. If you show it off, you will be pestered until you impart the secret; don’t be too hasty, this is good leverage that shouldn’t be lightly squandered.

The trick has a coin in each hand, the magician turns both hands over, and the mark has to guess where the coin is. By slight of hand, both coins appear in one hand.

You will need:
1x pound coin (or a heavier coin of any denomination)
1x 10 pence (a lighter coin)
a table to start with
a pair of hands
about an hour of practice

for a video of my own attempts… read on »

tag... play for today, 8up, enjoy and achieve

For those of you who need an introduction, here in the UK all childcare services - be they schools, local authorities, child centres, hospitals, nurseries, social services or childminders (like myself) - are now deeply immersed in the Every Child Matters framework. It started back in 2003, following the terrible case of Victoria Climbié, to ensure that no child fell through the holes in the services. As a strategy it has five aims, around which much of childcare and schooling is now being focused; you can browse this site for play ideas or reviews tagged with these aims.:

be healthy - stay safe - enjoy and achieve - make a positive contribution - achieve economic wellbeing

One of the founding principles of welikeplay.org was to provide ideas for play-professionals within such a framework, though it naturally lends itself to a rigorous approach to thinking about play in all its effervescence of activity.

We at welikeplay HQ hope this helps out. Do leave a comment here if this is useful to your setting, or you’d like to share good resources (I’m looking into How to Achieve the Every Child Matters Standards, though it’s school and child centre, rather than childminder focused).

If there is anything we can do to help out, let us know.

Brian

tag... play, be healthy, be helpful, enjoy and achieve, money matters, philosophising, stay safe