Activities
Spray Destruction
We sort of organically invented a game outside that I thought was pretty great for kids who are what’s sometimes called “destructive”, or who are wanting to take things apart, knock towers over, break things, […]
Outdoor Play
At Home
What is Modeling?
Somebody asked me the other day if I’ve ever written a post defining what modeling is. I haven’t, but it’s a good idea since I suggest modeling things for children basically constantly. 🙂 I think […]
Activities
Six Ways to Play with Vacuums
At my lecture last Friday, during the Q&A session, somebody asked me if I had any ideas for connecting meaningfully and playfully in therapy with a child whose special interest was vacuums, and who spent […]
At Home
Monkey Bars
We went to a new playground recently. Monkey bars are rarer here in the UK (at least in my rural area) than they were at playgrounds in the states. As far as I can tell, […]
At Home
Violent Themes in Play
Some adults get alarmed when they hear children using language that sounds “violent” or involves themes of morality, such as “good guys” and “bad guys”. They may want to explain to the child that morality […]
Activities
Clipline Zipline
This particular camp* invitation was whole-cloth taken from Denita over at Listen to the Children. She’s been collecting clips, towel clips, and clothespins for a toy zipline for years and I only had about a […]
Activities
Ice, Ice Baby
I hoped for a warm day to do an ice-themed camp invitation*, but in England all we had were moderate days and chilly days. The kids seemed completely unfazed by this fact and the ice […]
Activities
Everything is Paintbrushes
This camp invitation* was so simple and so engaging — all I did was collect a bunch of things that weren’t paintbrushes and set them out with a big piece of paper and some paint! […]
Activities
Nature Soup
I set up an invitation at camp* to make “nature soup”. If we had had the access, I would’ve loved for the kids to be able to pick whatever flowers and leaves and weeds and […]
Activities
Scavenger Hunt/Writing Game
I knew that among the play invitations that I had available at camp*, that I would want to have one more structured, writing-based invitation every day. I wanted this for a variety of reasons: there […]