“You can learn something new every day …if you listen”? I saw this in a kindergarten classroom and I thought about what it was saying. That doesn’t sound true to me. I mean, you can certainly learn something new every day, but I don’t know that “listening” necessarily has anything to do with it. You … Read more
Yesterday, my kids (age 5 and 4) found a stack of papers that my son had brought home from school. The speech therapist sent home a bunch of picture cards that he could use at home if he wanted to, on full sheets of multiple pictures per sheet. At home, my son feels comfortable speaking … Read more
Kids are very creative in play. They may be interested in symbolic play, using things to represent other things. They may be interested in sensory play, exploring the sounds and sights and textures of materials or the ways they interact. They may be interested in motor play, exploring how objects move and how they themselves … Read more
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 month, but I managed to find a few that worked like I hoped they would! I should clarify here that … Read more
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 probably lasted longer! I had soooooo many kinds of ice. I basically just did everything I could remember Busy Toddler … Read more
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! The possibilities are, of course, endless, and any replication of this activity would end with a zillion zillion different permutations … Read more
The single play invitation that I was most excited for in all of Camp Creativity* was set for Thursday: the “make your own potion” station. This could totally have been anywhere from really simple to really complex. I probably fell on the side of the scale closer to really complex 😉 We have had several … Read more
I’m going to start out today by just showing you guys the list of literally everything that I had planned for camp on each day, because I think that’ll give me a touchpoint to go back to as I break it down into what each play invitation was and why I did it and how … Read more
I am SOOOOO excited to tell you guys all about “Camp Creativity”, the sensory-rich, arts-and-crafts, child-led play day camp for 30 kids and their parents that I have been planning for a couple of months and finally got to run last week! I’m not kidding when I say it’s probably going to take me a … Read more
It started with a sticky note on a book that someone sold to my husband. My son got really interested in it. I was unaware of this, and when he came asking me for “paper that’s a little paper but it’s sticky but you can take it off and on again” I’ll admit it took … Read more