It was the start of our school holidays here so I signed up. This is what we've been up to so far. Towards the end of our first 15 days we were away from home so art materials turned into broader invitations to play instead. A while back The Imagination Tree posted a how to guide in creating invitations to play.
Day #1 - Our first invitation came courtesy of a garage sale. We'd been cleaning out my Mum's house and one of her neighbours gave this old electric typewriter to the kids to play with. They loved it and were busy creating notes for each other all day when we turned it on.
Day #2 - I have a lot of different manipulatives for class so today I pulled some different coloured buttons out and placed them with some recycled plastic trays. This smaller one was turned into a game of noughts and crosses.
Day #3 - We also have a lot of different art supplies. These small stackable mini palettes are great for travelling and offer a nice range of colours.
Day #4 - This invitation comes straight from a post by Munchkin and Bean. So much greatness about this post, I had to copy it at our house.
Day #5 - I'm sick during the school holidays no less! Thankfully my eldest child had been asking to recreate a recipe she had cooked in the school's kitchen (my children are lucky enough to attend a school that takes part in the Stephanie Alexander School Kitchen Garden Program - you can read more about the program here). I set out the ingredients and just showed her how to mix the pasta without a bowl and to work out how much pasta to make for five. Her younger sister made a simple tomato sauce to go with the pasta and the youngest got to grate the cheese using this fantastic grater they were given by the same man who gave them the electric typewriter at the garage sale.
The vintage cheese grater
Our dog was pretty taken with them too - making the most of his opportunity while I was trying to take a photo of them all.
Day #7 - My Mum was a teacher and even though she retired years ago, she still has all this great stuff hiding in cupboards. These transparent clear sheets were made for using on overhead projectors. The box states they can be printed on too but I have another idea to try that. These pictures look great on the window with the sun behind them.
Day #8 - Wet and dry chalk drawings on black card. It doesn't get any quicker to set up than this.
Day #9 - We're heading away for some of the holidays so the kids experimented with some colour mixing using liquid watercolours while I packed the car. I love these small palettes. They're great for mixing and are so easy to clean while the pipettes are perfect for fine motor strengthening.
Day #10 - A real art supply shop!! Woohoo!! Needless to say, we did not leave empty handed. Another simple one while we're away - a choice of foil, baking paper or mini canvas + sharpies. Who doesn't love Sharpies?!
Day #11 - While I like the peg dolls blank, I thought we could decorate some too (that and they didn't take up much room in our suitcases). I admit I love the way they turned out and the girls enjoyed lots of play afterwards with these.
Day #12 - We're off to the beach. I admit I'm kind of cheating with the next couple of posts but given the closest beach is nearly 3 hours drive from us now, exploring both sand and surf is a huge invitation to play for us all.
Day #13 - It's raining, we're still away from home, I need to pack the car (again) and given my 4 year old did not believe me when I suggested a square can also look like a diamond, playing with these puzzles could not be more timely. It also resulted in a post reflecting on how shapes are taught in Early Childhood settings. You can read that here.
Day #14 - It's back to school and kindergarten today for my children (sigh). Woolworths Australia had produced these Australian Animal cards to collect recently and after getting some more while in Adelaide, they could do nothing else but sort them out and enter them in their (one) book after school. One of their teachers has even arranged a swap day at school for all the kids. I can genuinely say I was surprised by how engaged each of my children have been by these cards. They've been quoting animal facts from them, knew which habitat they were missing cards from and could remember (from over 100 cards) which ones they already had. Given the trading of cards in different FB circles of late, I know I'm not alone in this.
Day #15 - The half way mark. Today I realised that I don't think that I've ever bought play dough for my youngest child which means she has not had the opportunity to create quite like the others. She's had plenty of opportunities to play but usually it's a single colour or maybe two or three.
Using Creative Play Central's play dough pictures as our inspiration, today's invitation to create involved lots of different coloured play dough (that she helped me measure, cook and then mix with dyes), generous amounts of sparkly bits and pieces, sticks and then even more sticks.
On reflection, it has been harder to squeeze an invitation into each day than I would have thought and a lot less of them were based around experimenting with just art materials but it's such a useful exercise to photograph each invitation so as to be able to look back. I'm really looking forward to the next 15 days and seeing how the kids like the next lot of invites. During that time I'll be sharing the invitations on my Facebook page - youclevermonkey