Sticky Nature Wall {Baby Nature Play}

Hi all lovely mumma’s out there! It’s Mumma Lozz here and I’m excited to be bringing you another blog. In May in the playful baby series the focus is on nature. Exploring nature is fantastic for children’s learning and development. Exploring nature supports their physical, social, emotional and sensory development, just to list a few. The benefits are endless. 

Nature Bracelets {Camping with Kids}

In the days leading up to our joint camping trip with the Loving Naturally family, Family Days Tried and Tested's beautiful nature wands popped up in my newsfeed and I was inspired to make some Fairy Nature Crowns, I also decided to make some bracelets.

Fairy Houses {Camping wth Kids}

There are so many great things to do with kids when you go camping. It's a great time to sit back and just let them explore nature!

At times though they need a little encouragement and inspiration. Ashlee and I both found this when we took our tribes camping over Easter.

Fairy Nature Crowns {Hiking with Kids}

In the days leading up to our joint camping trip with the Loving Naturally family, Family Days Tried and Tested's beautiful nature wands popped up in my newsfeed. I knew that we would be going on a hike with our little families, so thought they would be a fantastic way to make the walk just that little bit extra special.

The Curse of the Third Child {Baby Nature Play}

Welcome back to another post in our Playful Baby series! This year we are hosting a new series about none other than baby play! From playspaces to heuristic play and even paint… we want you to feel comfortable playing with your baby. By the end of the next 12 months you will have an arsenal of baby play ideas! You will have the knowledge and understanding to continue learning and growing with your baby through play. This month we are sharing nature ideas!

Bushwalking with Kids {Fairy Doors}

We had such a fantastic time over Easter, camping and hiking with the Loving Naturally family that Numnut and I decided we need to go back to the way we used to be and prioritise getting out to nature as a family every week.

Hiking with Kids {Baby Nature Play}

Hello everyone! Ashlee from Loving Naturally here, once again, to touch on the topic of nature play. Nature and being outdoors is important to our family; making sure we live in an area that allows us to do this is great.

Baby Sensory Play at the Beach {Baby Sensory Play}

Welcome back to another post in our Playful Baby series! This year we are hosting a new series about none other than baby play! From playspaces to heuristic play and even paint… we want you to feel comfortable playing with your baby. By the end of the next 12 months you will have an arsenal of baby play ideas! You will have the knowledge and understanding to continue learning and growing with your baby through play. This month we are sharing sensory play ideas!

A Space to Play {Creating a Baby Playspace}

Hi! I'm Ashlee from Loving Naturally and I'm thrilled to be guest posting on Squiggles and Bubbles today. Through the year of 2017, each month myself and a group of other blogger mummies will be coming together to take you into our families and show you a little into our world covering a different topic each month to give you an ever expanding knowledge of ways to engage your little squish helping them develop and explore safely. This month we are sharing our playspaces.

Outdoor Playdough-A Calming Activity

You don't always have to create a brand new activity to keep your kids entertained and yourself sane. Sometimes it's as simple as finding a new way to play with an activity you already have.

Colour Sorting {Learning with DUPLO®}

Welcome back to #toolsforlearning! Every Tuesday an awesome team of bloggers will be taking on the challenge of activities with common educational manipulatives! We want learning to be hands-on, interactive and fun! This week we're featuring all things LEGO® and LEGO DUPLO®!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience

A Fun Toddler Beach Activity

The weather has well and truly warmed up and the Australian Summer is in full force! You know what that means, don't you? It's beach season!

Size and Colour Sorting {Learning with Rainbow Bears}

I'm excited to be joining in with a brand new series this week: #toolsforlearning! Every Tuesday an awesome team of bloggers will be taking on the challenge of activities with common educational manipulatives! We want learning to be hands-on, interactive and fun! This week we're featuring rainbow counters!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Aussie Inspired S'mores

It's spring time here in Aus and with Christmas only a month away we're coming into camping season!

This is one of our family's favourite camping recipes.

Doll Carrier Hack

Does your child have a comfort toy? Do they insist on taking it everywhere with them?

Today I want to share with you a little tip that's helped us when we're at the park and Squiggles' insistence of having her "Bubba" with her get's in the way of play.

 

Nature Ice Play

Hi, I'm Louise and I'm so excited to be guest-posting here on Squiggles and Bubbles! My usual place to share what I've been up to with my 2 year old boy (who is lovingly known as 'Darth' because of my husband's love of all things Star-Wars,) is on Building Blocks and Acorns. 'Darth' absolutely loves getting outdoors, whatever the weather, so I wanted to share this activity with you (as featured in 'Go Barefoot' magazine.)

Ice-sensory play with nature is a fantastic activity to do all year round and if the weather is especially bad outside, you can bring the nature indoors and put the ice in a tub on the kitchen floor!

Making Letters with Tools

Recently Bubbles has been showing an increasing interest in writing so what I'm about to share with you should have been no suprise-but it was!

Whilst we were gardening this weekend Bubbles took an interest in some of Numnut's tools-especially his socket wrench (at least I think that's what it's called!). Whilst she was playing with the wrench and it's sockets (???) she very excitedly discovered that she had made an L!

Glitter Puddles

If you jump over to Growing A Jeweled Rose you’ll find some absolutely, amazing puddle play ideas. They’re a little too creative for me but I love the idea of creating magical puddles, as soon as I saw Crystal’s fairy puddle post I went out and bought some glitter-something that is normally viewed as contraband in our household, I love the way glitter looks and shimmers but I hate the way it spreads throughout the house. Then all I had to do was wait for it to rain enough to make some puddles.

Once it had rained I invited Bubbles out for a walk to the park, she was so excited when upon finding our first puddle I handed her a jar of gold glitter, she promptly tipped the entire contents onto the  puddle and then asked for more, I hadn’t quite expected that, thankfully I had brought a jar of silver glitter too which she also plonked onto the puddle.

Bubbles then went in search of a suitable stirring stick and upon finding one took great delight in watching the glitter as she swirled it around and around.

 This is a very simple activity, it doesn’t take long and Bubbles loves it. My neighbours love it too, they tell me they can’t wait to go walking in winter so they can see what magical creations Bubbles has created in the puddles.

What’s your favourite way to play in puddles?
Victoria


Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.

Water Sensory Bin Challenge

 I'm exited to yet agin be joining in Sarah from Little Bins for Little Hands Rice Sensory Bin Challenge. You can read all about the challenge over at the Monthly Child-Led Sensory Bin Challenge!

This month's chosen filler was a nice and simple one: water! I'd love for you to join in too and share your experiences with me. The guidelines are super simple: Set out a bin of water only. Please do not create a theme with in the bin or set out a bunch of things for the child to grab rather talk with them if they need some direction or are on the younger side. Maybe a scoop and a container could be acceptable to add. Let your child bring to the bin what they might be interested in to play. Let it be as child led as possible but feel free to help as you see fit with your child.

To invite the girls to play I simply filled a container with warm water (it's freezing here at the moment!) and invited the girls to come play with it. Unfortunately Bubbles was completely uninterested, preferring to take her dolls into her room for a special teaparty and some little sister free time whilst Squiggles played with the water.

I have to say, I was quite surprised with the way Squiggles chose to explore our simple sensory bin this month. She didn't touch the water, or splash in it first, instead she dragged her chair over and tried to place it in the bin-whilst I know the purpose of this exercise is to let kids explore in their own way, I stepped in and asked her to take the chair out, simply because of safety concerns.

After being asked not to place the chair in the water, Squiggles pulled her chair up as close as possible to the bin and leant over to swish the water around with her hands.

She then asked for a face washer and spent the next five minutes placing the washer in the bin and then taking it out and either squeezing the face washer onto the floor or using the face washer to pour water onto the floor.

Remembering the missed opportunity from our Dirt Sensory Bin Challenge, I then pulled her tights off and it took no time at all for Squiggles to climb into the bin and splash the water with her feet.

Once she was finished playing, I grabbed the mop out, squirted a little soap nut liquid into the biggest puddle and Squiggles helped me mop the floor-combining play with a little cleaning!

Now you've read about how we interpreted this challenge why not hop on over and read about all the different ways this challenge has been interpreted at these fabulous blogs:

Little Bins For Little Hands

House of Burke

Preschool Powol Packets

Life Over C’s

Squiggles and Bubbles

Life with Moore Babies
Still Playing School

Teach me Mommy

Stir the Wonder

 

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.

Dirt Sensory Bin Challenge

About a month ago we were lucky enough to be invited to take part in Sarah from Little Bins for Little Hands Rice Sensory Bin Challenge. I'm exited to say that this has now turned into a monthly simple sensory bin  challenge! Each month there'll be a new, simple sensory bin filler and we'll follow the same simple guidelines from the Rice Sensory Bin Challenge. You can read all about it over at the Monthly Child-Led Sensory Bin Challenge!

 

This month's chosen filler was a nice and simple one: dirt! I'd love for you to join in too and share your experiences with me. The guidelines are super simple: Set out a bin of dirt only. Please do not create a theme with in the bin or set out a bunch of things for the child to grab rather talk with them if they need some direction or are on the younger side. Maybe a scoop and a container could be acceptable to add. Let your child bring to the bin what they might be interested in to play. Let it be as child led as possible but feel free to help as you see fit with your child.

To invite the girls to play I simply filled a container with dirt and invited the girls to come play with it. Unfortunately Bubbles was completely uninterested, not too much of a suprise as she hates getting her hands dirty but I was hoping she would at least grab a spade and have a dig but she opted to simply play on the swing whilst Squiggles explored the sensory bin.

Unlike her sister Squiggles couldn't wait to play with the dirt, she often plays in our veggie boxes and ate quite a bit of dirt when we made a mud factory this summer but I've never really given her the opportunity to play with dirt solely without providing tools of some sort.

At first she simply poked the dirt, exploring what it was.

Then she had fun pushing her hands into the dirt and making handprints. She really did sit there for a full five minutes JUST making handprints.

Once she was finished making handprints, Squiggles decided to ignore the dirt and push the tub around our yard making car noises.

From there she decided to climb into the box! In hindsight I wish I'd taken her socks off so she could have felt the dirt between her toes, but I didn't.

She then went on to pooring handfuls of dirt over her socks AND attempting to poor it down my cleavage! When I expressed my wish to NOT have dirt poored down my top she began emptying the dirt out onto  the concrete at which point I decided it was time to end the activity.

I've left the tub out in the hope that Bubbles will eventually explore it but at the moment it's just keeping Squiggles entertained.

Now you've read about how we interpreted this challenge why not hop on over and read about all the different ways this challenge has been interpreted at these fabulous blogs:

Little Bins For Little Hands

House of Burke

Preschool Powol Packets

Life Over C’s

Squiggles and Bubbles

Life with Moore Babies
Still Playing School

Teach me Mommy

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.