5 Simple Invitations to Play

Since Bubbles was a toddler I've been setting up little areas around our house with 'invitations to play.' An invitation to play is nothing complicated but it has the potential for great learning to occur.

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To learn more about invitations to play and their many benefits I invite you to pop over to The Imagination Tree, where one of my all time favourite bloggers, mother of three and ex-early childhood educator will explain all about it. 

Invitations to play don't have to be complex or expensive, they can simply be made up of whatever you have on hand.

Here's five simple ideas to inspire you:

Invitation To Play with Playdough
This invitation to play was inspired by Playschool. After watching an episode of Playschool where they created Playdough Faces Bubbles requested to do the same, we had things to do at the time but I kept her request at the back of my mind. The next day I set this invitation up-I wanted to encourage her to strengthen her fine motor skills and cutting ability so provided materials and tools that I hoped would encourage this but I also tried to use materials that could be used to make faces.

Invitation To Play with Cars
This invitation to play was inspired simply as a way to revitalise the girls interest in their cars. To put it together I simply drew a road on the white table with texta (which took forever to clean off!), found a picture of traffic in a Where's Wally book as a backdrop, added a building block and some vehicles. Ever so easy but oh, so effective!

 Invitation To Create Snowflakes
This invitation to play was designed to extend on the girls' interest in the movie Frozen. To set it up I took the back and glass out of two photo frames and added some contact paper to the back so the sticky side faced up. I used a poster from Bubbles' Frozen busy book as a backdrop and then filled a small tray with cotton wool balls and cotton tips. This has been one of our most successful invitations to play and stayed out for over a month as Squiggles and Bubbles were constantly engaged with it!

Invitation To Build
This invitation to play was inspired simply as a way to revitalise the girls interest in their building blocks. To put it together I placed a container of tree cookies, a basket full of lemons and mandarins and kiwi fruit and an old cutting board to use as a building surface near a window. The invitation worked fantastically and over the next couple of months the items in the basket were changed for pinecones, potatoes, rocks and flowers.

(Just a note: I don't advocate wasting food but I do believe you can still play with it without waste-the lemons and mandarins were ones I'd planned on turning into marmalade and lemon butter, and that's what I did after the girls had finished playing with them-they were really easy to juice because of the play. If you're not into making jams you could try using potatoes instead-we've done this often and just pinch them from the girls basket when we need them to cook with!)

Invitation To Paint
This invitation to play was inspired partly because Australia Day was coming up and partly because Bubbles had become interested in the photos of Numnut's and my life on the Tiwi Islands. This was more than an invitation to paint, it was an invitation to learn about Indidgenous Australia-in particular the Tiwi Island and their people. On the table I placed some paper, bark and sticks, ochre, a picture by Tiwi Island artist and I also propped open the Tiwi book-the page I chose was page. I chose that particular page because it features artists painting-with paintbrushes. Growing up, every art class I had that featured Indigenous painting provided us with cotton tips to paint with-when I mentioned this whilst we were living on the Tiwi Islands I was met by two different reactions-amusement and offense, because of that I have chosen not to offer those implements to my children when we explore Indigenous art. Bubbles and Squiggles both enjoyed exploring the ochre and the way it painted on the paper and bark. This is an activity we've come back to many times.

If you liked this you may like Five Fun Busy Boxes for Baby. Just click the picture to read all about it!

 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.

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