Autumn is a great time of year, yes it gets wetter and colder but the autumnal colours are amazing and you know it’s getting closer to Christmas (and who doesn’t love Christmas). Here are a few activities you can do with the kids this Autumn to get them in the mood for the season of red, orange and yellow.
Autumn Collage Use the fantastic autumnal colours to create a wonderful collage. Collect some leaves and let them dry out. Once dry you can either stick them straight on to paper or if your kids are a bit older then maybe get them to cut the leaves in to smaller pieces to create a more detailed collage picture.
Paint a Tree
You can do this activity straight on paper, card or a canvas, but it is going to be messy. First you need to get your child to make a brown paint hand print and a bit of their wrist. This gives the impression of a bare tree. The next step is use finger painting to show the leaves in red, orange and yellow.
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I have loved Lego since I was a little boy and now I have 2 little ones, I love playing with Lego with them. But Lego is special, it's not just a toy, it's amazingly versatile and here are a few ideas to help your little ones learn with Lego.
1. Fine Motor Skills
Starting out with Lego Duplo from around 1 year old you can help your children develop fine motor skills. There are many Duplo brick shapes and sizes and they all lock together in a secure fashion. Lots of opportunities to build and knock down towers all helping develop hand-eye coordination and motor skills. 2. Social Skills Playing on their own, with a friend or with you, all helps your child to continue to develop their social skills. It could be learning to share and take turns or as they develop to take on the roles of the characters in their sets. They role play because it helps them to learn about themselves and others. 3. Learning Colours Lego is a good tool to begin sorting and organising with your children. Lego Duplo comes in a wide range of vivid colours. Children love to investigate and learn through play from the world around them and what better way than by playing and sorting Lego. 4. Maths Lego comes in all shapes and sizes of bricks. You can use them as counters or to represent values. If your child is reluctant when it comes to Maths then Lego might be a tool which unlocks their potential. 'It's not learning if it's fun,' but it is whether they like it or not. Here is a video showing Lego being used to teach fractions:
5. Stories
There are so many Lego sets available including more well known characters like Star Wars, Batman and Spider-man. These offer lots of opportunities for imaginative play and role play. There are also lots of minifigures and sets to help develop imagination and story writing. You could even try making your own stop-motion video (I can't wait to do this one day with my little ones). 6. Computing Lego WeDo offers children the opportunity to use Lego for science and programming. You can download the software for free and pick up a 2nd-hand set from ebay for around £50. Computing is a fantastic topic to help develop and teach your children problem solving skills. There are also some other great computing sites which are free, that help children learn programming skills: code.org and scratch.mit.edu If you have anymore ideas for how to learn with LEGO then let me know in the comments. |
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