Taking Time to Play Archives

Taking Time to Play with Little Artists

February 12, 2013 By Deirdre

‘Lee Ann Womack had a song out a few years ago called I Hope You Dance. When I read the post below, the words of that song came rushing into my head. It is such a wonderful song. I hope you will not only take a moment to read the post below by Little Artists ,but also take the time today to dance.

Playing together with your children is the best you can do! Getting away from TVs, computers, phones … and just enjoying the time together!

My older daughter and I love dancing. We dance anywhere: at home, at the playground, at the parking lot, at the mall… Since she was tiny she loved moving and dancing and creating her own moves.

We dance just about any dance style: from ballet to Chinese folk, from Bollywood to bellydance 

I do have an actual formal dance training and I love dancing. With both my girls I danced and dance since they were babies (my younger one is still a tiny baby!). 

So needless to say, most of the time when my now 4-year old hears music, she starts moving to the beat: in the malls, in the restaurants, on the bus, in the street – you name it!

About me: I blog at Little Artists about encouraging creativity in children. I believe every child is a mine of talents which we, as parents and educators, have to help discover, polish and nurture. Creativity is not only about arts and crafts, it is about using one’s imagination and applying to every aspect of life. 

Encouraging creativity in children – Little Artists Blog

Taking Time to Play- The Educator’s Spin On It

November 6, 2012 By Deirdre

We are excited for the opportunity to share our Time to Play with you as a guest post on JDaniel4’s Mom. We both share a love of books and how to incorporate them into our children’s lives through play.

Balancing life with a 2, 6 and 19 year old can take to prethinking to make sure everyone has their playful moments with Mom. Since we share share a weekly ideas of after school activities on The Educators’ Spin On In It. I want to share with you how important it is to take the opportunity for some afternoon play with your child after school. Luckily my two year old has been napping as we come home from school so, we get a chance to have some one on one time together and then the girls love playing once homework is done. Children don’t get anytime at school to just be kids and playtime is such an important role in childhood.

The Educator’s Spin on It

Now here’s comes the fun! Did you see JDaniel4’s recent Own Post? We loved it especially since it’s Owl Week at The Educators’ Spin On It! I’m excited to share with you our playful afternoon moment we had! We’ve been spending more time walking home from school together. We’ve even made some fun discoveries of plant life and animal life! We brought home tons of leaves from our walk one day and decided we were going to do something with them together. We sat and looked at the leave together and sorted the leaves. Something I’ve observed about my daughter is that she likes to categorize things during playtime. Even as a toddler she would find pairs of things and line them up. It doesn’t surprise me now that she’s in love with math. I’m so glad that I’ve observed that about her play over the years.

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While playing with the leaves she had a moment where we remembered a special book,Look What I Did with a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi that creates pictures from Leaves.

Look What I Did with a Leaf! (Naturecraft)

She ran inside to grab the book and then she came up with the idea of creating an owl from the recycled cereal box. So we gathered all our supplies and got to work. She glued on the feathers, beak, nose and wings. Once the owl was dry it was showtime!

At the very end of the day she used the owls she made to put on an Owl Puppet show to practice her lines for the Owl Play that we were practicing for. Sorry I was part of the show so now pictures from this part but it was such fun to talk in character with her and just see into her imagination. Plus what a fun way to play with words to get ready for her performance!

I was so proud of my little owl! We hope you’ll stop by for more Owl Inspired Fun at The Educators’ Spin On It!

Kim is the co-author of The Educators’ Spin On It. As an early childhood teacher and a mom of three, she’s learned many tips and tricks of parenting and teaching along the way in the past 20 years. She shares her “Educator’s Spin” on parenting issues and how make learning playful and playtime meaningful. You can also find The Educators’ Spin On It on Facebookand Pinterest.

Taking Time to Play- Little Moments

September 11, 2012 By Deirdre

You are going to love Little Moments. It is a blog is filled with wonderful mom moments, tons of love for a very special boys, and great ideas. I adore the post she is sharing here today. Why? I love that she plans activities for her oldest son like the one she shares in her post You Won’t Find Dinosaurs in Your Backyard.

I am very thankful to be guest posting for the Taking Time to Play series here at JDaniel4’s Mom. Before I share what we like to play I have to warn you…I am a plant killer. Aidan has eagerly shared many gardening experiences with me, mostly by decorating the front of our house with potted flowers and plants.

I soon forget them, grumbling when I see shriveled brown leaves as I try to will them back to life in a puddle of water. Every time I buy a new plant my husband laughs under his breath, “what did you bring home to kill this time?” Aidan is better at remembering to water plants than I am, yet I still continue to purchase them.

One year I bought 3 beautiful topiaries that lined a brick wall in front of our house. They were completely bare a couple of months later, so I drew scary faces on three white sheets and threw one over each of them just in time for Halloween…they’re coming back to haunt you, I thought to myself.

As much as I have grown to enjoy gardening, I haven’t taken the time to really understand the basics. I just found out from a guy at Lowes the other week that flowering plants do not do well in full shade…I’m sure he laughed about me after I left. Do you want to know what the really sad part is, aside from all the dead plants? Aidan’s favorite part of the hardware store is the gardening section. I’m not the best model for him when it comes to growing things, but we’re learning together, and it’s one of the ways we play together. Digging in the dirt, finding bugs and worms to inspect, enjoying the beautiful shades of green we arrange together. Aidan has learned basic math concepts while scooping dirt and measuring holes, the names of different plants and plant parts, and the three ingredients plants need to survive.

I am trying to develop some gardening skills for Aidan’s sake. My goal is to grow a couple of different vegetables this fall with him. For now we are playing with fake plants while I attempt to understand what I’m doing wrong. We are still enjoying the real stuff; the dirt, the water, and the sun. Even though the flowers are fake, the enjoyment of our play is real.

Taking Time to Play- Creative Playhouse

September 4, 2012 By Deirdre

Please stop by Creative Playhouse after reading this wonderful post and browse through her posts. I love the post on spray painting leaves. The fall would be a perfect time to try this wonderful idea at home.

I’m really happy able to be a part of this guest post series. Its been great to reflect on the time we spend playing together and how that benefits us as a family.

Creative Play House Taking Time to Play

I’ve always tried to take lots of time to play with Jake (2.5 years old); letting him lead the way but always there to interact, assist (if he needs me to), and play along. Since Jake’s baby sister, Poppy, was born 6 months ago I’ve made even more of an effort to set aside time to play with him, but Jake has also been a little frustrated that he hasn’t been able to play with Poppy. He’s just lovely with her, giving kisses and cuddles, stroking her head, and passing her toys, but up until now she obviously doesn’t really play back or interact very much.

Now Poppy is sitting up and holding things and is starting to clear and so joyfully interact with Jake it’s fun setting up ways for them to actually play together. I was excited to receive 2 big bags of play balls for free; a kind lady in my community was giving them away. I turned our pop-up tent upside down and filled it with the balls and we have our very own ball pool in our play area.

Ball pools are great for all ages; its big sensory play, and lots of opportunities to explore shape, colors, movement, and physical sensations. And they’re just loads of fun!

Jake jumped in first and loved it, of course! When he was done I popped Poppy in, she was so mesmerized by all the balls.

Jake was excited to see that she could play in the same way that he did. He passed her balls and she grinned, he giggled, then she giggled; it was very cute to watch! They both went in together too, but I was too busy supervising to be able to take a picture.

They both loved it; Jake could jiggle Poppy around as he moved the balls, and they interacted a lot. There aren’t many activities a 6-month-old and a 2.5-year-old boy can safely enjoy together but this was fantastic, and I hope they start lots more playing together!

Katherine has a background in special education, and early years childcare, and has a BA and MA in the creative and performing arts. She blogs at Creative Playhouse about her children’s activities and interests, manages and writes a collaborative parenting blog, Mummyology, runs an online community of Mums in Jersey and a retail site Cherishable, and is a stay-at-home mum to Jake (2.5) and Poppy (6 months).

Taking Time to Play- At Home with Ali

July 24, 2012 By Deirdre

It is beyond wonderful to have At Home with Ali taking time to play here to today. She hosts a wonderful blog that focuses on being creative with your children. After reading the post below, I would love for you to check out her post on a little construction site. It will inspire you to create and make you want to get down in the sand and play with your children.

I am thrilled to be guest posting at JDaniel4’s Mom today in the Taking Time to Play series.

I thought I would feature an activity that I used to do with my eldest daughter and is now seeing a resurgence with my youngest (almost 2 years). We call it ‘felties’ and it is a very popular game in our house.

I always do this quiet activity one on one, so we have to save it for days when my 4-year-old is at preschool. It is a great springboard for interaction with lots to talk about – size, shape, color.

‘Felties’ is very simple. I have some large felt pieces in blue, purple, yellow, green and pink. I grab a pair of scissors and we sit down on the rug together. We use one piece of felt for the base and use the others to cut shapes and objects.

We normally stick to simple shapes – squares, triangles, circles, flowers, fish, ponds, and boats. The momentum is lost if I spend too much time perfecting a complicated shape or object so I try to be quick with the scissors. I ask her what she wants me to cut out or give her a suggestion if she needs a prompt. It has been during this game that I have learned just how many colors and shapes she already knows!

Each time we play ‘felties’ she does different things with the pieces. Sometimes she colour matches – placing a pink triangle on a pink square, a purple square on a purple circle. Sometimes she tries to fill the entire felt mat and sometimes she lines the pieces up in straight rows.

We also use the commercial felt boards and pieces that you can buy in a variety of themes. Both of my kids also like these but prefer sitting down with me and asking for mommy-made custom felt pieces. It certainly isn’t about the quality of the felt pieces, as there is no way I could cut out a unicorn! In fact, I am always surprised at how much my kids like this activity, I guess it proves that the simpler things in life are often the best.