Natural Playhouse {Outdoor Play Party}

Welcome to another Outdoor Play Party hosted by myself, Mama Pea Pod, Greening Sam and Avery, Learning for Life, and our newest host The Kitchen Counter Chronicles.
  
I have always admired natural playhouses like a tree branch teepee, sunflower fort, and bean pole teepee, but I haven't found the time to make one.  While in our backyard, I realized two of our trees form a natural canopy creating a little den.  In the nook, I set out a tray of colored water and various toys.  


It creates the illusion of a secret playhouse, and she enjoyed imaginary and sensory play here.  She has grown weary of her play corner in the yard because it's so hot from lack of shade, so she relished the protection from the sun brought by the trees.  Being enclosed by these natural walls captured the spirit of play because she stayed for over an hour engrossed in creating a play scene. 


Some other outdoor fun we have had is growing sunflowers, painting with bikes, exploring flowers, and lying in the grass.  
I just LOVED all the outdoor play ideas you shared at the last Outdoor Play Party.  Thank you!  
There's no better place for messy play than the outdoors, and Growing a Jeweled Rose isn't afraid to get messy with her little girls.  She shared play with shaving cream and bubble wrap.  Her daughter sure POPPED with excitement for it!  

Photo by Growing a Jeweled Rose
Now, it's your turn to share your outdoor play with kids!  

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.

Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. 

Playful Parenting Tip #3 - Junk and Nature Toys

In December, I wrote about how unstructured play makes kids happy. Each Tuesday in the next two months, I will be sharing how I encourage unstructured play in our home. This week's playful parenting tip is to allow children to play with junk and items from nature.

Last Tuesday I shared how toys help children tell stories, and this supports children during unstructured, imaginative play.  I find that my daughter utilizes junk in her play as much as her store bought toys. Junk is anything that may have ended up in a trash or recycle bin, but my daughter has rescued it for a better purpose.  When she is outside, items such as sticks, rocks and water are essential tools to her play.   Both junk and nature finds allow her to engage in abstract thinking by imagining these objects are something different.

For this installation of Playful Parenting, I documented through photographs how my daughter incorporated junk and nature into unstructured play over the course of the weekend.  Hopefully, you will see the endless possibilities that come by allowing a little more junk into your playful lives.





























Sometimes a stick is not a stick, and sometimes a rope is a
And it's all good for unstructured play!
I know playing with junk makes some worry about having a messy house, but I assure you we live in a pretty neat and clean home (most of the time) even with junky play.  Next week I will be sharing ways to organize your kids' toys to help keep the mess a little more manageable.

Playful Parenting Tip #2 - Toys

In December, I wrote about how unstructured play makes kids happy.   Each Tuesday in the next two months, I will be sharing how I encourage unstructured play in our home.  This week's playful parenting tip is to provide toys that encourage imaginative play. 


Like most moms, I have read a lot of books, blogs, and parenting magazines that provide differing perspectives on toys.  There are families that don't allow plastic toys in the home.  Other families try to make many of their own toys.  Some families love Disney and buy a lot of their toys for play.   Parents may prefer that their children play with gender appropriate toys.  Some people favor certain toy brands.  Others may try to acquire toys to match a certain design aesthetic or color scheme.  


This discussion about toys will be sharing general ideas that can fit a range of families with differing opinions and backgrounds.   Using car speak, the make, model, year, or color isn't the most important thing about a toy . To support the practice of unstructured, imaginative play, caregivers need to provide a range of toys that allow children to create a story.  The stories can be role playing stories of real life like pretending to be Mommy or going on an airplane.  Stories in imaginative play can also be fantasy like fighting dragons or going on adventures in space.  I am sharing toys that work in our house to help our daughter with imaginative play.  


Characters are important to stories.  Dolls, stuffed animals, and/or figurines help children create characters.  My daughter enjoys playing with stuffed animals more than dolls, and we provide more animals than dolls.  Provide toys that fit your child's preference.  If your child loves cars more than anything, those can be made into characters too. At times, children like to pretend they are the characters in a story.  Dress up clothes, fabrics, or accessories can help children get into character.  We have dresses, Halloween costumes, tutus, bags, and costume jewelry in our dress up bin.  



Allow for a setting to develop.  Toys that encourage children to construct can help children create settings in their play.  We use blocks in our house to create settings.  We have traditional wooden blocks, Keva Planks, and Tykes Large Waffle blocks.  Doll houses can provide for settings, but our doll house is called a cat house by our daughter since it houses her miniature cat family.  



In stories, there is a sequence of events.  As the story progresses, the characters sometimes need to literally move along.  Toys that move and carry allow children to make changes in the setting and the story line.  In our house, a doll carriage and large vehicles that hold toys are favorites in imaginative play.  



Toys can serve as props in imaginative play, but I find there is not one specific type of toy Miss E utilizes for this purpose.  For props she uses toys such as play phones, toy food, bags, or musical instruments.  I find that random items destined for the trash serve this purpose just as well for her imaginative play.  


It's these types of simple toys that keep our daughter entertained creating stories with her toys.  By setting the stage for story telling while playing, she creates plots, conflicts, and works out solutions - all fundamentals to writing.  These aren't the only types of toys in our house, but these are the ones that support her the most with unstructured, imaginative play. 


Toys from nature and junk are also instrumental to imaginative play, and I will be discussing them next Tuesday for the Playful Parenting Tip series.   


I have not been paid by any toy company or other enterprise for this article, and all of these opinions are based on my own opinion and not influenced by monetary gain.  

Winter Nature Table

We have our Winter Nature Table out for playful natural exploration.  Last season we started our nature table tradition with our Autumn Nature Table.  We use a variety of natural objects that reflect the season and put the tray on our living room coffee table where it is accessible for our daughter to use for her imaginative play and creations.

This season we trimmed off branches from our living Christmas tree that we planted two years ago.  We sliced an orange and apple, dried them, and put them on the tray because children used to receive sweet fruit in their stockings for Christmas.  Chestnuts are a traditional nut roasted and eaten for the holidays.  Miss E made an orange with cloves at school, and it provides a delicious fragrance to the tray.  Once we displayed the tray, our daughter added our family picture.

In the past day, Miss E has incorporated the items from the tray in her play.  Last night she practiced her culinary skills and cooked a dinner for a tiger friend.


This morning she drew a plan for a garden, and she was busy planting.  


I can't wait to see how else Miss E plays with her Nature Table.  

Superhero Capes for Toys

Most of Miss E's day involves imaginative play with her stuffed animals particularly her set of Backyardigans.  There is often a superhero involved, and we sometimes use old bibs as capes.  The other day we decorated the capes.

Materials

• Bib
• fabric paint
• paint brush or q-tip
• pen

Directions

Write the first initial of the toy's name onto the back of a bib.

Trace the initial with fabric paint using a q-tip or paintbrush.



Decorate the cape with more paint.  Miss E wanted to keep decor to a minimum.  Perhaps, she thought it would ruin a superhero's tough image with a fancy cape.


Allow capes to dry for a day.



Tie capes onto stuffed animal or doll.  Now, your superheroes are ready to save the day in style.



This activity facilitates letter identification, sound recognition, and handwriting.  

Let Her Make Lines

It's not uncommon to find objects lined up in our house because Miss E makes a lot of lines. These are the lines I found around our home today.

The lines can be found in artwork designs. When asked to describe the piece, she cannot explain it.



Sometimes she can describe the drawing with lines, and she told me this was a mandala.



She uses lines to organize things. She decided to make this poster of all her favorite things.



Lines are a part of her imaginative play. The animals are sleeping here.



She created a line of artwork to make a display for an art store.



I cannot give a definitive explanation as to why Miss E creates all these lines, but I do believe if children are drawn to a particular activity in play, it is important for them.   Lines are found in every part of our life and the academic world.

Some Places We Find Lines

• Handwriting
• Shapes in Geometry
• Direction of writing on a page
• Organization of books on a shelf
• Creating grids in math and social studies
• Number Lines
• Standing in Line
• Clotheslines
• Invisible Lines in Symmetry
• Calendars
• Seats in an auditorium

Since Miss E is given the space and time for self directed play with access to a variety of materials, she has the opportunity to create lines on her own.   Creating these lines may be her way of processing the world around her.  She may be trying to create order in her own little sphere of the world by organizing objects into lines.  It's even possible these lines are helping her brain to develop a framework that will enable her to better comprehend academic lessons where lines are important. 

Whether or not, your child is creating lines on her own is probably not important.  The importance is that  children are given the freedom to play, explore, and manipulate the world around them.  Lines are part of the way Miss E plays.  The specific and unique ways your child plays are giving him some of the skills he needs to conquer the academic world in the future.  

Loose Parts in the Dollhouse

As Miss E grows older, her stash of junk multiplies. Whenever I am having the urge to have a clean and organized house, I feel inclined to just throw it all the way. After all it's stuff that was destined for the trash anyways, but I understand how important this junk is to her play. Loose parts is the term used in preschool education to describe the odds and ends, bits and bobs that children use in their creative play. Jenny at Let the Children Play is a proponent of loose parts play especially in the outdoors, and her site has a lot of wonderful ideas about how to incorporate loose parts into play.

Miss E utilizes loose parts, aka junk, when playing with her dollhouse.  She received a lovely, hand painted collection tray from our friends, Samantha and Naomi, and she uses it to organize the loose parts used in her dollhouse.  I find a pretty container helps make the junk more aesthetically pleasing to Mommy.




Except for the junk making the house messy, I find it invaluable to her play. It has enabled me to understand how my husband played as as child because he told me he didn't have toys as a child, but he played outside from sun up to sun down only taking breaks to eat. He turned out to be a very intelligent man even without access to commercial toys.

Loose parts have enabled Miss E to develop core cognitive skills that will strengthen her readiness for school.

She works on sequencing skills when describing the steps to prepare a meal with flowers found in our yard.




She develops abstract thinking and creativity by imagining objects are something else.

Acorn caps become bowls.




An eraser is a pillow.




A plastic lid is a bubbly pool.




She acquires problem solving skills when she creates a scenario of trapped kitties, and she needs to figure out a way to rescue them.




If you are still in doubt of the importance of junk in play, look at Miss E's face. That is the look of concentration and deep thought.

Whoever wants to understand much, must play much. - Gottfried Benn

Escape

There are just some times we want to escape from it all, and I am sure it's the same for children.  Miss E and I have both needed to get away from it all.  Both of us are going through growing pains adjusting to Miss E's beginning days of preschool.  She reports preschool would be better with Mommy, and there are too many children.  She misses the days with only Mommy.

Understanding of the need for time with me, we spend most of our afternoon after preschool playing together.  Today she wanted to play campout with a tent, and we both got to depart from the real world for just a bit.

We built a tent.





Surrounded by the sheet, we had a cozy hangout.  Miss E gathered her favorite things - animals, junk box, pillows, writing materials, and later play food.

She wrote me a letter telling me how she loves me.






She explored with the ribbon from her junk box.







Miss E cooked us a feast of all her favorite foods - pizza, eggs, cake, and junk food soup.






Playing campout felt like a retreat.  The play tent enveloped us creating a sense of intimacy that both of us have missed while she has been at school in the mornings.  We got just the escape we desired.

Simple Math - Playing Airplane

Miss E enjoys playing airplane. When we play this together, we pretend we are both Mommies, and we take our children and luggage onto our plane. We spend time hanging out on the plane fastening our seat belts, eating snacks, and reading books until we reach our destination which is either New York, where her grandparents live, or the Savannah, where she hopes someday she will travel to see lions, elephants, and zebras. Today I decided to include additional elements to our airplane play. We added a game of maching socks to pack our luggage, making tickets, and creating a runway.

Before our journey, we need to pack our luggage which includes matching socks. This fosters mathematical skills such as same and different.








We created tickets to board the plane using strips of paper, stamps, and markers.








We made a plane out of pillows.




I assigned seat numbers using letter and number blocks. We found our seats using our seat assignment on our tickets. Matching rows and columns was a difficult concept for her as an almost 4 year old, but it is a skill we haven't explored yet. I showed her how I find my seats using the numbers and letters found on my ticket and assisted her when she had difficulty.




Up, up, and away - the plane takes off on the runway.




We hang out with our babies (aka stuffed animals) on the airplane until it lands. Good thing the flight attendants weren't strict about staying in our assigned seats.








Incorporating educational concepts into an imaginative play scene grabs their interest. Children will realize that math is something useful in their everyday lives. Using airplane seat numbers encourages a child to develop a concept of grids, coordinates, matching numbers, and counting. If the children make tickets with the same seat numbers, they can work on their problem solving skills to figure out how to assign a different seat numbers.

Assisting children in including additional features to their imaginative play scenes will model for them how to create more dimension to their play. I think this is especially important for children who don't frequently play with older children because older children will naturally be more creative in their play, but a parent needs to try to do this in the absence of an older playmate.




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Simple Math - 3 Bears Porridge

Imaginative play is a consistent favorite in our house, and Miss E enjoys acting out classic stories. We have been pretending the story, Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Sometimes when we play it, we make three bowls of porridge for the bears, and this incorporates math into our play.

She chooses three bowls from our messy but well stocked container cabinet, and I remind her that we need a small, medium and large bowl  for each bear.







I supply a dry ingredient (flour, cornmeal, or oats) and water. We talk about how many scoops of dry ingredients should go in each bowl. On her own, she decides Papa Bear gets the most scoops of cereal, and she usually puts 3-4 scoops in his bowl. Mama Bear receives less than Papa Bear, and she gets 2 scoops. She pours one scoop into Baby Bear's bowl.









She pours water in each bowl and stirs it up.




As she is preparing their porridge, she narrates the steps she is taking to ensure the bears get the proper amount and provides reasons. Papa Bear is bigger, and he eats more. Baby Bear doesn't really like to eat porridge, and he gets the smallest amount of porridge.

Making cereal for the Three Bears helps foster mathematical concepts such as measurement, volume, and comparing amounts. To extend this activity, we could write recipes for each bear's porridge. We could try to make this not conform to gender stereotypes and encourage our children to think about how Mama Bear may want to eat as much as Papa Bear or more because she could be more hungry and/or be larger than Papa Bear. This would help children learn about the concept of equal amounts in math. In addition to math skills, this activity helps children develop motor skills by pouring and scooping, and it helps increase literacy skills through storytelling.



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Location:At Home