It’s Play Time!
Kids may only see play time as fun, but we know that play time is also great for mental and physical development, as well as a fantastic way to simply enjoy spending time with your children without the use of TVs, iPads and PlayStations! With our lives as busy as they are, we understand that it can be difficult to find time to seek out new activities and often the options seem outright expensive, elaborate or time consuming.
So, over the course of the next few months, we’re going to break down a list to help encourage kids to try a broad range of playful activities – ‘33 Fun Activities Kids Can Do Before Age 10’. Every other week we’ll release a new blog breaking down these activities into manageable chunks to try out with children on holiday camps, after-school programmes or even at home, with handy instructions to guide you!
Without further ado, here’s Part 1!
CHILDREN’S ACTIVITY 1: ROLL ON YOUR SIDE DOWN A GRASSY BANK
So simple, right!? This is a ‘must do’ activity, you’ll be in fits of laughter with your children! All you need is a grassy slope, perhaps in a nearby nature reserve or park if you don’t have one in your own garden or facility. You probably also need a bit of sunshine or, failing that, just a day without rain!
If you do need to head out to the park to do this one. Why not combine this with a nice picnic and a game of Frisbee?
Also, there’s nothing to say that adults won’t enjoy this one too, get stuck in!
CHILDREN’S ACTIVITY 2: MAKE YOUR OWN PLAY DOUGH MIXTURE
You just can’t go wrong with Play Dough. There’s no need to go out and buy the expensive stuff when you can quickly and easily make it from things you probably have in the cupboard at home! Your children may want to get involved with making the dough too!
To push the boat out a little bit, you could even add different food colourings to get a good variety of colours to play with or use pastry cutters to make the dough into different shapes.
RECIPE:
250g Plain Flour
50g Table Salt
140ml Water
1-2 Tablespoons of Cooking Oil (i.e. Sunflower Oil)
Food Colouring (if needed)
INSTRUCTIONS:
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Knead the mixture until it is smooth. Add more flour or water as needed to get the right consistency (smooth, not sticky). Blend in the food colouring a bit at a time until you have the desired colour. Put the mixture in a food bag, in the fridge for 1 hour.
CHILDREN’S ACTIVITY 3: FIND FROGSPAWN
It doesn’t matter how old you get, the transformation of frogspawn, to tadpole, to frog is fascinating. Kids simply love the frogspawn because it’s slimy, so why not teach them about this transformation at the same time?
To make it more hands on and fun for your children, you could fish out some tadpoles using a jar to scoop them up. This way they can have a really close-up look.
(Be sure to put them back where you found them afterwards)
You could also try to spot frogspawn and tadpoles at different stages in their development!
See if you and your children can tick off the Frogspawn checklist together.
FROGSPAWN CHECKLIST
- A young egg – This will be in the frogspawn. Each little bit is an individual egg. A young egg will contain a black dot that isn’t moving and has no sign of a tadpole’s tail.
- An egg that’s developing – The yolk/black dot in the middle splits into 2, then 4, then 8 until it looks a bit like a raspberry.
- An egg that’s ready to hatch – The black dot in the middle will now look a bit like a tadpole and may be wiggling about.
- A young tadpole – This will have few or no features and look like a black blob with a tail.
- A tadpole with legs – This will look like a tiny frog with a very long tail.
- A young frog or froglet – By this point you will see a small frog that still has a small remainder of a tail.
- A frog – Can you spot a fully-grown frog as well?
We hope you enjoyed and took away some fun ideas to try out in Part 1 of “33 Fun Activities To Do Before Age 10”, keep a look out for Part 2!
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