@staffstechgirl shares a great activity idea in water pouring with a difference. Mix the colours and learn from the results. This video was submitted by @staffstechgirl in support of this years make time 2 play campaign.

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Four year olds are starting become quite independent in their play, can get more adventurous with the activities that they do and can be quite helpful. Jennie Lindon explains helps you to understand the psychology of 4 year olds in this exclusive video and we had lots of lively conversation around 4 year olds and play during your Play Fest. You can save 10% on Jenny Lindons Book What it Means to be 4 exclusively with Izziwizzi Kids quote “izziwizzi” at the checkout. We have summarised some of the ideas that came forward during Play Fest to give you ideas with your 4 year old.

Feel free to add your comments.

These were favourite products for 4 year olds during Play Fest:

- Fuzzy felt
- Books
- Face Paints
- Happy Hopperz available from KidzOutdoors.com
- Jigsaws
- Board games to explore taking turns
- Puppets
- Think fun Zingo bingo
- Cars
- Role play with figures
- Old fashioned to encourage imagination (eg no batteries!) – wooden toy farm, bus and abacus
- Plastic animals and dinosaurs
- Anything robot
- Anything Toy Story
- Balance bike

Favourite Activities:

- Racing to do specified challenges such as see who’s the first to pick up 10 items
- Sticker charts
- Camping out in bedroom
- Riding bike
- Anything craft
- Making perfume with recycled plastic bottles and water
- Sensory play

Keeping Kids Occupied on Car Journeys

- Lots of singing
- Name a colour and they have to name as many things as they can in that time
- The Mini Flick game – spot a mini and flick the person next to you
- I spy
- Car snooker

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Three year olds are energetic, learning to talk and becoming more independent. Jennie Lindon explains helps you to understand the psychology of 3 year olds in this exclusive video and we had lots of lively conversation around 3 year olds and play during your Play Fest. You can save 10% on Jenny Lindons Book What it Means to be 3 exclusively with Izziwizzi Kids quote “izziwizzi” at the checkout. We have summarised some of the ideas that came forward during Play Fest to give you ideas with your 3 year old.

Feel free to add any further ideas in the comments below.

Activity ideas with 3 year olds from Play Fest:

- Making wooden spoon puppets
- Walks in nature or outside
- Messy stuff, painting and jumping in puddles, lots of outside stuff
- Water – transfer water from jug to jug using montessari techniques
- Creative – drawing, painting, playdough, chalks,
- Playing out in the garden
- Bounce, dance, sing and shout
- Role play superhero characters
- Making Gloop
- Tig
- Hide and seek
- Counting songs
- Bear hunt or picnic
- Penne pasta and some string
- Sand or mud pies
- Make musical instruments
- We love playdoh and colouring books at the moment
- planting flowers, seeds and summer bulbs is great for this time of year
- Playing Dinosaurs is another favourite, & usually involves alot of greeness and grrrrr
- Grow own veg
- Geo caching was recommended. Here is how it is described by one mum during Play Fest. You need a gps system- i use my iphone. You log on to http://www.geocache.com or download app. Lots of treasure boxes hidden all over the world. They give you the location on the cache (treasure) and then off we pop to find it! Gives the kids a purpose for walking- mine absolutely love it. You can take an item of treasure as long as you put something in it’s place. Worth a go

What can we do to encourage 3 year olds to be helpful?

- Clear tables
- Tidy up time
- Sorting and matching socks
- Putting washing in
- Set table
- Clear away
- Put clothes away
- Anything to clean
- Make a car wash in the garden to clean the bikes
- Cooking peas
- Bunny hunts, cat hunts, worm hunts
- Wash the rice before cooking
- Sweeping up
- MCleaning, cooking and gardening sets so children can get involved to help safely.
- Hang out the washing and insists on holding one end of the washing basket when we carry it out to the garden!
- Put pajamas under pillow
- Taking rubbish to the bin and recycling!
- Putting books back on the shelf
-The shopping! Draw pictures on a shopping list and make a game to see who can find the items in the supermarket
- Get the post in the morning
- Washing up

The topic came up about potty training too. Games to encourage kids to use the potty?

- Munching peas
- ping pong ball in the toilet hit the target
- Cheerio in the toilet hit the target

These were Play Festers favourite products for 3 year olds:

Products for 3 year olds reviewed during Play Fest

- Fuzzy felt
- Books
- Face Paints
- Happy Hopperz
- Jigsaws
- Board games to explore taking turns
- Puppets
- Think fun Bingo bingo
- Cars
- Role play with figures
- Old fashioned to encourage imagination (eg no batteries!) – wooden toy farm, bus and abacus
- Plastic animals and dinosaurs
- Anything robot
- Anything Toy Story
- Balance bike

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

If you ever feel like you want to be doing a bit of counting with your kids then there are some great songs and rhymes to support this actitivity. Many of these songs and rhymes you will probably know, but sometimes when you are thinking off the cuff and with so much else going on in your life it can be difficult for them to spring to mind, so here’s an easy resource to refer to. These songs and rhymes were all suggestions given my mums during your weekly Play Fest parties. Thanks for sharing these ideas.

Can you add any more ideas to these? Please do share in the comments below.

5 Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day

5 little ducks went swimming one day
over the pond and far away
mother duck said quack, quack, quack, quack
and only 4 little ducks came back

4 little ducks etc…

Until no little ducks came back, back, back

Then mother duck went out swimming one day
over the pond and far away
mother duck said quack, quack, quack, quack
and 5 little ducks came back, back, back.

10 Fat Sausages

10 fat sausages sizzling in the pan
10 fat sausages sizzling in the pan
one went pop and the other went bang
there were 8 fat sausages sizzling in the pan

8 fat sausages sizzling in the pan
8 fat sausages sizzling in the pan
one went pop and the other went bang
there were 6 fat sausages sizzling in the pan

6 fat sausages etc

1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a Fish Alive

One, two, three, four five
once I caught a fish alive
six seven eight nine ten
then I let it go again

Why did you let it go?
because it bit my finger so
Which finger did it bite?
This little finger on my right

1,2 Buckle my shoe

One, two buckle my shoe
three, four knock at the door
five, six pick up sticks
seven at lay them straight
nine ten a big fat hen

10 Green Bottles

10 green bottles sitting on the wall
10 green bottles sitting on the wall
and if one green bottle should accidentally fall
they’ll be 9 green bottles sitting on the wall

9 green bottles sitting on the wall
9 green bottles etc….

There were 10 in the bed

There were 10 in the bed
and the little one said
roll over, roll over
so they all rolled over and one fell out

There were 9 in the bed
and the little one said
roll over, roll over
so they all rolled over and one fell out

There were 8 in the bed
and the little one said
roll over etc….

10 Cheeky Monkeys Bouncing on the Bed

10 cheeky monkeys bouncing on the bed
one fell off and bumped his head
mummy called the doctor and the doctor said
no more silly monkeys bouncing on the bed

9 cheeky monkeys bouncing on the bed
one fell off and bumped his head
mummy called the doctor and the doctor said
no more silly monkeys bouncing on the bed

8 cheeky monkeys etc….

5 Little speckled frogs

5 little speckled frogs
sat on a speckled log
eating the most delicious bugs yum, yum
one jumped in to the pool where it was nice and cool
then there were 4 green speckled frogs glug, glug

4 little speckled frogs etc….

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Two year olds can be a lot of fun and at times quite challenging. What are they thinking? How can we handle those challenging states of emotion? How can we encourage play with siblings? Are we getting our 2 year olds involved in things they are capable of doing?

We had a good conversation about 2 year olds in Play Fest during a week in March where we talked about things you love about 2 year olds and ideas on how they like to play.

These are some of the things that you came up with:

What’s the best thing about 2 year olds?

“I love their random babbling about anything and everything.”
“I love that they get amazed at the smallest thing, everything is exciting!”
“The way they copy things, especially pretending to be grown up…”
” I love how quickly they pick things up, it amazes me each day from new words to remembering that ‘daddy got petrol from there’ yesterday!”
“Ah yes, our son had to fill all his toy cars up with petrol, using an old ketchup bottle as his petrol pump!”
“Good idea, the funniest thing our son said was that he wanted a willy pocket for the front of his trousers! Said it would be really handy. We neally died laughing, but he was totally serious ”
“the best one so far is this: I turned to Chester to see that he was dabbing his ice cream with a tissue…. erm what are you doing chester? I am warming the ice cream up mummy its too cold for me!!”

These are the activities that Play Fest came up with:

• Simple baking
• Ice painting – This one caused quite a stir and one to try out for Izziwizzi Kids Play TV in the future. The idea came from @Encycloplaydia during the Twitter Play Fest. Basically you freeze paints in the freezer and paint with them and they make marks as the paint ice melts. Sounds lots of fun and very messy!
• Anything messy – digging, painting, colouring, crayons,
• Can you find? – a simpler version of i spy!
• Any arts and crafts
• Making masks
• Singing and dancing
• Glue stick and bits of paper
• Water and drawing outside
• Anything in the fresh air – plenty of space to run around and run of energy!

Products Play Fest Liked for 2 Year Olds

• Tomy Aquadraw was a big hit
• Orchard Toys – Lots of jigsaws and games for 2 year olds. Old MacDonalds Lotto was a big hit with the Izziwizzi Kids Independent Toy testers.
• Thumbs up for the brio pounding bench distributed by Marbel Toys. We are still awaiting reviews on the Brio train sets, but another great idea for 2 year olds.

The Play Fest felt that there was a big gap for age appropriate play which are safe for 2 year olds. Toys for 2 year olds were described as often being very babyish.

If you have a two year old in your life, then I highly recommend watching this video interview with Jennie Lindon. Jennie talks about different aspects of play with 2 year olds to give you ideas of how to interact and present stimulating play opportunities for your 2 year old. Enjoy!

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

November is a great time of year for planting spring bulbs e.g. the daffodil, the crocus, the tulip. It’s a short and easy job that your kids can enjoy and takes just a few minutes. You can talk about the essence of how the spring bulb comes to life, how it grows up towards the sun and how it needs water to stay alive.

Dig a hole that is twice as deep as the bulb is high. Carefully place the spring bulb in the hole ensuring the roots are facing towards the bottom. Cover the bulb with soil and although there will probably be lots of rain to water your bulb you can ask your child to water afterwards. You can also plant bulbs in pots and leave in the house. They usually grow quicker if they are kept in doors and if you want to be a real cheat, you can place your bulb on the radiator in the spring to stimulate bringing it to flower.

Photo attributed to Secret Tenerife Flickr

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

For many (my mum included) the idea of maths is a real turnoff. For some reason that I can not begin to explain I have always liked maths and it’s incredible that as my mum loaths the subject it hasn’t damaged my view of it at all. Well done mum! The only issue now is that I need to make sure my own kids don’t rebel against me on this one. Know the feeling?

But whether you love it or hate it as maths has such a wide and important application for all of our children, it’s important for us to do everything in our physical power to help children grasp mathematical concepts from an early age.  How do we do this?

Well the good news for us is that for early maths, it doesn’t have to be about complicated sums, multiplication and long division.  It’s about helping children to understand mathematical ideas in everyday context without realising it.  There are lots of activities that we can be doing every day without working too hard at it e.g. matching things up, finding patterns and work with money.

My personal favourite thing to do is work with pocket money as it is not only a reward system, but is easy to relate to in an every day context and usually means that I don’t forget. Money usually comes up in context somewhere as children can tend to want so many things. But the idea of pocket money only really starts to become meaningful for a child aged 4 and upwards. My 2 year old is just happy to have something to stuff into her money box.

I was absolutely delighted when Maths Insider created an article for us to give some ideas for you with 24 short and simple maths activities.

In this article you will see that it’s not hard to fit mathematical concepts into everyday living. It just takes a bit of creativity and realising what it is that you are doing.

What activities do you do to make Maths Fun? Please do share your comments below as it will inspire others with ideas.

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.