Play Fest families got together and came up with some really stimulating play ideas for toddlers on Twitter and Facebook. We’ve captured the ideas to share back, so you you’ve always got a handy point of reference to come back to if you ever find that you are stuck for an idea or two.

What is like life with a toddler?

We asked Play Fest what life was like with a toddler to which there was a general agreement that it’s exhausting, hilarious, maddening, hectic, busy, frustrating, rewarding, manic and stressful, yet the most amazing experience. Bearing all of this in mind, how on earth do you keep one of these entertained?

Play Fest gave it’s top tips for stimulating your toddler through play:

• give them opportunity to learn through discovery e.g put objects in a box & reach in without looking to feel it
• Little ones like to imitate what you’re doing. Even if it’s just stacking bricks
• Don’t put in too much effort – inevitably they’ll be fascinated with the thing you least expected!
• Everything breakable moves up a shelf
• Make it simple but fun. Think outside the box

Play Fest families shared favourite toddler play ideas that you can try for yourself:

• Toddlers love play that involves textures; glitter & foam and playdough
• Games like duck duck goose & traffic lights are great for introducing taking turns & coordination
• Messy activities – as young as possible
• Reading
• Building
• Cook lots of spaghetti and put it in a washing up bowl and cut it up. Add food dye to make it more interesting.
• Role play
• Crafts with pasta shapes and making texture pictures
• Pretend play e.g. play kitchens
• Playing games like i-spy when out and about to learn about surroundings
• Food play with jelly, angel delight, pasta, noodles as well as the usuals like water, paint and cornflour
• Baking is great for experiencing tastes, smells and textures
• Simon Says, hokey cokey, head shoulders knees and toes, if you’re happy and you know it, old mac donald – singing games
• Simple jigsaws
• Shopping list game memory game
• Matching pairs game
• Jumping in puddles
• Make things from old cereal boxes, toilet rolls…anything from the recycling box.

spaceship stations, from old cereal boxes, toilet rolls, well anything from the recycling box

Toys and Toddlers

Play Fest discussed a distinct lack of good quality engaging & stimulating toys for 18-24 mth group that they can learn on their own. Many have to introduce older toys under supervision.

Any toys that help children learn colours and shapes are great, but introducing textures is even better.

Finally science play for young ones was a product idea challenge.

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.

Are your kids bedrooms in a mess? Does it seem like a hopeless cycle?

Here are some tips to blast your kids bedroom and get them self-motivated to do it for themselves.

Bits missing? toys broken? bits of toys all over the place?

Prefer to watch this on video. Watch Izziwizzi Kids Play TV Episode #20.

The Challenge

- For 90% of children tidying up is not an attractive option as playing is much more fun.

- Yes children will find long lost toys in the depths of their toy boxes and get side tracked in playing with them rather than tidying up.

- Yes it will take longer

The Benefits of Motivating Children to Tidy Their Room

- Your children are more likely to appreciate the work that has been done and keep it tidy.

- You get to spend some quality time together

- It encourages children to take responsibility for their own environment

- It encourages children to look after their personal belongings

- It teaches children some self-discipline and organisation skills

- You will be creating good habits for later in life and save yourself a lot more time and headache in the long run

- You will have a nicer environment to live in

- You never know you might even breed someone who loves tidying and wants to help out in other areas of the house. Well it’s worth a try anyhow.

It is astonishing that the first 3 pages of Google are dominated by computerised games where children can pretend to tidy up. And yes, some of these games even said you could really please your mum by showing her how tidy your computerised room is. Wow!

How to get your kids motivated to tidy their room:

- Get some music on to get you in the mood

- Make a game of how much you can get tidied up in one song. The problem here with experiences is that children focus on quantity of tidying rather than quality. They will pick everything up off the floor and pile it up as a mountain in the corner.

- You can make games up with younger children to encourage learning, shapes, colours, toy types e.g. put all the toy food in one box, put all the dolls in another box.

- Talk with your kids and ask them about their toys, which ones they particularly like and why.

- Make games up with the toys that you find now and again e.g. make a puppet show.

Extra Tips:

- Keep the process simple by having a set of rules. Which toys belong in which place, what to do with broken ones or toys with missing parts.

- Be prepared to repeat yourself

- Have an ‘abandoned things’ box for small bits that get lost. Don’t worry about matching everything up, when you come to play with it and something’s missing, then go to the abandoned box.

- If you find toys with lost or broken bits check the abandoned box first. If you can’t find it there then it’s worth considering contacting the manufacturer as they often have replacement parts. So contrary to advice given elsewhere on the web, don’t just chuck it.

- If you do decide to get rid of broken things (get the permission of your kids if they are aware of what you are doing)

- Do not stop and examine anything was the advice given on one website. Everything broken should just be thrown straight in the dustbin. This is the worst advice from an environmental perspective that I have seen. If you can fix or replace bits before you throw them away. Even if you don’t want the toy anymore it could be re-used.

- Sort out clothes that don’t fit in another bag and toys and books in a bag

- You can give re-usable items to a charity shop or do a boot fair. Your kids will get loads out of doing a boot fair. Marketing their toys, practicing money and appreciating the value of money. They can buy a new toy as a reward

- You might also want a bag for things to put away for later and rotate if you don’t have enough room for everything right now.

How To Motivate Your Child to Keep Their Room Tidy?

Make it easy for them, easy boxes to put things in, easy hooks to hang coats on.

Habits are things that we do repeatedly without almost being aware that we do them. They become an unconscious thing that we just do. So if you are not a tidy person naturally you need to make it become a habit and you do this consciously making yourself repeat behaviour until you do it regularly without even thinking about it.

And here is how to form good habits

Consciously dedicate 15 minutes a day to a ‘tidy up time’. Set a specific time of day for doing this and stick to this as much as possible.  Write it down somewhere, ideally in your diary or chart. Something you look at daily. If you write it down you are far more likely to act upon it.

Avoid introducing pocket money for tidying their room if you can. It seems to really work on the face of it, but then the reward of money becomes the focus of attention rather than the original benefits discussed. A financial reward can come for older children by selling old toys. But if keeping a tidy bedroom is mixed with other activities during the week as part of a pocket money rewards scheme for general good behaviour it can work really well.

And Don’t forget those other day to day things that kids can be doing to keep those tidy habits

- After getting dressed make their bed before breakfast

- Put dirty clothes in the wash basket after they’ve taken them off

- Put toys, CD’s and DVD’s back in their boxes

- Put their coats and shoes away when they get back from school

- Take plates and cups back into the kitchen

- Put towels back on the rail in the bathroom

How many times do you find yourself doing these things for your kids just to get on with it? Do you find yourself getting sucked in?

Al Boxall-Gordon

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

Do Your Children Have Good Table Manners?

What seems pretty straight forward to us adults in demonstrating good table manners is a pretty challenging set of rules for the average toddler and child. Any of the following sound familiar…and on repeat?

• Sit up straight
• Don’t talk with your mouth full
• Eat with your mouth closed
• Sit still while you are eating
• Say thank you to whomever has made the food
• Don’t bring toys to the table
• Wash your hands before eating
• Don’t use silly and offensive words
• Use your knife and fork
• Don’t bash the table
• Eat all your dinner up
• Don’t put too much in your mouth
• Eat more than one pea at a time
• Take your elbows off the table
• Stop burping, stop grunting
• Don’t play with your food
• Say “please may I leave the table?” when everyone has finished
• Put your knife and fork together when you have finished (if you are really lucky)

and the list goes on….

When you look at a list like this, it’s no wonder really that children often feel a bit bewildered and forget their manners, exactly which quantities they should put into their mouths and when they should have their mouth open and closed.

A major contradiction lies in that children love to play and be on the move and would much prefer to snack as they go to maintain their energy levels (for most from their own point of view on energy rich sugary foods). The temptation to play and make a squidgy mess out of perfectly solid food is just too tempting. In fact, we are asking our children to do quite the opposite of their natural urges i.e. sit down, sit still, eat plenty all in one go and don’t play with their food.

So bearing in mind that there is such a lot to remember and it goes against natural urges, we can remind ourselves that our children have not been sent here from another planet to test our patience at the dinner table. They are simply acting perfectly well according to their natural instinct and are not too dissimilar from millions of other children.

So here’s our opportunity to take stock and put our patience into practice…which lets face it may take many years, but is well worth the investment.

The crucial thing to remember is that mealtimes are for the benefits of time spent eating together around a table and not to get too hung upon on manners. It’s more a case of rectifying where children need guidance and giving positive praise for great manners.

The other thing to remember is that according to psychologists 60-70% of behaviour is learned through non-verbal cues and body language, whilst the spoken word accounts for only about 7%. So in spite of everything we say in our long list of table manners, the majority of what children learn at the dinner table is through mimicking our behaviour. That’s right, they are copying you! Yes you are being scrutinised at the dinner table without anybody consciously realising it.
On top of this, as well as you, your children start to mimic their friends at school which adds even more to the challenge.

So the moral of the story is do as I do…not just as I say. How do you score on the list of manners?

Set boundaries and reinforce good behavior being specific about what impressed you so they can repeat that behaviour again, ignore the bad behavior and bad manners, and keep setting the good manners example and practice what you preach.

It will take a while for things to sink in, but with practice we all get there in the end.

Here are a couple of tips to make table manners a bit more interesting:

1. You could have a fun quiz at the start of the meal to see who can name a table manner.

2. You could have a day of the week dedicated to eating differently e.g. Chinese or Indian food and use different manners for different types of food e.g. in India you eat rice with your hands, sit on cushions on the floor etc.

Does your child display outstanding table manners when you go out or to other peoples homes? How does this compare to at home? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

Al Boxall-Gordon

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

Potty Training

Well …for the past 2 weeks I’ve been potty training and needless to say I haven’t been in touch for a couple of weeks. Lily-Mai is of the incredibly headstrong variety and having now potty trained two toddlers successfully, I am starting to really get my confidence at this. So bring on the production line!

Here’s my top tips that really worked for me and from years of experience of my advisor (super childminder) …

1. Before you start introducing the potty, talk about the potty, read books about the potty and tell them about how big girls and boys don’t wear nappies and that they are getting bigger now.

2. From the day you decide to start, spend 2 days in the house without going anywhere. This may sound extreme, but it’s worth the effort in the long run as it gets them used to the idea of the potty without too much else going on to distract them. When they’ve got other things going on, they’ll just let go.

3. Be headstrong without appearing so. Your toddler will most likely have a desire to win the battle of wills. Here’s how I handled it that made a very strong willed and determined toddler take to the potty like a dream…
- When they don’t want to go on it don’t force them. It will only make them more determined not to. It generally seems to get a better reaction to say “whatever you do don’t you sit on that potty”, or ignore the fact and let them have a few accidents.
- be determined that you are not going to revert back to the nappy as reverting back can confuse the message about whether they need to be thinking about the fact that they are ‘going’ or not and if you revert back they have won the battle of the wills.
- stay very relaxed and calm when they have a little accident. After all a carpet can be cleaned, but if they have any emotional difficulties with the fact they have accidents, then it can lead to psychological difficulties later on. Freud had a theory on adults regressing to a stage in their childhood. If you buy his theories, developing anxiety at this stage could link to regression back to the anal stage and I’m sure even the best of us would never want that.
- Expect a blip. Lily-Mai walked round for a whole day (around day 5) and completely ignored any existence of a potty. It was tempting to give in. My mindset was that you will either go on your potty or have an accident. I was very tempted to give in, but persevered.

Perseverence and remaining very calm are definately the key. After 2 weeks she is now asking to go to the toilet. We have not tackled night time yet, but the plan is to stay in nappies until she is dry at night which seems to be on it’s way.

Al Boxall-Gordon

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