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.

Don’t miss your exclusive interview with Kim Johnson of LittleHelper.co.uk at the bottom of this page

Usbourne Childrens Cooking and Baking Books

Don’t miss your exclusive interview with Kim Johnson of LittleHelper.co.uk right here!

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.

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.

About the NYBY Garden Hoe

A metal garden hoe in child size, this little hoe will allow your helper to give you a hand in the garden, just make sure you point out which ones are weeds!
Image is squashed slightly

Buy from Adventure Toys >>

Al Boxall-Gordon

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

About the NYBY Gardening Gloves

A pair of textile gardening gloves, these gloves have bobble grips on the palm and fingers to give better grip of your tools and have stretching cuffs so its easier to put your hand inside, they are light weight children’s gloves so they wont give protection against spiky or stinging plants but are great to have alongside adult gloves so you can both garden together.
Colours vary mainly white with coloured prints.

Al Boxall-Gordon

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

Traffic light pancakes are best made with a traditional dropped scone (scotch pancake) recipe as the mixture is thicker and it is easier to achieve smaller pancakes.

To make dropped scones you need:

200g/8oz self-raising flour
1/2 level teaspoon of salt
1 level tablespoon caster sugar
1 standard egg
250ml/1/2 pint milk
25-50g/1 to 2oz butter, melted

1. Sift flour and salt into bowl
2. Add sugar
3. Mix to smooth creamy batter with whole egg and half the milk
4. Stir in rest of milk
5. Brush large heavy frying pan with melted butter.
Heat
6. Drop small rounds of scone mixture (about 12 in all) for your spoon, into pan
7. Cook until bubbles show on surface (21/2 to 3 minutes)
8. Carefully turn over with knife. Cook for further 2 minutes.
9. Pile scones in clean, folded tea-towel to keep warm and moist
10. Serve immediately

Makes 12 dropped scones

You can then use your imagination to create red, amber or green toppings. As an example, you could encourage your child to spread jam on the red scone, honey on the amber and then for the green you could use mint icecream or green glace icing as toppings. Alternatively you could divide the scone mixture up before you cook your scones and add food colouring to the mixture.

How to make Green Glacé icing:

225g sifted icing sugar
2 tablespoons hot water

1. Put sugar into bowl. Gradually add water
2. Stir briskly until somooth and thick enough to coat the back of the spoon without running off.
3. If it gets too thick add a drop or two of water; if it goes to runny stir in more icing sugar.
4. Add a couple of drops of green food colouring
5. Use immediately

WARNING! These pancakes are very sickly and very moreish:-))

Photograph accredited to philipe garcia on flickr

Al Boxall-Gordon

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