Painting fork fireworks
What you’ll need: Old forks or brushes Non-toxic, washable paints Black paper or card Newspaper/an […]
Read moreNature pattern bracelets
What you need
- Piece of paper or thin card, cut in a strip to the size of your child’s wrist
- Double-sided sticky tape (if you don’t have double-sided tape, you could create the same effect by looping a piece of tape and securing at each end of the strip)
Benefits
Exploring nature and natural materials engages all the senses and is a great opportunity to develop new language. The pattern element of this experience promotes maths skills and will also enhance your child’s creativity and problem-solving abilities.
The experience
Place the strip of paper with tape on it around your child’s wrist to make a bracelet. Go into the garden or an open outside space such as a park or woodland area. You will need to ensure the outdoor space you are exploring has access to natural materials such as leaves on the ground, blades of grass, petals, flowers that can be picked such as daisies.
Talk with your child about how we take care of plants and flowers and shouldn’t pick leaves off growing plants, but there are certain flowers that grow in the ground and we can pick such as daisies and buttercups. You can see if your child can already name these particular plants/flowers, and introduce new vocabulary if they don’t.
Show your child how they can stick leaves/petals/twigs, etc. to their bracelet. Challenge them to make a pattern by repeating the same materials in a certain order, e.g. daisy, leaf, daisy, leaf. If your child finds this easy, challenge them to use three or even four items to create the pattern.