Bubble Painting

In this blog, we’re going to learn how to make beautiful bubble art. Remember sitting at a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive whilst blowing bubbles into your drink with a straw? Keeping that in mind, let’s now turn this scientific exploration into a fascinating art project for you and your child. With just a few drops of washing-up liquid and food colouring, together you’ll create artwork with a fascinating and unique pattern.

Materials needed:

  • Paper (or plastic) straws
  • Liquid food colouring
  • washing-up liquid
  • Plain stationery or printer paper
  • Stickers (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Add a couple of drops of food colouring, about 20mls of water, and several drops of washing up liquid to a wide-rimmed cup or bowl (disposable ones are recommended for easy clean up). 
  2. Using a drinking straw blow until the bubbles rise just above the container rim.
  3. With your paper in hand, gently lower down on top of the bubbles, then lift off slowly. The bubbles will pop from the weight of the paper leaving a unique circular transfer.
  4. For a more intricate pattern repeat steps 2 and 3, until you’re happy with the results. For more variety in the pattern, we recommend using more than one colour mixture.
  5. Optional: Add fish stickers or have your child draw their own to create an interactive underwater seascape (glue to secure if required).

Pro Parent Trick: To prevent your child from sucking up bubbles, near the top of the straw cut out a small notch in a triangle shape and throw it away to avoid a choking hazard.

Why is bubble art important for early development?

Bubbles are an excellent way for your toddler to practise visual tracking skills in their early years. As we are not born with these skills it’s important to introduce them to allow for development over time. Other skills that need to be taught include the ability to fix, follow, track, focus, and so on.

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The Importance of Sensory Play

Children are natural adventurers, always looking for something to discover, investigate, and experiment with things in their surroundings. Whether it be insects, rocks, sticks, or flowers, the desire for discovery is present in every child’s imagination. 

In this blog, we will discuss why it is so important to keep sensory play as an important aspect of your child’s growing up, what factors can help to develop their sensory play skills, and how it can add value to your child’s overall early years development.

Remember back to when you were a child, before screens and the internet. What about actually playing outside, getting dirt on your hands, and exploring the world around you? Activities like riding your bike, counting the insects in the garden, or playing hide-and-seek with your friends? These types of childhood experiences helped to develop our senses and actions, in preparation for our formal education. 

Today, most children are subject to the standard indoor activity mindset. Meaning television, mobile phones, tablets, and computer games are their main source of entertainment. Although these activities do provide visual and auditory stimulation, they may be considered too fast-paced and don’t allow your child self-control and may hinder them to use all their senses.

At the same time, the pressure on parents and teachers to “prepare” children for school is resulting in younger than expected children completing worksheets and other unsuitable assessments. Rather than exploring and just simply “being a kid.”

What is sensory play?

Sensory play includes any activity that inspires your child to explore and stimulate their core senses. Some examples of these include; dancing, yoga, arts and crafts, playing in the sandpit, and so much more. 

Some parents are put off by sensory play because it can be messy or too loud, or assuming it will result in disruptive behaviour. Some of these might be true… yet by implementing a couple of simple rules for your child to follow and preparing a space for the activity, the benefits of sensory play are irreplaceable for early development.

There is a strong physical desire for young children to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste things that are new and within reach. As your child grows, the need to stimulate their senses and explore will continue. Cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural development are all enhanced by sensory play.

The different types of sensory play are visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory perceptions. We will explore each and give examples of how you as a parent can implement these into your child’s everyday routine. 

Visual

  • Paint with water on tissue paper and use an eyedropper to encourage fine motor skills stimulation. A fun activity we like to do is make “tissue paper worms”.
  • Mix baking soda and your favourite colour jelly powder, and slowly pour in vinegar to simulate a volcanic explosion. Add dinosaur miniatures for a prehistoric adventure. 

Auditory

  • Using pots, pans, stainless steel, and wooden utensils make your own kitchen band.
  • While reading your child’s favourite book, purposefully leave out the last word of the sentence and ask your children to complete the phrase.

Kinaesthetic

  • Practice yoga poses with your child. Some of our favourites include the tree, dolphin, door, and dancer poses. Here’s a great tutorial yoga video for your child.
  • Build a fun interactive obstacle course using sofa cushions, blankets, stuffed animals, pretty much anything you’ve got around the house.

Olfactory

  • Construct your own smell laboratory using common spices from the kitchen.
  • Play the game we like to call “guess that scent” using a variety of ointments. Some we recommend are lotion, sunscreen, toothpaste, body, hand and dish soaps.

Gustatory

  • Compare the difference between sweet and salty foods, such as mini marshmallows and pretzel sticks.
  • Take a bite from a variety of apples or grapes and talk with your child about the difference in flavours and textures.

All exploration takes time.

If a child is to become familiarised and engaged with their environment, they will need proper time to connect, discover, and explore all their senses. This may help your child to learn more self-control, how to communicate ideas more clearly and absorb new information. Most importantly, your child may discover a passion and eagerness for learning which will continue throughout their entire education and lives.

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Plant, Water, Grow!

Learning the concept of gardening for toddlers can help build a variety of valuable motor skills that you, as a parent, might not even have considered. Gardening can help teach your children to feel different textures of soil, seeds, flower and petals. More importantly, for improving their future academic skills in writing, cutting and typing.

One of our favourite activities that demonstrates this is grass growing! In this blog, we will be discussing how to set up a little gardening project that will keep your children entertained (with little adult support) for months to come!

Even as an adult, it amazes me that a handful of seeds can turn into an entire back garden on wonderfully green grass. Start by explaining the type of seed you plan to grow, how they feel, and look. Allow your toddler to explain what they think will happen when you add them to soil and water them over time. 

It is time to create our nature monster! What is needed…

Most of these items can either be found at your local garden centre, online or by recycling!

  • Potting soil… we recommend using soil or dirt from your back garden, as every child enjoys the art of digging! Go for the top, looser bits of soil if using this alternative.
  • Grass seed
  • Plastic containers (6–12 cm deep)… recycled food packaging works perfectly.
  • Watering can… the one with a rose sprinkler is best.
  • Spray bottle

How it’s done…

  1. Fill your recycled containers with potting soil or back garden dirt.
  2. For the first watering, use your watering can and make sure the soil is completely wet, but not drowning.
  3. Sprinkle a handful of grass seed over the entire surface of the soil.
  4. Gently spray the seeds using your spray bottle.
  5. Place your recycled containers on a window sill with plenty of sunlight. If your window sill isn’t wide enough, place your containers on a table near the window to catch the sun. To promote growth throughout the process, don’t forget to rotate your containers for even sun exposure.
  6. Make sure you are spraying your grass seeds daily and that the soil is thoroughly dampened.
  7. At this stage of the process, you should start to see the first bit of growth coming in as reddish-brown grass shoots, which will turn green within 1-2 days.

Congratulations, the “grass growing” is complete. However… as plants are organisms that can continue to grow, we recommend starting a growth calendar. Your child can track daily watering, when the seeds were planted and started to see grass shoots, and how often they gave the grass a “hair cut”.

Download our printable growth calendar here.

Circling back to fine motor skills, when the grass has grown nice and tall, your child can, with parent supervision, practice cutting the grass to tend their garden using safety scissors. Let them know the importance of cutting the grass, as it will help the grass grow big & strong, just like when we eat our vegetables!

Although we are currently in Summer and gardening season might be best suited for a Springtime activity, there truly is no better time to educate your child on gardening. Key factors being various plants, how they give us oxygen, and being outside and away from screens in general. Connecting with nature is a vital skill for all ages and should be practised daily by recycling, not littering, and walking when possible.

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Guide: Travelling with Toddlers

Have you ever taken a young child on a long-haul flight? If not, you might want to consider a couple of things beforehand. Maybe even just travelling a couple of time zones seems daunting… don’t worry we’re here to walk you through all of it.

What is circadian rhythm?

The circadian rhythm also referred to as the circadian cycle, is a natural process that regulates the daily sleep-wake cycle of your body. Keeping your child’s circadian rhythm as consistent as possible is important as it can lead to sleep problems going forward. Similar to when the clocks spring forward or fall back during daylight savings. 

Let’s talk about some more practical travelling tips.

We all know how important it is to keep that sleep schedule strict for young children, right? Well, what should you do when it comes to shorter distance holidays (less than a couple of time zones or days)? It’s recommended that you keep your child’s day and bedtime schedules in their home time zone, or as close as possible to routine. If you plan to travel across more than 3 time zones, move your child’s sleep and wake times a little earlier. 

An easy way to adjust these routines is by starting a week before travelling. Try moving sleep-wake times 15 minutes earlier every day or two. Shifting nap and meal schedules earlier as well. Don’t be afraid to wake your child up from nap time if it exceeds one hour, too much sleep can lead to reverting your routine shift preparation.

For long-haul or international travelling, you should try to adjust these routines to meet the time zone you will be going to. A couple of ways of doing this could be to wake them up earlier and to also have them do some daytime exercise. This stimulation can help reset their brain’s melatonin release.

What you can bring on holiday to help your child sleep:

  • Their favourite cuddly toy or stuffed animal.
  • The beloved white noise machine (a parent’s true best friend).
  • Sheets from their bed back home to comfort the surroundings.
  • Set the mood by dimming the lights about an hour before putting them to sleep.
  • Turn those screens off, remove the visual stimulation.
  • Late night meals and snacking is a no-no!

We hope this article helped put your travel fears into easy-flight mode and you’re feeling more confident taking your toddler with you for the next adventure. 

And as always, safe travels!

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