Do you remember playing with a magnetic fishing game when you were younger? I have memories of playing with my younger brother and having fun seeing who could catch the most fish. We had a set that you could buy but I made the children in my childminding service their very own set.

To make your own you need the following:

• Stiff card
• Felt tip pens
• Scissors
• Paper clips
• Magnets
• A stick (I used green plant sticks)
• Some string
• Electricians tape

Here’s what to do:

• Draw and colour some fish shapes onto your card and then cut them out
• Put the paper clips on the nose end of the fish (do they have noses? I don’t think they do but you know what I mean!)
• Now make your rod by attaching a magnet to the string and then attaching the string to the stick. I wrapped the string in electricians tape at the stick and the magnet to make them a bit more toddler friendly
• Put your fish in a tray and let your little one/s go fishing!

(It’s best to supervise them as the rods can be a bit dangerous if left in their little hands)

Happy Mothers’ Day to all the lovely mummies out there. I hope that your little ones have organised something lovely for you today.

Here at my childminding service we have been making sparkly flowers for all the mums. I thought you might like to see how we made them as they’re also a great thing to make for birthdays too….. (Warning – this activity can get messy!)

You Will Need:

• A toilet roll tube
• Green paint (I used finger paint)
• A brush or fingers
• A piece of card
• PVA glue
• Sequins and foam pieces to stick on
• Glitter – preferably in a shaker
• Foam leaf shapes or leaf shapes cut from card backed with double sided tape

Here’s What To Do:

• Firstly get your little one to paint the toilet roll tube green
• Cut out a flower shape from your piece of card and cover it in PVA glue
• Hand the flower over to your little one along with all the sequins and foam pieces (watch them for trying to eat the pieces!)
• Let your little one loose with the glitter shaker over the flower shape
• Now put all the pieces to one side to dry
• Once the tube is dry cut 2 slits opposite to each other at the top
• Take your leaf shapes and stick them along the front of the tube in appropriate leaf places
• Place your flower into the slots at the top and there you have it… one sparkly flower! To make ours even more personal I made little message cards to go on the back of the flower and got the children to sign it

The beauty of these flowers is that there’s minimum help from an adult so the children can really feel like they made it themselves.

Does your little one ever want to get the paints out when you don’t have the time to allow them to get messy? You can still let them enjoy experiencing paint and mark making with this idea for mess free painting.

Simply put some paint into a zip lock bag, zip it up and let them loose on it! I give my little one a cotton bud to use as a “brush” or just encourage him to use his fingers to make marks. He has great fun exploring mark making whilst I can relax knowing that no mess is being made…. everyone is happy :0)

(excuse the quality of this picture but I wanted to show you one of our paint bags and this is the only picture I could find!)

Have you caught the PlayTalkRead bus yet? It is visiting lots of places around Glasgow this month so there’s still time to catch it. There will be baby massage, a Bookbug song and storytime session and play@home will be running interactive play time sessions all for free.

Here are the upcoming tour dates:

12/03/12 – Drumchapel Health Centre, 80-90 Kinfauns Drive, G15 7TS

13/03/12 – Forge Shopping Centre, 1221 Gallowgate, G31 4EB

14/03/12 – Shakespeare Street, Maryhill, G20 9SH

15/03/12 – Shandwick Square Shopping Centre, Easterhouse Township Centre, G34 9DT

16/03/12 – Castlemilk Shopping Arcade (The Braes), 15 Dougrie Drive, G45 9AD

To find out more information, visit their website: www.playtalkread.org or search for Play Talk Read on Facebook and like their page.

They are also running a competition at the moment for tips on how to talk with your little one. If you fancy entering the competition it closes on Sunday. For those who think they never win anything, I entered last week with a tip for play ideas and I was a runner up!

The play idea that I shared was this:

I give my little one a tray full of pompoms of different sizes, a whisk, a scoop and some other boxes/ tubs of different sizes and he just loves pouring them, moving them, picking them up etc. To further develop this game we also talk about the colour of the pompoms and the size of them too and once he has the concept of numbers we can count them out into the tubs. For now though he just loves moving them about from tub to tub.

Did you get up to anything for World Book Day last week? We had a great time here at my childminding service going on an indoor bear hunt. We based our activities on the book by Michael Rosen and had a great time running through long wavy grass, splashing in the deep cold river, squelching in the thick oozy mud, discovering pinecones and bark in the dark forest and putting on our hats and scarves in the swirling whirling snowstorm. We also had great fun finding our rather friendly bear in a cave and getting into the cave with him!

I set up little stations around the house that we went to at each stage in the book and let the children play and discover for as long as they wanted until they were ready to move on.

If you fancy going on a bear hunt too, here is a list of the activities that we did for each part of the book (warning… these activities can be a bit messy!!):

• The long wavy grass was a large sheet of paper that I had painted green and cut into strips and hung on a piece of string, higher than the children’s heads, in a doorway. They just loved running through it and feeling the paper on their heads and shoulders.
• The deep cold river was a blue blanket on the floor that I covered in pieces of shredded blue and green paper. We had so much fun throwing the paper up in the air and letting it land around us.
• The thick oozy mud was a tray full of compost that I put some scoops with along with a pair of welly boots and we just got stuck in and squelched it through our fingers and poured it from scoop to scoop.
• The dark forest was a small Christmas tree with some extra sticks, bark and pinecones. This was a great activity for discovering different textures.
• For our swirling whirling snowstorm we had to get our hats and scarves on and then we threw lots of foam chips and cotton wool balls up in the air.
• Finally we found our bear hidden in a large cardboard box cave. I chose a box that was big enough for the children to hide in themselves and they absolutely loved this.

Below are a few pictures from our bear hunt… I think you”ll agree that we had loads of fun! (Parents have consented to these photographs being shown)

Now, I wonder what book we’ll adapt next?……. I’ll keep you posted!