Play ideas
19 articles
One page to remember a family outing
You went to the same place. You might bring home different bits.
Keep the basket game. Try rolled socks.
Something from the sock drawer for the next round.
Let curiosity lead your next family outing
Follow their curiosity at the museum, then leave crayons out at home.
One object to notice on a family outing
One thing they point at is enough.
One shadow puppet and one small story
One bold paper shape and a torch, and that's the whole theatre.
One small story from when you were their age
Not a lesson. Just something that happened to you once.
Too hot to go out, too much left in the tank
When it is too hot to go out, start with the space indoors.
The painting that disappears
Water on paving shows up dark, then dries back to nothing.
Two children, one afternoon
They do not have to want the same thing at the same time.
When the child becomes the sound designer
Same book, twentieth reading. Give them the sound effects.
Four quiet things for when everyone has had enough noise
Some days end loud. These are for the twenty minutes after.
Four jobs they can actually do while you cook
They don't want an activity. They want to be where you are.
How to make one idea smaller, quieter or more active
One activity, three dials. That covers most afternoons.
One cardboard box, four afternoons
The box is reliably better than whatever came in it.
What to do when the activity flops halfway through
A flop is usually a fixable thing, not a finished thing.
One sheet of paper: four things to do with it
Four afternoons out of one sheet of paper.
You're allowed to stop early
Four minutes and a wandering child is not a failure. It might just be enough.
Five minutes, nothing to carry: games for the waiting bits of the day
The hardest minutes aren't the busy ones. They're the waiting ones.
When your child has too much energy and nowhere to put it
The energy has to go somewhere. These four activities give it a place to land.
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