When it comes to setting up playful activities for my children, I am all about quick and simple. That is part of the reason I love invitations to play so much – simply presenting a small collection of open ended resources in an inviting manner easily leads to hours of fun! And this invitation to make spiders was all that.
I pre-prepared a fresh batch of homemade playdough, colouring it in three colours – a grey-black, an earthy, garden green and red. I presented the playdough on a flat serving plate with pipe cleaners, googly eyes and small pom poms.
I quickly twisted some long silver pipe cleaners into a spiders web and sat it on a large piece of black craft foam adjacent to where the girls would be creating.
And then I let them at it! They chatted to each other and to me as they created. We had baby spiders (we cut some of the pipe cleaners into smaller pieces for the babies), parent spiders, spotted spiders, furry spiders and a nasty redback! Immy (6 years) had a great time making realistic looking spiders while AJ (2 1/2 years) had fun rolling balls, sticking legs and eyes into the playdough (and then taking them out and starting again!)
Quick to assemble, easy to play, fun to create!
I would love to know, do use set up invitations to play for your children?
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Christie Burnett is an early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and the editor of Childhood 101. More importantly, she is a Mum who believes wholeheartedly in the value of children learning through play, the importance of quality early education, and the togetherness of family.
