Our Play Room | learning 4 kids

Play Room Ideas 6

Posted by Janice on November 4, 2012 4 Comments

You may be familiar with our posts about our play room and how we set it up and change it around to keep the kids interested and motivated. On our previous ‘Our Play Room’ posts I have discussed creating different zones for individual activities. This time, I was keen for a bit of a change and decided to move our play room around and push all our furniture and toys to the walls leaving a large open space in the middle. I am very interested to see what creative play ideas and games the kids come up with, with this arrangement.

You will also notice a lot of kid’s artwork on the walls, these are from our Learning Colours Series and is our way of reinforcing and continuing the learning that has already taken place with these craft activities.

Our reading corner is a place for the kids to relax, read books and enjoy some quieter activities. The sunflowers on the wall were made from our Learning Colours Series: Yellow and we have a free printable and all instruction available by clicking here.

Pretend play kitchen, storage containers filled with puzzles, threading beads and other toys. Dolls house book shelf and a table and chairs at the centre of the room. The number charts are homemade, for full instructions click here.

I love our cube book shelf! It is great for keeping toys off the floor and we also have fabric tubs that slide and fit easily into the cubes.

The magnetic side of our easel has been set up this time with paper available on the shelf nearby and pencils and crayons set up in small cups. I have also placed a tub of magnetic letters, numbers and games nearby for a change of activity for the kids.

Our craft storage cube shelving. Don’t look too close it is need of a serious clean out!! :) Baskets, jars, containers and fabric tubs are great for storing all those crafts supplies and hiding the mess!

If you would like to share some photos of your kid’s playroom or play area here on learning4kids, please send in photos to janice@learning4kids.net

I would love to hear and share you fabulous ideas!!

Filed Under: Our Play Room | Tagged: Tagged With: Play Room Ideas for Kids

Play Room Ideas 5

Posted by Janice on May 22, 2012 2 Comments

When our play room starts getting messy and I find it increasingly impossible to motivate the kids to tidy it up, I find this is a good time for a change around to spark a new interest. Involving the kids in the organisation of the room gives them pride and responsibility in looking after it.

Our new ideas for our play room!

The first photo is of the entry into the room as we have created a bit of a corridor and room divider with our book shelf.

We have used the back of the book shelf as a board for sticking up games and numbers with blutac. My girls move them around and rearrange them into the correct order. Miss 6 is learning about skip counting at school at the moment and this is an area for her to practise and reinforce her learning.

Our reading corner! I like to encourage a space to read and for quieter activities that is inviting and comfortable to sit and the books are easily accessible. Cushions, pillow, bean bags and throw rugs are also great for creating a reading corner.

Our cubby house has always been pushed up into a corner of the room and this time we thought we would bring it out to the centre of the room alongside our pretend kitchen to encourage imaginative play. We have also placed a props box next to the kitchen and cubby house to spark any new games and ideas for pretend play. A props box is a box filled with items to encourage imaginative play such as a doctor’s kit, pretend phone or camera, blankets, etc.

This area provides a space for the kids to bring out toys, games and puzzles from the shelves and containers to play with. We have swapped our dolls house book shelf from a writing station to a dolls house.

Our storage shelves have separate games and puzzles in each container for the kids to lift the box and play with the contents. It is great for tidying up because once they have finished the toys go back in the box! We also have our felt board set up and one of the storage containers is filled with felt toys and characters for imaginative play.

Miss 6 had her birthday recently and we have placed the balloons from her party on top of an organza curtain which hangs up over the reading corner. It creates such an inviting environment to chill out and read a book.

If you would like to share some photos of your kid’s playroom or play area here on learning4kids, please send in photos to janice@learning4kids.net

I would love to hear and share you fabulous ideas!!

Filed Under: Our Play Room | Tagged: Tagged With: Play Room Ideas for Kids

Playroom Ideas 4 – Numbers Theme

Posted by Janice on April 22, 2012 6 Comments

The Numbers Theme Playroom Ideas was inspired and motivated by the current interests of my kids. I feel it is important to follow their lead in what they are interested in and want to learn more about, then cdevelop learning experiences to explore this further with them.

Miss 5 is very keen on maths sums at the moment, addition and subtraction and my little Miss 21months is very interested in counting. So while my kids have been on school holidays I have followed their curiosity with numbers and brought it into their playroom with some fun games and activities.

Some of the changes to our playroom included a bit of a shift around and filling the room with number related resources, books, activities, games and environmental print.

Useful link: What is Environmental Print and it’s Importance for Learning?

Our reading/quiet corner with number books displayed on book stands and in the book shelf. There are also number puzzles on the shelf for the kids to play with on the space provided on the floor mat. QToys have some fabulous number puzzles!

Useful Links: Number Tree Display

We have divided our room using the solid book shelves with the quiet/reading area on one side and another area for playing with toys on the shelves and in the clear boxes stacked to the side such as blocks, marble run and musical instruments box. My Little Miss 21 months loves playing with the marble run and piggy bank at the moment.

Opposite this area is another area set up to encourage imaginative play, it has become a bakery for the last 2 weeks with a baker selling food through the windows – a bit like a drive through.

The storage shelves with trays have all sorts of bits and bobs of toys that really don’t belong anywhere, there are toys cars, threading beads, some dolls clothes and puppets. This shelving has also been used as a room divider and is great for getting the toys off the floor and a perfect height for the littlies!

Useful Links: What is Imaginative Play and How to Encourage it?

In another corner of the room I have set up a table for drawing and some number games and activities, there is also the felt board with a numbers chart.

In the pink boxes positioned on the wall are large pop sticks with number stickers on them and Miss 5 would pull out 2 pop sticks and add them together writing the sum and answer on her magna doodle. Kids love Magana doodles and it is so much more fun than paper and pencil. Miss 4 is also doing simple number sums but on the felt board using the numbers chart and bottle tops as a concrete aid to assist her.

Useful Links: DIY Felt Boards

Our little art and craft storage corner and we use the back of our playroom doors for displaying some of the art work done at home and school.

If you would like to share some photos of your kid’s playroom or play area here on learning4kids, please send in photos to janice@learning4kids.net

I would love to hear and share you fabulous ideas!!

Filed Under: Our Play Room | Tagged: Tagged With: Play Room Ideas for Kids

Playroom Ideas 3

Posted by Janice on April 10, 2012 Leave a Comment

Today the kids and I moved the playroom around and it made me realise that I hadn’t even published the last photos here on learning4kids. I thought I would do this before I would share the next big shift around that we have done for the start of school holidays.

Lately the toy kitchen had been getting a bit neglected, so I wanted to breathe some new life into it by setting it up using pretend and real food and empty food packages to encourage imaginative play. We put coloured pompoms into empty jars and bottle to symbolise juice and other drinks. The milk bottle has white pompoms in it; the box of Jatz has cut up circle sponge shapes for crackers, pop sticks for bread sticks and sponges for bread. The empty cereal box is filled with plastic milk bottle tops and a small milk jug filled with white rice. We provided lots of utensils and bowls for mixing and stirring.

Pretend Play Kitchen with Real Food – coming soon!

Our toy kitchen has been set up in the corner of the room with a table and chairs

The last playroom set up had an array of different toys sitting upon the shelves but this time around I wanted to encourage more play with puzzles and packed a lot of the toys into a large box. We are used the box as a table by throwing a cloth over the top and set up toy cars and tracks on it, you can see it in the photo below. Packing toys away and bringing them out again later, ignites a whole new interest in them for kids.

Related posts:

Why Puzzles are Important for Learning?

This playroom shift around was also inspired by the upcoming Easter celebrations, therefore we set up our felt board and Easter Numbers felt pieces.

Previously our white book shelf had been used as a writing/drawing station and to encourage new interest we set it up as a dolls house and placed all the wooden dolls furniture and other pieces into the storage rack for easy access.

Related posts:

DIY on Felt Boards

Easter Egg Felt Activities

It was the start of autumn when we last changed the playroom around which inspired us to incorporate some autumn leaves. My girls decorated their Paper Mache Tree with real leaves they had picked up on a walk and I also pinned some to a curtain which we used as a room divider. The curtain has been threaded through a string which we use to display craft work.

Related posts:

How to Make a Paper Mache Tree

Our next Playroom Ideas post has been set up around the theme of NUMBERS. We have so many new and exciting ideas to share with you!!

If you would like to share some photos of your kids playroom or play area here on learning4kids, please send in photos to janice@learning4kids.net

I would love to hear and share you fabulous ideas!!

Filed Under: Our Play Room | Tagged: Tagged With: Play Room Ideas for Kids

Our Play Room – More Ideas

Posted by Janice on February 11, 2012 2 Comments

Can you spot my youngest; Miss 18 Months hiding in the photo with a cheeky grin?

Our playroom gets a lot of use and I wanted to demonstrate this a bit more as things can get very messy in our playroom and this is how it should be!!

In the previous post Our Play Room, I talked about setting up different zones or areas for different types of play opportunities. In these different areas I set up activities but this does not mean that my kids have to ONLY do this activity. It is just suggestive and offers different ideas for play opportunities. My kids are always integrating the furniture and other toys into their play for example our red drawing table has become a dentist’s chair and the magnetic letters (for the whiteboard) have been used as pretend food. Things get very messy in our play room and this is what I like!

With the recent shift around of our playroom, the kids and I set up an igloo for imaginative play. We used white blankets to cover the cubby house and make snowy mountains with cushions underneath. We also used a blue mat to pretend is the ocean and my kids placed some stuffed toys to pretend to be whales and sharks.

My kids spent a lot of time putting on beanies, scarves and mittens and building a pretend fire to keep warm in a snow storm. If you do not have toy cubby you could use a tent, cushions or small table in its place.

To find out more on how to encourage imaginative play click here: What is Imaginative Play and How to Encourage it?

An area set up to play with felt, white board easel for magnetic toys and a box of blocks to pull out to play on the mat.

Table and chairs for drawing or other activities such as puzzles. I have stocked up the book shelf with drawing materials, stickers, colouring in books, paper and envelopes. I have also placed a basket with puzzle pieces and puzzle boards to play with in this area.

An area for reading or just chilling out with books and/or talking books easily accessible.

Since moving house, I am finally unpacking and sorting through all our things. We use to have a large plastic box to put all our craft supplies in and now I have organised them into jars, baskets and boxes.