Natural loose part play!
Nature for The Little Adventurer is a very important factor of his play and learning. It’s beneficial to his development and a key interest that The Adventurer in Training loves to encourage!
This week has been full completely of nature and natural loose part play.
We thought we’d share a few simple ideas for play and a little sneaky learning through play (which is the best way to learn) using natural loose parts we collected on many visits to the woods and park.
Pinecones has been a key focus point.
1.Painting pinecones - we did do a few variations of this.
Just to paint directly onto the pinecones. Little thoroughly enjoyed this and created many lovely pieces of nature art.
Pinecone flowers - this is where you cut a pinecone in half to reveal a beautiful flower which we painted in lots of lovely colours and little even dipped some in glitter for extra wow.
2.Counting with natural loose parts - we used a hessian tens frame (we made this) abs using natural loose parts we collected like conkers, pinecones and acorns Little was able to place onto the tens frame to count and organise.
3.Pinecone size order - make a chart with two columns big/small and sort the the pinecones between those two factors. Little wasn’t too interested in this at first but he enjoyed investigating the different pinecones.
4.Pinecone experiment - this may be our favourite. You simply pop an opened pinecone into a bowl or jar of water and within half an hour you’ll see the pinecone close up to protect its seeds. Did you know they open and close?
5.Pinecone feeder - using peanut butter and bird seed you can make bird feeders for your garden. Little helped apply the peanut butter to the pinecones and rolled them in a bowl of seeds. They’re hung outside for our garden visitors, squirrels like this too.
For more nature loose parts play check out our Instagram page:
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