Learning through Play

The home of easy to set up play ideas! Browse a range of activities that are simple to create and often use the stuff you already have lying around your house! These activities are all created with communication development in mind, so be sure to join in with your little one and foster some conversation.

On the Blog...

Summer Soup: Imaginative Water Play

Summer Soup: Imaginative Water Play

The best activities are the ones where you already have all the stuff at home. Here's a new one for you - soup making. Or tea. Or coffee. Or anything...
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Exploring Wet and Dry – Pet Rescue | Play Tray Activity

Exploring Wet and Dry – Pet Rescue | Play Tray Activity

Today we explored textures in a fun way - August enjoyed this for ages! I filled the play tray, half with flour (he's really enjoyed baking recently) and the other...
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Backyard Pond

Backyard Pond

One of Auggie's favourite things to do with his Nana and Granda was to throw stones into any body of water on their outings! My parents did a fantastic job...
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DIY Wrapping Paper

DIY Wrapping Paper

Most of you have heard me rant on about how important messy play is. Sometimes you just have to let them go wild with paint in the garden, and Christmas...
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Beach Play Tray

Beach Play Tray

Some simple sensory play today - sand. You can't get more classic than that. We keep a load of sand in a big plastic container and we tip it into...
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Water Painting

Water Painting

Water on a dry surface like concrete or wood is the CLEANEST, messy play experience you'll ever have. Unless it's raining - there's no excuse not to do this activity...
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Painting with a brush

Painting with a brush

We've done a lot of finger painting in the past but not a lot of using a brush. It's HARDER for little ones to get their heads around using a...
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Mud Pies

Mud Pies

Messy play is incredibly important for development, so I like to provide August with as many messy opportunities as possible. Sunny days make it easy because we can wreak havoc...
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Blue Goop

Blue Goop

Just a chill one this afternoon. I chucked the last of the cornflour I had into his play tray with a little bit of water and some blue food colouring....
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BYO Puddle

BYO Puddle

Yesterday in the park, August showed interest in a puddle and I couldn't let him explore it because it was just before naptime (in the pushchair) and I'd forgotten a...
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Bird Seed Sensation

Bird Seed Sensation

Bird seed is an excellent option for dry messy/sensory play- especially outside!! You can choose to either scoop it all back up for play another time or just to scatter...
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Treasure Tubes

Treasure Tubes

We were gifted these gorgeous treasure tubes from @playitforwardnz. I've wanted them for aaaaages so I felt super lucky to have them turn up.I really want to use these to display...
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Clock Creation

Clock Creation

I found this fab plywood clock kit on the kmart website and knew it'd be PERFECT for August because he's obsessed with pointing out clocks and saying 'tick tock'. Plus...
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Our Play Tray

Our Play Tray

Eeek I’ve been shopping! I’ve wanted one of these for forever and I finally just went and ordered it! So expect some more posts where we’re exploring and getting messy...
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Play Doh Talking

Play Doh Talking

Playdoh/playdough is one of the most versatile activities for speech and language development. WHY? Because you can mould it into anything and then talk about it! So YES it's a...
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Sponge Squeeze

Sponge Squeeze

I picked up a car washing sponge at the weekend to give August a bit of a spongey experience!!! I'm always on about his brain being like a sponge but...
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Rainbow Pasta Sensory Bin

Rainbow Pasta Sensory Bin

Some sensory experiences take a big set up and clean up and I wanted a few that were easy to access and drama free. I bought two of these big...
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Recycled Rainforest

Recycled Rainforest

Our play tray today:I grabbed handfuls of leaves from the bushes in our back garden and added the cardboard recycling that I've been hoarding. THEN I remembered that I had...
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Bathroom Picasso

Bathroom Picasso

The bathroom is the best place to paint - the room is your canvas! Whilst I DID put an old used canvas in the bath with August today, he was...
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ANZAC Day Poppies

ANZAC Day Poppies

We're ready to put a poppy in our window. And we had a ridiculous amount of fun doing it. I put some of our @navybabynz metal pieces ina tray of watercolour paint...
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