WonderAdventures

10 amazing fun FREE Easter Activities for kids

March 2, 2021 by WonderAdventures

Here you will find some of our great tips for an egg-siting time with your children this Easter. Note the link to our free resource pack PDF download that means you can print out 8 very different and egg-squizit fun activities you can do at home or school with your children. We also sell some fantastic resources to enhance your easter fun. A video led treasure hunt to make for the best easter egg hunt ever, led by the Easter Bunny and including his amazing hop song and dance. You can even join the bunny for a LIVE event on Facebook and Youtube and get a personalised message video for your child or children.

With a bit of imagination, easter can be such a creative and fun time for children, and what a great opportunity to fuel their creativity and love of fun, and make-believe play. Who doesn’t want to bounce like a bunny with a basket of chocolate eggs, and their can be so much more fun than a standard egg hunt too…

Easter Bunny picture colour in — Colour in a fab easter bunny picture.

One element of our fun free resource, an amazing Easter Bunny dot-to-dot picture. What a great way to get children egg-sited about the easter bunny folk story and build the anticipation to their deliveries easter weekend. A really good way to engage concentration from children learning to control their pen and pencil skills.

Get the above printable A4 sheet in our fun activity pack – for FREE – see link below.

https://wonderadventures.co.uk/EasterKidsFreeActivityPack

easter bunny costume — Dress up as an Easter Bunny.

There is so much to be done creatively at easter. Painting hard-boilded eggs, making and easter bonnet or bunny ears. In our FREE activity resource pack you can get a fun cut and glue activity where by you make a picture of a basket of eggs with your child. This combines puzzle solving with fun creative making skills – fabulous across early years ages.

https://wonderadventures.co.uk/EasterKidsFreeActivityPack

be the easter bunny — Easter Bunny make believe play.

Just like Santa the Easter Bunny brings children gifts – so just like Santa of course they want to play at being the Easter Bunny. So why not get them create some ears or even a full face mask you can paint together or draw. Get our FREE printable resource here.

https://wonderadventures.co.uk/EasterKidsFreeActivityPack

Children of course love hide and seek and treasure hunts. Easter egg hunting is of course the ultimate egg-siting treasure hunt, and you can use toys and craft to set up a fun search out and hide and seek game with children and engage them for long lasting playfull fun. Get them to hide objects, toys and eggs from each other. Our FREE resource pack even includes Where’s Wally style pictures where they need to find and count up the eggs. See our amazing Easter Bunny video led treasure hunt resource in the Wonder Adventures shop – a great way to create the best Easter Egg Hunt ever!

https://wonderadventures.co.uk/EasterKidsFreeActivityPack

A puzzle maze game can be so much fun for little ones to solve. You can even make up your own with different squiggly lines where only 1 makes it to the final destination. Our FREE resource PDF for self printing gives you a great version of a maze to connect the Easter Bunny with some eggs!

Best Easter Egg Hunt ever — Enhanced Easter Egg treasure hunt game.

The better organised your egg hunt experience, the longer it can last and the maximum egg-sitement gained. Wonder Adventures shop has an amazing video led treasure hunt game, hosted by the Easter Bunny, and including a fun song and dance and bunny skills too. This is a great way to make this years Easter Egg hunt egg-tra special! Don’t forget to have your camera phone at the ready to capture some of the amazing egg-sitement. The video hosted activity will lead your child in a fun filled 30 to 40 minute adventure at your house or garden.

FREE easter activity pdf — Easter Bunny resource pack for kids.

Access your FREE resource pack download here:

https://wonderadventures.co.uk/EasterKidsFreeActivityPack

We want you to have an amazing time in the run up to Easter with your children, so hop along and check out our FREE resource pack download to help bring that bounce in to the fun of the Easter Bunny folk tale and great times with your children. Do see we have a downloadable treasure hunt, ONLINE events and a personalised Easter Bunny video product you can get from the Wonder Adventures shopify shop.

We hope you have an egg-cellent time!

Don’t forget to check out the Easter Bunny’s personalised video messages…..

And if you are involved in a PTA or charity look at the ways you can easily make money for your funds with the Easter Bunny’s fun offers….

Why pretend play is important to your kids right now….

February 7, 2021 by WonderAdventures

As a kid one of my favourite TV programmes was ‘Let’s Pretend’. Each week the presenters would find a number of ordinary household items and contrive to produce a short story featuring them all. It was so simple and yet so inspiring; especially now. Pretend play has always been important to child development; but never more so than now.

When kids are having more uncertainty, more time on screen, more time at home and less directed activities, then it is the perfect time to encourage even more pretend play and notice the positive impact it has on your child.

And not just for toddlers and pre-schoolers – all children and even adults benefit from pretend play. (who doesn’t love getting lost in a storyline of pirates and princesses, pretending to arrive at your own wizarding school or building the best den ever known to man?!!)

And it’s not only good for your kids development to play; it’s good for the whole family! Playing together is an almost magical way to build connection. When we laugh, our body releases oxytocin into our systems and so fun times together are an easy way to decrease the family stress, transform bad moods and give an instant uplift.

Playing together is one of the fastest ways to heal minor relationship stress, help people drop grudges, and bring the family into sync. Play and laughter create a happy feeling in your home.

So embrace the play in your house… play is not limited to playing with lego or a structured games. There are so many different types of play and ways you can play in your family.

Imaginative play

When you say the word ‘imagination’ people often just think of children pretending with dolls, pushing dump trucks, or dressing up as princesses or pirates. And whilst young children do spend much of their time in the land of make believe, the imagination is not just reserved for young children playing int his way. Using themes, stories, puzzles, problem solving and physical challenges all involve using our imagination and is valuable whatever our age!

It is because of the development of the imagination during childhood that adults are able to do many of the tasks that daily life demands. Adults constantly use their imagination to help them invent new things, solve problems, make plans, enjoy a film or book see things from others’ perspectives, come up with ideas, and think creatively. After all as Albert Einstein said “imagination is more important than knowledge”!

Therefore, using our imagination is a critical cognitive skill that is used throughout life, and so it is so important that we encourage our children to use their imagination from an early age in childhood and continue to use it as they grow older.

Here are 11 ideas for imaginative play in children

Rough-housing together

Does your child enjoy a bit of roughhousing? Great! Some researchers in early brain development believe that this sort of play helps develop the part of the brain (the frontal lobe) that regulates behaviour. So instead of worrying that this type of activity will encourage him to act out or become too aggressive, be assured that within a monitoring situation and with clear boundaries and rules that you agree beforehand (if someone says stop you stop, for example) roughhouse play can actually help your child learn the self-regulation skills needed to know how and when this type of play is appropriate.

Dancing together

A kitchen disco can work wonders to lift the spirit in your house. choose a song, crank it up and get moving.

Thinking Skills

Pretend play provides your child with a variety of problems to solve. Whether it’s two children wanting to play the same role or searching for the just right material to make a roof for the playhouse, your child calls upon important cognitive thinking skills that he will use in every aspect of his life, now and forever. So thinking skills extend into all kinds of play but if you want more structured play activities then jigsaws, puzzles and board games are great for coming together and working together using your thinking.

Even activities such as setting up a domino rally or obstacle course are ways of being creative, thinking up ideas and looking at ways to problem solve.

Bringing play into the every day

Incorporating play ideas in your every day activities and instructions, especially with younger kids, can work incredibly well to not only achieve what you want to with the kids in a moment (get them dressed, them them out of the house, be on time fo ran appointment etc) it can also shift the mood, reduce the stress or difficulties that often overshadow a lot of daily family chores.

For example, an instruction like

“Eat your breakfast now!” could become “Little Gorilla, it’s time for breakfast, come eat your bugs and bananas!”

Instead of: “Get in the car!” why not try:
“Don’t you think your steam shovel wants to get in the car now so he can see the construction site on the way to school?”

Or instead of

“let’s go upstairs for bath” you might say “which dinosaur can get ready for bath the quickest? The T-Rex or the Stegasaurus? I’ll be the Stegasaurus you be the T-Rex”…..

When trying to get somewhere for a time ask them to be in charge of the timer that says we need to leave in 10 minutes.

Given how hard life can be at times, I think that if we seize all the joy, silliness, fun and humour we can get, we will all enjoy daily life more.

The best way to start cultivating more playful fun in your house is to make it part of your routine. You can do this by simply trying new ideas, and if they work, repeating them. That creates fun traditions for your family to enjoy and look forward to. Not all rituals need to be serious or spiritually joyous, some of the best are silly. But don’t wait for special times; any part of daily life can be made into a game.

Lose your inhibitions and start to play now…you will feel the benefits in yourself, notice it in your children and feel it in your family.

So the next time you child asks you to play, instead of automatically saying you can’t, are busy, don’t know how….get involved and have fun!

Space themed activities for kids at home

January 31, 2021 by WonderAdventures

Do your kids love space? Are they a budding Astronaut?

Do you want to inspire your children about science, space and the universe?

Here are some of our favourite Space themed activities, creative ideas and inspiration to help children with their space topic, learn about astronauts or just have some out of this world fun!!

Active games

1/ NASA Training Obstacle Course

Astronauts need to be very fit and physically active.
Set up an obstacle course and have the children complete it. Vary it with time challenges.

You can even get the children to set up their own obstacle courses and each one of you has to do each others.

Some ideas for obstacles are:

Jumping on a pile of cushions or pillows.
Crawl under or over a row of chairs.
Walk on a balance board.
Throw a beanbag into a laundry basket.
Limbo under different height bars.
Shoot a rocket through a hoop or a target.
Run while balancing a beanbag on your head.
Karate chop an invader (you can use a cushion or bop bag for the invader)
Climb through a tunnel
Weave in and out of cones ( cones can be made from anything)
Stack up cardboard boxes to make wall, Bust through the wall!
Spinning round
Running through hula hoops
Jumping over things of different heights.
Squeezing through a thing space created by objects.
Do a ring toss.
Run whilst balancing a bean bag or similar on your head.
Do a handstand.
Do 10 star jumps

2/ Meteor Catch

Wrap a styrofoam ball in aluminum foil. Attach crepe paper for tails. Toss back and forth.

3/ Martian rock scramble game

This is best played with more than one child.

You’ll need an adult Martian volunteer, a bag of treats, and some Martian rocks. Martian rocks can be made by wrapping a sweet or small prize in aluminum foil.

One child is the Martian and the other (s) are the outer space explorers. The outer space explorers must try to collect as many Martian rocks as they can and race them back to their ship, but they must beware of the Martian. The Martian is guarding the Martian rocks and if he tags an explorer they must drop any Martian rocks they have and run back to their space shuttles. When all the rocks have been collected the explorers can open them up and share the prizes inside.

To play have the Martian stand in the middle of the playing area surrounded by the Martian rocks. The little explorers wait on either side until the word GO. Their shuttle can be a basket or bucket to collect their rocks in.

4/ Rocket Shuttle Landing

Give your children a pile of paper and instructions for how to make paper aeroplanes. You could watch some videos to inspire the paper plane making here

Or you could create a competition of creating the best paper aeroplane design.

Once they have made their aeroplanes then hang a hula hoop from the ceiling and the children can then practice flying their shuttles by trying to fly them through the hoop. They can start close and get farther and farther away.

5/ Moon Walking

Place pillows all over the floor. Then cover the pillows and floor with a sheet. Attach x-large sized thick sponges to the children’s feet with rubber bands for space shoes. Let the children walk over the area. You can even play space walk music for additional dramatic effect!

Imaginative play games

6/ Make dress up clothing for space

You can buy astronaut costumes and helmets but it is more fun to make your own!

A large white t-shirt can work as a spacesuit. You can make it fancier by adding strips of silver tape or a flag that you make and add to it. Inexpensive disposable painting coveralls can also be good to decorate and use.

You can buy velcro cheaply and use this to attach tools to the space suit (children can make the tools too)

Your astronauts can also make a jet pack to help them get around. Check out the tutorial here using duct tape and two empty two-litre bottles which makes a great DIY jetpack.

7/. Dramatic play space trip

We are big believers in imaginative play, with whatever theme or topic of study children are doing. What can be more fun that having a pretend trip to outer space? Children can pretend to pack all necessary items, put on their uniforms (as created in the idea above) and get into a spaceship. You can explain lack of gravity and its relationship to movement and then challenge the children to walk, run, skip, hop, gallop, leap, and crawl through space.

You could go for a nature walk on the moon and see what kinds of imaginary items children discover.

A great calm down activity for ending you session is to land back on earth, have them lit down and close their eyes and try to remember what life forms looked like and what they saw.

They can then open their eyes and draw what they saw or if they are younger you can write it down for them.

8/ Goodnight Moon

Read the story “Goodnight Moon”, and then set up objects set up like the book. You can doing this as an evening activity or before bed and your child can use a torch to shine on all the objects as you retell the story.

Space theme craft and make activities

9/ Telescope Craft

Decorate a toilet paper roll . Child can then look through it and pretend they see various objects in space.

10/ Paper Plate Planets

Cut paper plates into different sizes to represent each planet. Children can make their paper plat planet creations accurate to actual planets or be creative with their own ideas and use crayons, markers, paint or whatever craft items you have to decorate them.

11/ Planet Seriation

Using the paper plate planets, that are representations of the planets in our galaxy, and have children arrange planets in order from smallest to largest.

12/ Paper plate astronauts

Use paper plates as a base to create some astronaut faces!

13/ Make Your Own Mood Sand

You will need:

6 cups of play sand (preferably colored sand)
1 1/2 cups of cold water
3 cups of cornflour

Mix the sand and cornflour together. Add water, and mix everything together with your hands. Work through until you no longer see the white cornflour. Add toys or mold into shapes. Store in airtight container.

Note – You may have to add a couple teaspoons of water the next time you play with moon sand.

14/ Make Moon Craters

Cover bubble wrap with plaster of paris or paper mache’. Let dry and peel off. Then paint.

15/ Make Star Cards

Paint glue on index cards and scatter celestial glitter and confetti.

16/ Rocket Launch

Place an Alka-Seltzer Tablet and a little water in a 35mm film cartridge and close the lid tightly. Place this on the floor and stand back. The top will very soon launch (the pressure from the gas causes the lid to pop off and fly about chest high).

17/ Make your own Robots

Build Robots from various boxes and tubes. After they are dry, paint them with gold paint(or silver).

18/ Make you own Space Helmet

You will need: a bag, straws, crayons or markers, long underwear, cereal or oatmeal box, yarn, paper towel tubes, cutting implements (for adult use only) and tape.

Make your space helmet out of a paper bag or smallish square box. Glue or tape on straws to simulate wires, tubes, and other important gizmos one would expect to find on a space suit. (You can also draw them with crayons or markers.) The suit can consist of long underwear or pj’s.

Make an air tank out of an oatmeal or cereal box.

Make shoulder straps out of yarn or string (careful with young children). To make an air hose, tape several paper towel tubes together (slit the ends to make it easier to combine them), then make cuts every inch or two that almost pass through the tube. Tape one end to the air tank and the other to the helmet.

Paint and strap on with tape or string. Blast off!

19/ “Moon Rock” Sorting

Go out for a walk and gather a collection of different sized rocks. Have children sort rocks by color, size, etc.

20/ “Moon Rock” Counting

Get a collection of different rocks. Using a muffin tin, label the bottom of a each muffin section with a number. Have children count that many rocks and put into the numbered muffin tin section.

21/ Make a glove box

Follow this tutorial here

22/ Make a constellation craft picture

You can do your own constellation creations using stickers, paint or drawing. There is a great step by step for doing a great constellation picture here

Food based games for space fun

23/ Make Astronaut Pudding

Make Astronaut Pudding by putting 1 tablespoon of chocolate Angel delight or instant whip pudding in a ziploc bag. Add 1/4 cup of milk. Close the bag. Squish up the pudding mix. Poke a hole in the bag and suck it out. Eat just like the astronauts with no utensils!

24/ Make a space ocean you can eat

Get all your favourite gummy sweets for this one! Its fun to make and you can eat it after!

Download the PDF on how to do it from NASA here

25/ Oreo cookie moons!

What goes better with Oreos than a glass of milk? How about a little bit of moon science?

Do the learning and then eat them afterwards – perfect!

Printables and resources

You might also like the Space themed Intergalactic treasure hunt activity pack – interactive fun game to download, presented by Buzz the Astronaut!

For a week of Space themed fun join Astronaut Buzz for his Space Escape week; LIVE and interactive February 8th – 11th….find out more and register your young astronaut in training here

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Creative ideas for homeschooling success and activities for kids at home

January 24, 2021 by WonderAdventures

Whether the kids are at home full time or part time at the moment, they are at home significantly more than we are used to as parents.

We have less options for taking children out and about to stimulate, entertain and have leisure time together.

And parents are being expected to be a bigger part than ever before of our child’s learning and development journey.

So how do we do this? And not only cope, but thrive and create an enjoyable bank of memories that we know have been key in our children’s mental, intellectual and physical well being.

I believe that like most things in life it comes down to thinking creatively and being open minded, trying things differently and being flexible.

So here are some creative tips for homeschooling success, strategies and ideas for activities to keep you and your children sane, happy and create precious family memories……

Tips to help your home-schooling day run smoothly and be fun:

1/ Have a daily home-school routine for everybody to see.

Try to keep on track. Set alarms to give audio cues for moving on, taking breaks and changing activities. Audio cues are helpful for children to know what to listen out for and to give some structure.

2/ Provide a positive incentive.

Research shows that it is more effective to provide a positive incentive than a threat. So giving milestones that help them to achieve something they want should provide motivation. Make the milestones bite size and something they can see they are achieving bit but bit to keep motivated. Also keep them specific and measurable. A goal like working hard is hard to quantify for both adults and kids. But, reading 5 pages of your book and writing 3 paragraphs is much easier to take satisfaction from achieving.

3/ If weather allows go outside where possible.

Not just for breaks but for learning. Even if the weather is cold; wrap up appropriately! The outside air is good for body and mind and changing up the learning environment helps concentration levels for children.

4/ Take pictures.

Children love to look back and be praised for achievements. If you take pictures of work and projects it allows for reflection together on what you have done and at the end of a week when you might need a boost you can look back at the successes and moments you might have forgotten about!

Creative Home-schooling activity ideas for all subject areas

5/ Literacy and IT – Make a toy video

Get the children to gather their favourite toys, write a narrative for the toys, complete with scenes and interactions and have them make a video using your phone. Simply film one shot of each scene. Children can move the toys, do the voices and play out the scenes. You can even take it to the next level and edit the scenes together and do captions etc. so they have a completed toy video.

Toy videos on youtube seem to be all the rage and children seem to love watching other people play with toys and create toy scenes, so getting them to create their own video like this is great for not only developing storytelling skills, character developing, social and emotional intelligence (creating character interaction) they also have the challenge of learning software to create an end product. Finally there is the satisfaction of watching their end creation!

6/ Physics – Engineer a toothpick bridge.

The idea of this seems quite simple but actually in practice it can be quite a challenge! You can compete with others in the house or virtually to see whose bridge can hold the most weight! This is a fun way to start your child’s study of physics and engineering. You can follow along with this toothpick bridge YouTube video!

7/ Art, Science, Maths, English (depending on what you design in your room!) Create your own breakout room

Complete with clues and puzzles. If you have more than one child you can give them each a room and they can create their own series of games and puzzles in their room and you can all play together visiting each others rooms.

8/ Subject area – Maths Make a Paper Boat

This is a great geometry project as you can work on makin

g the strongest or fastest paper boat. Use origamiway.com to find some good boat designs, create them. Then if you have a stream or pond locally you can go and test them out! Failing that you can test them in the bath or paddling pool!

9/ Chemistry – make slime

What kid doesn’t love slime?! And it’s a safe and basic way to

look at chemistry, plus there are loads of varieties you can do with it and loads of opportunities for theming! Check out Daisy’s favourite slime recipe and instruction video here.

There are also some good, variation recipes here –

Fluffy slime

Lemon slime

Crunchy slime

10/ Science – Make Home-made ice-cream

There is loads of interesting science involved in making ice cream! How do room-temperature ingredients become cold and fluffy? Why does salt lower the freezing point? Use this recipe to make your own homemade ice-cream. You can then research the chemistry behind it whilst it freezes and share

your findings while you enjoy eating the fruits of your labour!!

Ways to add More Fun to Your Home-school Daily Schedule

11/ Cook lunch together – have a pre-lunchtime cooking class.

Teach them about cooking and food covers so many learning points including science, weighing, measuring, reading ingredients and being creative with preparation! And you get to have a great lunch too!

12/ Have an afternoon picnic; in a local park or the garden.

Snack time can be made more interesting by making an event of it. You can even invite your teddies and toys, create a theme for it

and play out role-plays at your picnic!

13/ Go to a Museum – virtually!

Lots of museums, zoos and attractions have virtual offerings. The great thing is that you can virtually visit one that you wouldn’t normally go to – at the other side of the world for instance!

14/ Play More Games

Board games, card games, role play games are all rich in learning, strategy, maths, word play and all sorts of learning opportunities. Board games are certainly not just for Christmas!! Here are 23 Card Games That Will Turn Your Students Into Math Aces

15/ Incorporate Music –

Putting a favourite song on between subjects, having a mad dance moment, doing PE to a favourite song or playing a music themed game are all super valuable and fun moments to have in every day, Music lifts everyone’s music, increases connection between people and improves focus and concentration.

16/ Get Messy with Art

Messy play is encouraged with babies and little ones but everyone loves messy play (just not the clearing up!) But creating messy art; using food, items from nature, shaving foam

and flour is great for getting creative juices flowing; not worrying about creating something long lasting and just enjoying the process. Just remember it can be cleared up afterward!

17/ Lego stamping

Lego stamping is art with bricks! It is super simple and sure to be a huge hit – see here for ideas and tips for a great Lego stamping session!

18/ Do a scavenger hunt

Scavenger hunts are so great because you can theme them on practically anything, set them up anywhere, made for all ages and abilities and can be created to cover any length of time!

Here are some great free printable scavenger hunts

Here is some great interactive themed treasure hunts, each one a 45 minute ready to play activity complete with character videos, riddles and even a song routine. There are dinosaurs, wizards, super-heros and astronaut themed here so a theme for every imagination.

Finally as a lot of us are juggling working from home whilst home schooling, and so if that is you then here are a few practical and creative tips to help keep you sane!

19/ Reframe Your Thinking

Don’t benchmark yourself against parents who aren’t also working. Remember every family is different’ everyone’s works schedules and pressure are different and every child is different. So just because you perceive a neighbours family to be doing things one way doesn’t mean that is right for your family. Do what is right for you and your family and don’t be influenced by what anyone else tells you they are doing or w

hat they think you should be doing.

20 / Take Care of Yourself First

Heard the saying ‘happy parent = happy family”? It’s true

. If you are not looking after yourself – this includes physically, mentally, eating and sleeping properly. Having time for your own moments of peace and joy, chatting to friends and having time to think are all critical to keeping well and thus being able to look after your family well. So don’t see it as luxury, see it as priority.

21/ Teach Self-Sufficiency Skills

It’s never too soon to teach children to be independent, take responsibility and be self-sufficient. And you’ll be doing them a favour as self sufficient kids do better later in life. A great mantra is “Don’t do for a child what he can do for himself.”

22/ Give Your Kids Daily Jobs – it helps them and helps you!

Win-win! Enough said!

24/ Quality not quantity

Having quality time with the children is more important than sitting with them all day. So if you spend a small amount of focused, quality time doing an activity that your both enjoy and create social moments with and your child has your undivided attention during that time then

you can fill their ‘attention bucket’ and that can be sufficient to allow them to do some independent tasks quite happily, allowing you some much needed time too.

25/ Get Help When Needed – we are all in this together

No-one expects you to be superhuman and no-one hands out medals. So it’s not a bad thing to ask for help.

Here’s to your successful home-schooling journey with your child now and beyond. And let’s hope that even when the pandemic eases that the memories and habits we have created during this time are long lasting in our families……

What creative homeschooling activities do you experience with your family? We would love to hear!

You might also like Family Bucket List; 50 Fun activities & ideas to do with kids at home

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13 fun and interesting facts for kids about Winnie the Pooh

January 18, 2021 by WonderAdventures

It’s Winnie the Pooh Day!! 18th January was the birthday os A.A Milne (born 1882)

To celebrate the amazing bear of very little brain here are some fun and interesting facts you may not know for your kids…..

1. The real bear who inspired him, Winnie, was a Canadian female black bear.

2. Christopher, the son of Alan Alexander Milne received a teddy bear on his first birthday from his father. It was an 18-inch bear from Harrod’s department store in London, was originally called Edward and could growl! Milne and his son eventually renamed the teddy Winnie, after the black bear they went to visit at London Zoo.

3. The “Pooh” part of Winnie-the-Pooh comes from a swan that Milne and his son came across when on holiday. They called the swan Pooh, which Milne described in ‘When We Were Very Young.’; a poetry book by Milne published in 1924. Winnie-the-Pooh’s first appearance was as an unnamed character in this book – “A bear, however hard he tries/Grows tubby without exercise.”

4. As well as Pooh, Christopher Robin had a stuffed donkey, which would inspire Eeyore; a stuffed pig, which would inspire Piglet; a stuffed Kangaroo, which would inspire Roo; and a stuffed tiger, which would inspire Tigger.

5. The Hundred Acre Wood characters Owl and Rabbit were the only two that weren’t inspired by Christopher Robin’s toys. Instead their characters came from real animals on Cotchford Farm, the Milnes’ property in Sussex.

6. Kanga was a “he” in Milne’s original notes, but was changed to become the only female character in the books.

7. Christopher Robin’s original plush Pooh toys are kept in a bulletproof display case at the New York Public Library, and see about 750,000 visitors per year. They are extremely fragile and their environment is consistently monitored for temperature, relative humidity and light levels.

8. The only original toy you can’t see at the New York Public Library is Roo. Christopher Robin Milne lost it sometime in the 1930s in an apple orchard.

9. The reason Milne stopped writing children’s books, and especially about Winnie-the-Pooh, was that he felt “amazement and disgust” over the fame his son was exposed to, and said that “I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. I do not want CR Milne to ever wish that his name were Charles Robert.

10. Milne and his wife became estranged from their son, who came to resent what he saw as his father’s exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye

11. The Disney corporation now owns all rights to the books and stories. However, The UK copyright on the text of the original Winnie the Pooh books expires on 1 January 2027, at the beginning of the year after the 70th anniversary of the author’s death.

12. In 2014, a meeting was held in the tiny town of Tuszyn, Poland, to decide upon a new patron for a local children’s playground. Pooh was suggested, but then denounced due to his questionable attire (no pants). “It is half naked, which is wholly inappropriate for children,” said Councillor Ryszard Cichy.

13. 13. Remember how Pooh and the gang have a game they play called “Poohsticks”? Well, the Poohsticks World championships are held in England every year! Here’s how you play it if you are not familiar!

You might also like to read –

8 ways we can learn from our children….

Why reading with your kids is important for them and also for you!

Treasure Hunt Packs, Anytime

Family Bucket List; 50 Fun activities & ideas to do with kids at home

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Family Bucket List; 50 Fun activities & ideas to do with kids at home

January 17, 2021 by WonderAdventures

Now is the time more than ever to make special family memories.

It’s true that we can’t go on holidays, days out, see family and friends and have parties and events in the way we would like.

But that is precisely the reason that we do need to make the most of our time together as an immediate family. We need to make memories that will allow us to look back on this period of time as something positive. A time we have all learnt and grown through and a time that we made some special memories.

Before long we will be back to dashing around, driving to and from school, work, extra curricular clubs, parties and activities and so whilst you can see how many things you can tick off your Family Bucket List whilst you can.

This is a list of fun ideas and activities that you can do with the kids at home or close to home.

Look out for our family bucket list of things we are looking forward to doing together as a family and planning for fun time together for the future. As there is so much fun comes in planning and anticipating exciting and fun times together with the kids.

Your kids only get one childhood, so make it count….

These are ideas to get your family started for simple fun at home during these challenging times. See how many you can get done. And let us know what you have on your list that you have done during the last year or that you plan to do…….

Active ideas in and around the home –

👉 Indoor “camping” complete with blanket tents and s’mores in the toaster oven.

👉 Make an obstacle course inside and time each other running through it.

👉 Put hop scotch on the pavement in front of the house.

👉 Host your own family olympic games

👉 Play Mini-golf. Better still create your own mini golf course in your house or garden. If you are feeling ambitious it could go all around the house!

👉 Have a Water Fight (obviously this is dependent on the outside temperatures where you live!)

Game and puzzle ideas

👉 Play a competitive game of memory…it is funny how the youngest kids always seem to win that.

👉 Put together a big puzzle…leave it out on the dining room table and every day everyone has to put 5 pieces in. See how long it takes to complete!

👉 Make your own version of monopoly.

👉 Play Cards – A simple deck of cards can lead up to hours of entertainment. Teach the young ones to play your favourite childhood game here are 15 easy and classic card games for kids

👉 Charades

This is a great game for all ages. To play charades, you have to act out movie titles, songs and things without making a sound.

👉 Play party games –
Put together a plan for all your favourite old fashioned party games and have a party! Pass the parcel, musical bumps, musical statues, pin the tail on the donkey, blind mans buff and hide and seek. You could even make party food to have after the games!

👉 Scavenger hunt

Create a list of things to collect and bring back (or photograph if you don’t want to remove the items from where you found them). The person (or team) with the most items (or images) or who completes the hunt the fastest wins.

Or try one of these brilliant themed treasure hunts

Making and creative ideas

👉 Bake cookies. Bake cakes. Bake bread. Just Bake!

👉 Make your own ‘create your adventure story book’

👉 Make puppets with socks and then put on a puppet show.

👉 Make a volcano.

👉 Make a bird feeder.

👉 Face painting

With some face paints you can do each other’s faces with butterflies or spider webs. Just search for easy face painting designs and you will get lots of easy ideas.

👉 Have an art day. Get creative, spend a whole day doing creative projects. You can set a theme for your crafts, set out resources and space for everyone at the start of the day and at the end of the day create an exhibition for your work.
See 5 easy and fun craft ideas here

👉 Budget home make-over

Brainstorm about themes together then redecorate the kids rooms using things that you already have or have pulled from another room. Then repaint or sew to give the room a fresh look.

👉 Photography project –
Go out as a family and take photos of each other or landscapes, anything. You can even set a theme or challenge and then share your pictures later.

👉 Make jam – you can go and pick the fruit (depending on the time of year and where you live) or you can get creative with mixing different fruits together.

Make a family recipe book – favourite recipes that can be carried forth and kept by your family of the future!

👉 Make things out of cardboard boxes! A fort, a space helmet or event a cardboard dolls house –
Use this guide and template here for a cardboard dolls house

👉 Or Create a cardboard arcade – if you never saw this delightful video about the boy who created a whole garage full of arcade games made from cardboard boxes; then watch it now full full on inspiration! Watch it here

Being together ideas

👉 Movie night with a sheet screen, big speaker, movie style snacks, turn the lights off and feel the atmosphere!

👉 Dress up posh for dinner.

👉 Dress up silly for dinner.

👉 Have a ‘Come dine with me dinner’ – everyone (who is old enough) be responsible for a different course and mark each other. (younger ones could work in teams with adults or prepare something cold)

👉 Have a tickle fight.

👉 Create a Family Scrapbook. You could even create a scrapbook from lockdown.

👉 Create a time capsule

👉 Research your Family Tree and create a big visual family tree.

👉 Make S’mores

👉Make a Family Music Video – choose your favourite family track. choreograph a dance, come up with a style for the music video and get creative!

👉 Play Dress Up – adults too!
Not only does playing dress up important for children because it helps them use their imagination and builds confidence, it is just a plain fun family thing to do. Let your kids pick a theme, and make sure you join them is dressing up!

👉 Play dress up in adults clothes! Taking the dress up idea one step further is allowing the kids to dress you (and them!) in your clothes! Let them have free reign – after all who is going to see and what’s the harm! You might even discover you have a Vivienne Westwood of the future!

👉 Put on a Family Talent Show

Outdoors with the kids ideas

👉 Picnic at the park…even if it is cold.

👉 Be a tourist in your own town

Here are some ideas for how you can do this

👉 Fly a Kite

👉 Go on a bug hunt – see what bugs you can find; draw or photograph them so you can discuss them later.

👉 Go on a foraging hunt: Give the kids baskets and lists of things to find (white feather, black stone, yellow leaf…)

Mindful and family wellbeing ideas

👉 Go 24 Hours without Internet, Radio or Television
Ok this is a challenge for even the adults! But think about it. When was the last time you went for two hours without your phone? Try going 24 hours without internet, radio or TV. Go camping, read a book together or use the time to complete some of the ideas on this family bucket list. See how it makes you feel and communicate as a family. And if it helps have a big fat reward that you all agree on and get if you all manage it!

👉 Do a Random Act of Kindness
Random acts of kindness are some of the most fulfilling things you could ever do and giving without expecting anything back is a valuable lesson to teach every child.

👉 Donate some food
There are plenty of food banks and charities that help those less fortunate than ourselves. So find your local one and make a delivery. Most supermarkets also have bins at the checkouts so even getting the kids to put a few bits in there teaches them about sharing and caring.

👉 Pick up litter in the park

👉 Make a calming jar – If your child is feeling anxious or worrying then a calming jar can work well. The falling beads and glitter will help them relax and slow their breathing. and making one together can be very therapeutic for both of you too!
Here is an easy how to guide for making a calming jar

👉 Make a gratitude jar. Every weekend when you sit together as a family take it turns to write down something you are grateful for on a piece of paper, fold it up and put it in the jar. Next year on new years day you can open the jar and read everything you were grateful for last year.

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Don’t forget to check out the Easter Bunny’s personalised video messages…..

Imaginative play

Rough-housing together

Dancing together

Thinking Skills

Bringing play into the every day

Do your kids love space? Are they a budding Astronaut?

Do you want to inspire your children about science, space and the universe?

Here are some of our favourite Space themed activities, creative ideas and inspiration to help children with their space topic, learn about astronauts or just have some out of this world fun!!

Active games

1/ NASA Training Obstacle Course

2/ Meteor Catch

3/ Martian rock scramble game

4/ Rocket Shuttle Landing

5/ Moon Walking

Imaginative play games

6/ Make dress up clothing for space

7/. Dramatic play space trip

8/ Goodnight Moon

Space theme craft and make activities

9/ Telescope Craft

10/ Paper Plate Planets

11/ Planet Seriation

12/ Paper plate astronauts

13/ Make Your Own Mood Sand

14/ Make Moon Craters

15/ Make Star Cards

16/ Rocket Launch

17/ Make your own Robots

18/ Make you own Space Helmet

19/ “Moon Rock” Sorting

20/ “Moon Rock” Counting

21/ Make a glove box

22/ Make a constellation craft picture

Food based games for space fun

23/ Make Astronaut Pudding

24/ Make a space ocean you can eat

25/ Oreo cookie moons!

Printables and resources

For a week of Space themed fun join Astronaut Buzz for his Space Escape week; LIVE and interactive February 8th – 11th….find out more and register your young astronaut in training here

Whether the kids are at home full time or part time at the moment, they are at home significantly more than we are used to as parents.

We have less options for taking children out and about to stimulate, entertain and have leisure time together.

And parents are being expected to be a bigger part than ever before of our child’s learning and development journey.

Tips to help your home-schooling day run smoothly and be fun:

1/ Have a daily home-school routine for everybody to see.

2/ Provide a positive incentive.

3/ If weather allows go outside where possible.

4/ Take pictures.

Creative Home-schooling activity ideas for all subject areas

5/ Literacy and IT – Make a toy video

6/ Physics – Engineer a toothpick bridge.

7/ Art, Science, Maths, English (depending on what you design in your room!) Create your own breakout room

8/ Subject area – Maths Make a Paper Boat

9/ Chemistry – make slime

10/ Science – Make Home-made ice-cream

Ways to add More Fun to Your Home-school Daily Schedule

11/ Cook lunch together – have a pre-lunchtime cooking class.

12/ Have an afternoon picnic; in a local park or the garden.

13/ Go to a Museum – virtually!

14/ Play More Games

15/ Incorporate Music –

16/ Get Messy with Art

17/ Lego stamping

18/ Do a scavenger hunt

Finally as a lot of us are juggling working from home whilst home schooling, and so if that is you then here are a few practical and creative tips to help keep you sane!

19/ Reframe Your Thinking

20 / Take Care of Yourself First

21/ Teach Self-Sufficiency Skills

22/ Give Your Kids Daily Jobs – it helps them and helps you!

24/ Quality not quantity

It’s Winnie the Pooh Day!! 18th January was the birthday os A.A Milne (born 1882)

To celebrate the amazing bear of very little brain here are some fun and interesting facts you may not know for your kids…..

You might also like to read –

Now is the time more than ever to make special family memories.

It’s true that we can’t go on holidays, days out, see family and friends and have parties and events in the way we would like.

Active ideas in and around the home –

Game and puzzle ideas

Making and creative ideas