Encouraging mark making using imaginative play

Happy New Year! to all my readers.  Here we start a brand new year in which I hope to bring you all some ideas.  This is the year that Little Boo turns 3 and starts Nursery how scary! time really is going too fast.

Today we have been playing with the dolls.  Little Boo LOVES her dolls at the moment and so wanted to play doctors with them.  Before Christmas I printed off some doctor role play resources which we are using in this activity

doctors surgery from Sparklebox
Hospital Role play from Sparklebox
Baby Clinic from Sparklebox

All the print out packs were available FREE! I had to make our own appointment sheet (could not find one but only took a few minutes) which had to have Dr Ranj from Get Well Soon on as Little Boo loves this programme at the moment. The sheets I placed in plastic wallets so that they could be reused as I gave Little Boo a dry erase marker to use.

It ended up being a Baby Clinic and Little Boo was measuring and weighing the dolls.

 She was then answering the telephone to book patients in.  I did not realise until we started playing the great opportunity this provided for fun mark making.  Little Boo loved writing in the Telephone messages and writing in the heights and weights and writing in the patients names on the appointments.

At one point I asked her to write her own name and she made a very good attempt there is definitely a letter "s" there!

I hope that you enjoy this activity.

A Christmas party for the dolls

Little Boo is very excited about Christmas and today in her advent was pretty paper to write our letter to Santa and an invitation to her dolls Christmas party! We got to work making crackers and party hats.  I was surprised that Little Boo liked the crackers even though they did not bang.  All we did was wrap toilet rolls with tissue paper and tape them. They looked really effective. Some of them we made into mini crackers as the "dollies are only little"

We also made some little chairs as I had some cardboard boxes spare.  These did not take long to make and we will be adding paper mache to them to make them more sturdy for reusing them. I have a feeling that we will be adding a bit of sparkle to them as well as they are pretty dull at the moment. I should of taken pictures of the stages but all I did was cut two flaps of the box fold one in a suitable place and cut the other one into two equal pieces then attached this. I hope that the picture helps if anyone wants to use the idea they would be brilliant in a home corner as long as the children do not sit on them :)

Then we set up Little Boos kitchen as she wanted to cook for them and the table (upside down toy box with wrapping paper tablecloth) .  I was really pleased that Little Boo looked for Knives and forks and even laid these out in a sensible way.  Everyone had to have straws as Little Boo loves these at the moment.

After this the dolls wanted pudding so we made some snowman biscuits using the white play dough and then decided to use this for a Christmas pudding. Little Boo really enjoyed cutting this up and sharing it between the dolls. 

We both enjoyed this and to be honest spent most of the morning returning to the activity making more crackers and inviting more dolls and teddies to join our party. 

Imaginative play the creation of our fancy dress box

Just recently all of us set to work organising Little Boos toys and thanks to this she now has a wonderful dress up and dollies box. The great thing is is that I feel this will be used differently every time we play.
Today Little Boo wanted to be a princess hence the Cinderella outfit, she later styled up with a hat pretending to be a cowboy!

Inside our dress up box is an array of items including some of my old make up I had which I do not use. Little Boo loves playing with make up. The agreement is that the make up only goes on her dolls we have some great dolls for this activity which can just be wiped clean and they were really cheap. I do not mind Little Boo playing with make up, I realise some parents may be concerned. However, I see playing with make up as another way Little Boo copies me just like when she cares for her dolls like I care for her.

After a while the dolls and Little Boo were tired so Little Boo took it upon herself to tell me that they needed her pillow and cover. Then the dolls were tucked in to sleep.

The dress up clothes that I have for Little Boo have mainly been passed down or brought when on sale. We have made up our own fairy costume using an old top a £1 tutu and wings the rainstick we made is now a wand! How's that for imagination :)