A Box to Encourage Mark Making

I have been meaning to post this for ages now as I realise that for many of us encouraging our children to make marks is very important as a start to get them interested in writing. At home we have a box full of different items all to encourage mark making.

It is surprising how the box is used differently each time. Sometimes Boo likes me to get her a colouring in book other times she uses the stencils then the other day she asked if we could write letters therefore the printed stamps and envelopes have become a new addition to the box.

There are loads of things in the box and we keep adding to it. Can you spot the rubbings that I made for Little Boo ages ago? She still loves using them. The great thing is that everything is in one box so really easy to store away and use when needed.

What else would you add in the box to encourage mark making?

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.

Our countdown to Christmas

I have been looking at loads of advent calenders on Pinterest and decided to do our own big advent calender.  It has been so much fun thinking what to put in each bag. I have tried to keep it as healthy as possible so not everyday will there be a chocolate bar or sweets but a craft or game/activity to do. I hoped that Little Boo would like it and this morning when we came downstairs I was not disappointed she was so excited and asked if Santa had brought them. 

I brought the bags from ikea for £4 for all of them.  I realise that this is expensive but I wanted to reuse them for as long as they last and liked the design on them.  A cheaper alternative would be to hang decorated toilet rolls or the cheaper brown sandwich bags.  Obviously I needed to be careful what I was including in the bags as the items need to fit.  I started a board on Pinterest with the countdown bag ideas  and I also had ideas of my own. 

Today's bag included some free colouring in sheets from the Library, Stickers from a sheet which I have cut up and placed in a few of the bags, Little Boos Christmas cards and a little packet of Haribo and some home made stamps for the cards. 

The idea was that Little Boo could write her cards as it is the 1st December I thought we should make a start. I have made some home made stamps which have Little Boos face on and have been printed onto sticker paper from the £1 shop so she enjoyed putting the stamps onto the envelopes. Then wrote the cards with the sparkly pens.

The advent itself is on the banister pegged to some ribbon.  The pegs I covered with some strips of paper that I had over from my Christmas crafts as I have been doing some iris folding Christmas cards.  I then cut and laminated the numbers which were from ewe hooo! and attached these to the pegs with a hot glue gun. 

I hope to share with you how the rest of the advent goes.  Most bags have easy craft activities that I have either thought of myself or brought from the £1 shop.  Tomorrow is a letter to Santa  I have found the template for this on sparklebox I have also just found out that you can post this to an address that the royal mail provide and they post a letter back! 

This idea can be as expensive as you make it.  I have tried to find a lot of activities that I already have what is needed or have found free items such as colouring in sheets.  I have cut up some of the sticker sheets that I have brought as well as helping them to fit in the bags it also means they can be used in a few bags. 

Busy bags 5

The last busy bags to share with you today firstly, making your own jigsaws. For these jigsaws I used lollipop sticks for one and have labelled them with numbers so that Little Boo knows how to put it together. For the other jigsaw I cut up a photograph then used another piece of card to draw around the pieces so Little Boo needs to match the shapes to put the jigsaw together. I am lucky that I take lots of pictures when we go to the zoo so had loads of spare photographs of animals so used these.

Because Little Boo loves drawing and writing I thought it would be a good idea to include a bag with a small note pad and selection of crayons and pens. This has worked and we often play guess Mommys picture.

Let's go fly a kite

Today we have been thinking again about weather and focusing on wind.  We have therefore made the most simple kite but Little Boo loved making it then playing with it in the house!

All you need is

• Paper bag 
• Lolly stick 
• wool 
• decorative items such as paper, stickers, sequins, felts and stamps. 
• Glue
• scissors (if you wish this to be an exercise for practising cutting)
• Ribbon or crepe paper

Here is how we made ours 

Decorate the bag however you like

Little Boo is LOVING cutting everything at the moment so this was a great activity to practise! 

Place a hole in the bottom of the bag in the centre.  I did this by folding the bag and punching half a hole. 

wrap some wool around a lolly pop stick and secure with tape on the stick, then thread through the hole. (the lolly pop stick just helps to reinforce and secure the wool)

We then placed some ribbon on the top of the bag just to make it look extra pretty! you can also use crepe paper. 

All that is left is to fly your kite! 

Hope that you enjoy making these we hoped to go outside and play with this afterwards but it started to rain really badly so played in the house instead.  Hope we can go outside and play tomorrow.

Search for the Olympic rings-learning colours the fun way

Yesterday we went to a local teddy bears picnic. It was great some really nice crafts and fun for the children. I was really impressed how Little Boo completed the free trail that was at the museum. The idea was that you had to find all the hidden teddy bears.  The bears were all wearing different coloured scarves so to win you had to get the correct number next to each colour.  We were provided with a sheet which we had to tally up the colours we found.  I have never done an activity like this before with Little Boo so thought the tally idea may be a little bit too difficult and thought that we would just enjoy looking for the bears.  I was wrong! she loved it, before I knew it she was in charge of the clipboard and pen telling me to "come on, there are more bears to find" it really got her thinking and I could tell that she actually enjoyed doing this.  I took the idea on board and considered how I would differentiate it to make it easier for preschoolers (the one at the museum was a bit too heavy on text). 

For today's post I have devised 2 Olympic themed games the idea is search for the Olympic rings.  This game is perfect for learning position words as I started giving clues like,  "you need to look higher".  It encourages learning colours as when we found one I would ask Little Boo what colour is it? After this she placed a tally on the sheet next to the colour.

Find the Olympic Rings

I have done two games as I considered that there could be an alternative whereby the tally is not needed.  For this one all we did was hide one of each colour then Little Boo matched the colour rings with the sheet.  This will help to learn colours and the concept of things that are the "same" or "matching".
Find and Match Up

I hope that you enjoy the games as much as we did.  At first I only hid a few circles just to get Little Boo used to doing the activity.  If you have older children you may wish to have more than three of each ring.  What I loved about it was how quick it was to set up I have since laminated the tally sheet as then it can be reused.  Little Boo also loves using whiteboard markers!  


Hope that you all enjoyed the opening ceremony we did! 

People who help us- post deliverer

We have decided to look at people who help us.  This is part of our week theme of people.  We decided to look at the people who deliver our post.  Little Boo loves posting things and we also managed to find some fantastic resources in our local library and toy library.  It has been a great activity which has incorporated loads of fun learning including mark making, number recognition and communication to name just a few. 


To start with we did a few activities which were centred around people who help us.

First we sorted them into heads, belly's and feet.  I then gave Little Boo a couple to match up

People who help us matching activity from Sparklebox

Little Boo doing a colouring activity from Sparklebox

I decided to make a post box so that we could have some imaginary play and thought it would be a great idea if Little Boo could make her own postcards to post.

Making postcards 

Writing the postcard

Adding a stamp (these were just from the Internet)

Writing the address on the envelope 

 Making our postbox 

Before we started to create our postbox we looked at our library book together so Little Boo could learn about a post deliverer.

We made a postbox from an empty box as you can see Little Boo had already been playing with it. We just painted this red then painted five doors as well.

Putting the box post together I could of use a hot glue gun but at least doing it this way Little Boo can join in. 

Painting one of the doors

After all that creating it was time to use our postbox.  Little Boo dressed up in her outfit which she loved regardless of the fact it was way too big! She looked so cute.  We then got to work posting the letters then posting them in the correct doors.  All the letters had numbers on them which related to the numbers on the doors so this was good for number recognition.

Playing in the sunshine!

Today we had a very rare opportunity to play in the sunshine.  The weather has been miserable lately so we were well excited.  I came across some water balloons a few days ago and picked them up glad I did now as we have had a great time with them.

The balloons were ready!

We had great fun with the balloons Little Boo enjoyed chasing me and her Dad around the garden.  To be honest think that me and my husband enjoyed the activity just as much it got rather competitive and Little Boo kept laughing at us both.  It has been so nice to actually have a family afternoon it does not happen often enough.

We also played with our chalks on our slabs.

I wrote out Little Boo's name in chalk then she went over the chalk with water.  It was really nice as the chalk just turns into paint. It does also come off the slabs with water and a brush.

We did the same with numbers.

The letter a was really good.

and of course we did loads of hand prints!

It was a great activity as Little Boo was having fun all the time and not realising how much she was learning about colours (when picking up the balloons she would keep commenting on the colour), numbers and letters.  After all the fun she had even more fun with the hose pipe cleaning all the chalk away and of course running after Mommy and Daddy with it.  We were soaked!

Sparkly letters

I feel that the best activities are those that your children just do naturally.  This is an activity that came purely from Little Boo herself (after the pig creation). There were loads of sequins in the boxes which she just started grabbing and moving from one box to the other.

Moving them one box to the other

Pouring them

First making a circle

Then a letter e

Then making marks with a lolly pop stick

When pouring apparently the sequins "look pretty" and "make a nice noise" Then with the ones that had spilt she started drawing. I realise this can get messy but she loved it! We put down a sheet of foam so she could easily see what letter or shape she was making. I would write something in the sequins then she would copy. It started a brilliant conversation about letters as Little Boo suggested what the letter b looked like.