Author Archives: Charlotte Parry

100 Tuff Tray Play Ideas

100 Tuff Tray Play Ideas! The popular Tuff Tray is such a versatile resource to have for children at home or in your setting. With or without a stand it can be used for many small world set ups, messy play, investigation, explorations, adventures and crafts. Tray Play filled with provocations and invitations to play help children to play and learn at the same time.

13 recycled craft ideas for children

Turn your old cardboard boxes, egg boxes and toilet roll tubes into creative treasures that provide hours of fun and play. Upcycled and recycled crafts are cheap and often simple to make with a little imagination. Here are our 13 recycled craft ideas for children to make and play with.

24 easy lockdown craft and activity ideas for children

Whilst spending so much time at home with our children it can be difficult to provide varied, stimulating and engaging projects for them to do. Here is our top 24 lockdown craft ideas and activities for children to do at home.

Nature Trail Collections and Natural Sensory Play in a Tinker Tray

In the warm Spring sunshine we love to go on nature trails to collect an array of beautiful things! We really try hard to listen to the birds, the leaves rustling in the trees, birds singing and the crackling of twigs under our feet. We love collecting and displaying items in our tinker tray, where we can sort and arrange our treasures!

Fairy Small World Play in the Tuff Tray

Fairies are a popular theme. We love tuff tray play ideas. Our tuff tray gets used for a variety of activities and themes. This time is was small world play with fairies and our recycled cardboard treehouse.

Making Dinosaur Skeleton Bones

A great topic for boys and girls! My boys love Dinosaurs so I bought some shaped biscuit cutters which included the bone structures of them! We decided not to make biscuits – but used Air Dry Clay instead!

Air Dry Clay Christmas Decorations

These are so easy to do and my boys really enjoyed this one. They make ideal handmade Christmas gifts for teachers and family members. Ours will be wrapped in tissue paper to give out at school and for Christmas Day.

Let it Snow Scrabble Christmas Decorations

These scrabble letter Christmas decorations are really simple to make and look great on the tree – they also make great little Christmas gifts.

Christmas Reindeer Chocolate Crispies

These deliciously cute Reindeer Chocolate crispies are a favourite of ours at Christmas time. We usually make a batch to take with us when visiting family or for family parties.

Christmas Cork Characters

We love our recycled cork characters and these Christmas Corks are a lovely craft for the run up to Christmas. The Nativity Scene takes pride of place on our Fireplace and it is especially lovely as it was made by hand by us as a family.

Recycled Cardboard Christmas Town Display Scene

This lovely recycled cardboard Christmas Town scene looks great in a window or as part of a display. We re-used a large cardboard box for this large scene but you could use smaller boxes and piece them together.

Stop Motion Animation Winter Scene

We love creating small world scenes, but why not add an extra level of learning by incorporating ICT into the mix? Create your own basic stop motion animation. You can do this with Lego set ups or any small world scene that you create in any theme.