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Play and Learn

Explore new activities and support your child's interests, creativity, and learning needs.

Home Activities

Here are some activities for babies...

Blowing Games Copying Games Faces in Lids Fine Motor Skills Heuristic play handout Mirror Play Number Rhymes Nursery Rhymes Sand Play Sensory Bag Sensory Bottles Shakers Sharing books and stories with your baby Treasure Baskets Tuff Tray Water Play

...and here are some activities for toddlers...

Animal sounds Bathing Babies Bird Feeders Bubble Snakes Bug Hunt Cloud Dough Den building Edible Slime Exploring Ice Fine Motor Activities Gloop Leaf Rubbing Leaf Sticking Listening Walk Making Playdough Mark making Marshmallow Playdough Mirroring Game Mixing Ingredients Musical Instruments Obstacle Course Painted Pebbles Pasta Threading Photo Scrapbook Posting Role Play Singing Skittles Sock Puppet Stop and Go Game Story Bags Target Spraying Tea Party Traffic Light Dancing Water Painting

...and here are some links to more resources from around the Web:

  • Nursery rhymes and songs from the BBC
  • famly.co blog
  • Booktrust
  • NSPCC Guidance on look, say, sing and play
  • Wriggle and Rhyme by BCP libraries
  • Cosmic Kids Yoga

Your Feedback

Below is some of your feedback on the activities above. We would love to hear yours!
Contact us via: southbournecc@ymcabournemouth.org.uk.
You can also send us your thoughts or make suggestions of things you would like to see on this page!

Thank you for the activity sheets, I have had a go at a few adapted them to what we have at home (All lids are superglued on!)

The photo cards are his favourite so far and are really portable when that becomes possible again. Despite my best efforts the texture book is already looking worse for wear but he does enjoy professional texture books and pop up books and is starting to help me turn pages.

I've taken some pictures so you can see how they turned out.

Kind regards,

Theresa

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Thanks so much for the extra handouts. So far we have done the basket of items around the household. She loves exploring everything - with her mouth!

I'm looking forward to trying the faces one, getting some photos printed - hopefully this will help as well having been away from people for a long time.

I think I will do the book as well, she loves scratching at things like jeans, sofa, her playmat, carpet!

Kelly

Love the fun activities to try with Harry. Sometimes when your busy, you don't always think of new things to try.

We often look in the mirror together, but normally lots of smiley faces. Harry found it very amusing seeing me pull different faces and pretending to cry.

Emily

Many thanks for the handouts, I love the idea of the faces in lids! I hadn’t thought of something like that so it’s great to try something different, we’re collecting lids l where we can & doing different faces in them!

We’ve started reading more to Layla as well as she is much more engaged with the picture books we have. We have a collection of Miles Kelly books which are great for pictures & some old classics like the Beatrix Potter collection...brings back memories from when I was younger!

Thank you again for the new ideas, it’s always great to try new concepts for Layla’s development :) We hope you are managing to enjoy some of this lovely weather, take care & stay safe.

Sarah