During the coronavirus pandemic, Pippins staff began assembling this Home Resources area to help support our families through lockdown. We wanted to ensure that all the children in our community continued to have access to fun, enriching activities and learning experiences, even while the government was asking most of us to stay at home. To date, we have posted over 150 resources in this area, which you can use at home with your children. These activities are meant to engage and inspire you and your children, not to make extra work for you. Therefore, please pick and choose only those activities that you feel are most suitable for your family.
Help your child to cut a pizza-shaped slice out of a paper plate, then glue the point of the pizza slice to the opposite edge of the plate. Voila! You have made a fish. Now let your child go nuts with paint and decorations. If you don’t have a paper plate, this craft can also be done by cutting a circle out of regular paper.
What is your child’s favourite animal? With Google’s new 3D animal feature, you can make a tiger – or lots of other animals – appear right at your kitchen table. Here’s how to do it:
1. Use your mobile or tablet to do a Google search for the animal you would like to meet (e.g. ‘tiger’).
2. In the search results, you should see a white box that says ‘Meet a life-sized tiger up close.’ In that box will be a button labelled ‘View in 3D’.
3. Once you’ve tapped the ‘View in 3D’ button, you will automatically be switched over to your phone/tablet’s camera.
4. Move your camera around a bit and, after a few seconds, a moving, breathing 3D tiger will suddenly appear on your screen, as if it was standing right in front of you.
Looking for some other animals to invite to your next family meal? Lions, penguins, pandas, hedgehogs and sharks are all favourites!
Also called kinetic sand or cloud dough, moon sand has an amazing texture and can provide hours of sensory play for your little ones. We use moon sand at Pippins quite often, and the children love to get involved with making it.
Making moon sand only requires two ingredients – plain flour and some oil (vegetable, canola, baby, or any sort of oil will do) – but adding extras such as food colouring, scented oils or even some glitter will ratchet up the fun. Find instructions for making moon sand on parentingchaos.com.
Download and print the Shape Matching Game pieces from Primary Playground, then take turns with your child to match the pictures of real-life objects to their shape. Add more complex shapes as your child’s confidence grows.
Clap along and follow the actions as Jackie sings the Musical Bumps theme song. Then she reads ‘Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency’ by Cressida Cowell.
This is a simple and tasty science project that is great for kids of lots of different ages. All you need is some double cream and a container that won’t leak – a clean jar, an empty water bottle, or a zip and seal bag will all work for this. Just fill the container up to halfway with cream, make sure it’s closed tightly, and shake until you create butter! Kids will feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment when they get to spread butter that they made themselves onto their morning toast.
Visit Healthy Little Foodies for more details and to help you explain to your kids why this experiment works.
Do you have a copy of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle? If not, you and your child can watch this lovely animated retelling. Read the story (or watch the video) together, then download and print this caterpillar hat from Primary Playground for your child to colour.