Get silly and messy with your kids!!! (Creative Play in General)

Member Name: KELLY170980

Product:	Creative Play in General
Date:	11/11/08 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes you and your kids laugh, and hopefully helps them express themselves more freely

Disadvantages: messy and sometimes takes planning, but is so worth it!!

There are so many things parents and children can gain from creative play, now do not get me wrong you have to plan these things and it does cause some mess dependant on the activity you have chosen, but if you are anything like me...at the weekend, I just wait till they go to bed to clean up, it's the easiest way!!!

I try and do lots of activities, one because I want my children to have some great memories of their childhood and plus my husband thinks I was a blue peter presenter in a former life!!!!

Here are some of the things we have done recently, we try and do some things with my Daughter and Son separately and then together dependant on what we are doing at the weekend as a family, for e.g., if my little lad goes to footie with his dad then ill try and make the activity a bit more girly and vice versa if daddy is having some daddies girl time!!! She has him wrapped round her little finger!!! Then ill try and do some boys type activities, and it's the same with my husband, he always tries to do some girly things as well, as he tends to do many things with our little boy as they have many common interests mainly Football!!!! But he always said he wanted to have a close bond with our daughter like he has with our son, so it's quite funny watching him having dolly's tea parties, and a few weeks ago he actually let her paint his nails!!! Was hilarious!!!

Anyway here are some of the things we have done recently

Girly activities

***Catwalk madness ***

You get loads of old clothes, hats, belts, shoes, beads etc and dress each other up, do each others hair and make up and then put the music on and do little catwalk shows...... sounds silly I know, but we loved it.
My little girl had my hat from a wedding I attended on..... My pink body top with a diamante belt wrapped round her so looked like a dress...my high heels..... Loads of necklaces etc.... it was just one of those classic picture opportunities!!! We put the music on virgin on demand, and played all the high school musical tracks that she loved....so imagine this walking up and down our living room singing "fabulous" at the top of her voice!!! I could not stop laughing!!!
When it come to my turn....well lets just say I looked more like a drag queen than a catwalk queen.... She put pegs in my hair!!! I had green eye shadow on, and the lipstick was smudged all over my face.....and I was wearing wellies with a dressing gown!!!! Attractive hey!!!!

*** Jewellery Boxes and jewellery***

We decorated a shoe box, with paint and glitter and stickers etc and made all different kinds of jewellery out of pasta, and we made friendship type bracelets out of wool, we made some brooches out of pipe cleaners and I had a few birthday badges that had been left from her cards so we just recycled the backs of them to make the brooches.
Again was really good fun and she loved showing the boys when they got back from the footie.


Boy's activities

***Spy stuff***

My son has just got into spy related things, so my husband had taken our little girl to his mums for the afternoon and I had some quality time with my son.
We did some secret messages to each other; one way was to use a candle and then paint over what the other had wrote, and another was a cryptic code...when a 1 stands for a and 2 stands for b and 3 stand for c and so on and on.... Was good fun.
We made spy equipment from cardboard boxes and old tubes etc we had, so we made some spy goggles, and secret id cards, and maps and secret documents etc etc....was brilliant fun and my son loved it.

And that night we watched spy kids, and had pizza and popcorn was really good day.

***Treasure boxes***

This activity is the same as the jewellery box one really but we made the shoe box into a treasure box and we put in chocolate coins and he put in some of his footie cards etc, he then hid the box and made me a treasure map and then myself, my husband and daughter went to find it according to the map!!! It did not quite work the way I wanted, as he had cheated slightly, but was still really good fun x


Things we all love to get involved in

Xfactor - we all sing and dance and dress up !!!! It's so much fun ...although my hubby always tends to volunteer to be Simon Cowell so he does not have to perform...!!! It's great laugh, and my children love to sing and dance.

Cooking - We all love to cook in our family, so we often will make cakes and biscuits etc, and the kids like helping with Sunday dinner as well

Cleaning up!!! - I know this sounds silly...who likes cleaning up!!! Well my two kids love doing cleaning, my son loves to help hoover his room and my daughter well, she is a domestic goddess, she will help with anything, she especially likes to put the shopping away when it gets delivered, or cleaning the bath!!! I'm defiantly just enjoying this while I can because I'm almost certain that this will change!!!!!

Drawing ...... we recently had some rolls of lining paper we had not used, so we used it one Sunday afternoon and drew round each others body and made life size pictures of all of us, was a laugh and made use of something that would of either been thrown away or put in garage for forever and a day.


Creative play is a brilliant way to get your children involved and interested, I think that although I feel academically I want my children to do well, I also want them to be able to have different activities that have helped then express themselves and also find hobbies and passions in life through this kind of play.

Summary: This will help your children gain interests and hobbies and gives them an outlet in which to express