Forest Floor Small World Play

As you may have guessed, we love a bit of small world play in the Collingwood household. Following on from the success of our rockpool small world, I thought we'd make another one, this time with a forest theme. Whenever you make a small world, I think it's important to already own a lot of the 'stuff' needed to make one. It's no good trying to make a small world farm spontaneously, for instance, and then realise you only have one cow and a sheep. One cow and a sheep does not a farm make. I try and collect things I might find useful as I go, as I see them and this makes things much easier when you eventually do get round to setting a small world up. This is why I chose a forest theme - having a young boy who is fascinated by insects and bugs, we already had a sizeable collection of plastic ones.

To make the 'forest', I used lots of pine cones and twigs, bark and conifer trimmings I collected from the floor of our local maze (yes, really!). I added some toilet roll tube 'logs' and a collection of stones/ rocks from the garden for creatures to hide in and under.

The animals were two sets of Animal Planet plastic animals (an insects/bugs one and a snakes, lizards and frogs one).

 

During our play, we talked about camouflage and the idea of predators and prey, habitats and species. We played hide and seek with the animals, which was really tricky considering the colour of the creatures and their 'habitat.' I'd love to hear your ideas for small world play you've tried.

Rockpool Small World Play

We've really been making the most of the good weather recently and welcomed the lighter nights and school holidays, which have enabled us to get out as a family and spend more quality time together. We feel so lucky to live where we do, in the countryside as well as being five minutes away from the beach. I love nothing more than going for a walk on the beach - it's probably my favourite place to be. I love the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the feel of the soft sand between my toes and the wind brushing my face. It's a place that you can really go to to forget any troubles and relax and unwind.

It's a long time since we've been to the beach and we've had a stressful last  few weeks so I thought we were about due a visit. So I bundled the children and the dog in the car, picked Daddy up from work (earlier than usual!) and we headed to the coast.

When I was a young child, I loved nothing more than to wander up and down the shoreline beachcombing looking for natural treasures. I'd struggle up the beach at the end of a day spent there with a pocketful of shells and stones. I still love to do it now. I never did anything with them, I was just so captured by their beauty that I just wanted to keep and treasure them. So when we all went to the beach that day, naturally we had to take home a few souvenirs. Tommy is really interested in creatures of any kind so he needed no encouragement in helping me search. We found a huge variety of shells, starfish, stones and seaweed that evening and brought them home.

As you can see, they were all very beautiful and I knew I wanted to do something with them but I wasn't sure what. That's when I came up with the idea of using them to make a rockpool in our tuff tray, which we involve regularly in our play.

We simply filled our tuff tray with water, sprinkled some play sand in the bottom and then arranged our treasures on top and added several brightly-coloured (albeit wholly unrealistic-looking) sea creatures!

You wouldn't believe how long Tommy wanted to play with this for - it lasted for an entire afternoon. And every day since, he's asked whether we can "Get that rockpool out." I'm going to try and adapt this later on by buying a few more realistic sea creatures, as our collection was pretty limited this time!

Dinosaur Small World

Another small world we've recently set up is a dinosaur-themed one. Again, we set this up in a tuff tray.

Materials/objects we used:
- playdough in Earthy tones
- tissue paper in various green/Earthy tones
- blue tissue paper covered with cling film for lakes, rivers, waterfalls etc
- a range of bowls for creating hills/mountains/volcanoes
- a range of different trees from a model railway set
- Lego plants and trees
- Schleich dinosaurs
- rocks, stones and twigs
- our dinosaur fossils we made. You can find instructions here: http://mummycollingwood.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/salt-dough-dinosaur-fossils.html.

Tommy loved using his dinosaurs to make prints in the playdough. Again, this small world was a big hit - it was played with for a few days in a row and he begged us not to tidy it away! I'd love to hear your ideas for small world play.

Pirate Small world

I thought I'd share with you the small world we set up recently. Tommy loves imaginative play - he becomes totally immersed in it and it's something that will occupy him for hours on end. 

When we set up a small world, we usually make it inside a tuff tray. This tends to keep all the materials, objects and "mess" pretty contained. It also means we can put it to one side to play with later or the following day if we so wish. We tend to keep our small worlds relatively simple, so they won't take long to set up or put away and use materials and objects that can be used time and time again.

Tommy has really been into playing pirates recently. Amongst other things, we've made a pirate sword, played a variety of pirate games (Pop-up pirate, Pirate Shapes and Yo Ho Ho!), made a treasure map and played in a storybook that turns into a pirate ship! Because we had quite a few pirate-related objects, setting up a pirate small world couldn't have been easier!

What we used:
- a variety of pieces of jewellery (necklaces, rings, bracelets)
- yellow foam cut into island shapes
- a Mega Blocks pirate ship and pirate characters
- a variety of shells
- Melissa and Doug treasure chest that came with a telescope, pirate flag and golden coins
- blue and white water beads
- blue tissue paper
- Lego Palm trees and plants
- bath toy sea creatures