Monday 14 April 2014

Discovery Basket: Spring

Spring has sprung. Daffs, blossom, lambs and at the end of this week is Easter. 

I made a small discovery basket on the theme for L to enjoy and to focus some talk on Spring. As L becomes more and more chatty with a greater range of sounds it is becoming really important to me that we have lots of chances for high quality talk during play times now. Discovery baskets provide a great chance to talk and to introduce new vocabulary to both young babies and older children. I would use similar discovery baskets as focus activities in my classroom for those children for whom talk and language was an important focus. 

 

And then I had lots of other ideas of thighs to include and decided to supersize this basket. 


Ta da!!

Fluffy fabric, silky fabric and sheer net fabric all line an old under the bed box. I used pegs to secure the fabric slightly. 


I have included books which are L proof, ish as we still have to rescue the flaps occasionally. These books are loosely related to spring, lambs, farms and caterpillars with Peter Rabbit chucked in because a Peter Rabbit is included in the box. I have a seperate blog post to come on the Easter and Spring books featured in some of these photographs as well as others.


I raided the Easter aisle in Sainsbury's recently and found these lovely finger puppets and a wind up chick. L now regularly hands me the chick so I can make it cheep and jump around the floor. 

 
We are really lucky in that on our street we now have a lot of lovely blossom trees. On our walks we regularly stop to admire the heavy branches. We found a sadly fallen branch which we brought home and after seeing just how keen L was to eat the blossom I decided that putting it safely in a clear bottle was the way to stop this! It's nice that L can look and see the blossom and I am reassured that she won't eat it!! 



We had these two toys already, one is a squeaker and the other rattles but as a lamb and caterpillar they suited the theme. I found this lovely tin in Tiger and it serves a vague purpose in the box as L loves to put things in and out of buckets or boxes. 


Putting the massage ball in the bucket.

We also already had this wonderful plush Hungry Catterpillar which we usually play with as we read the book but works wonderfully in this box, I would also love a plush butterfly to bring out at the end of the story. 



L loves these textured balls and this massage ball from tiger is brilliant. It's pretty firm compared to her other one and L finds it suprisingly enjoyable to chew. 


These two fluttery balls feature farm animals as well as being appropriately coloured for the box. It's nice to have familiar toys included in this box as well as new things, such as the discovery bottles. 



8 comments:

  1. What a great basket and some great ideas here. We have the hungry caterpillar book and currently have the peter rabbit play book from our library, love them both. Poppet is getting that's not my lamb for Easter.

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  2. What a great idea, so many different textures and ideas. Fab! #MiniCreations

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  3. That's a wonderful basket! I have some of those finger puppets to go in plastic eggs for a Easter egg hunt this year. Last year we got Potato the Peter Rabbit Easter Egg Hunt book instead of an Easter egg. He still loves it, even though the flaps and pop ups haven't really survived.
    #MiniCreations

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  4. Oh, this looks lovely! I want to play with it!

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  5. OOOhh this is so fun! Its so colorful and so many choices! #MiniCreations

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  6. Great idea making up a basket for her x #minicreations

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  7. Grace says - Fab idea and so different which we always love at KidGLloves xx
    Lucas says - Very cool and it includes the Mother's favourite book character; the Hungry Caterpillar - High-5's for an awesome #minicreations

    Thanks for linking to #minicreations

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