How to make play dough with your child:

1. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Mix the oil, water, and a few drops of colouring in another bowl.

2. Pour the water and colouring mixture into the flour and salt, and mix with a spoon.

3. Put some flour on a surface and pour out the dough mixture. Knead the dough until it is smooth and malleable.

4. play, play, play! When storing, use the sealable plastic bag provided and store it in the fridge to keep it fresh.

This play helps children improve their physical abilities and control. It involves children using their entire bodies to develop coordination and balance. Examples of this play include dancing, ball games.

Social play

Playing with others, both children and adults, encourages turn-taking, collaboration, and sharing. This also develops language skills.

To foster social play, you can take your child to playgrounds as well as parent and toddler groups.

Constructive play

This involves creating something using natural materials such as leaves, stones, flowers, sticks, or manufactured materials such as paper, boxes, or recycled materials.

This helps children develop an understanding of distance and size, as well as creativity and imagination.

Invite your child to play with play dough, art and crafts, or blocks.

Pretend play

This involves children using their language and imaginations to create stories and scenarios through play. Children act out both real and fantasy play.

You can encourage imaginary play by providing props such as recycled materials, old clothes, and scarves for children to use to dress up.

To nourish children's language, activities like mealtimes, shared reading, alphabet learning, counting, songs, active games, art and crafts, and educational play dramatically improve infants language, whether it be in their home language or second language.

Reading to young children creates favorable attitudes towards reading, expands vocabulary, and fosters a close connection between parent and child.

While reading, you can engage your child in discussions about the plot, drawing their attention to the words, imagery, and meaning of the book.

Reading books to children opens their imagination and inspires their play, such as pretending to be a fairy, Gruffalo, snake, or any character in the book!

Its important when reading the book to make it fun! speak like the characters would in the book, make sound effects and make funny faces. Talk about the story and relate it to the personal experiences of the child. Remember, we want to build on and encourage as much language as we can!

Puppet's such as Polly or other toys are great to involve in the read-aloud with your child. You can take part in pretend play with your child by pretending that Polly the puppet or other toys can be used as props to be characters from the book.

Books inspire play for children and we can use themes of books to encourage children's play, such as arts and crafts, dress up, pretend play or scavenger hunts.

Another tip to have more books around the home is to get a library card from a local library and borrow more books for free. This is good for children to learn about libraries and have a choice in new books whenever they would like, encouraging positive experiences with books and reading.

HSE, (2022). Types of Play. HSE.ie. https://www2.hse.ie/babies-children/play/types-of-play/

Taylor, M. (2016). Using books to inspire play. Naeyc.org.https://www.naeyc.org/resources/blog/playing-stories-using-books-inspire-play