This weekend, my brother sent me a video of his kids playing on the beach in Tasmania, it's summer there right now. Ok, I have to admit I was a little envious...I live in Canada and it's winter here, cold and snowy! But the video got me thinking and inspired a sensory play activity outside that encouraged exploration of the natural environment and ...

As a child, we always used recycled greetings cards to make our own jigsaw puzzles. My mum would give us a pile of recycled cards and a pair of scissors each and off we'd go. One year, being more than slightly competitive in nature, I decided that I would make a much better puzzle than my brothers and sister. I cut my card into so many tiny pieces ...

Last week we made salt dough decorations using flour, salt and water and biscuit cutters.

You can find our Air dry salt dough recipe here.

Top Tips when making Air dry Salt dough:

• The thinner you roll out ...

Have fun making paper chain decorations and develop your scissor skills.

What you need:

• Wax crayons, felt tips, paint, oil pastels etc.

• Plain paper (you can also use construction paper ...

Freeze small toys in water and challenge your kids to rescue their toys from the ice.

This is a great sensory play activity that provides opportunities for developing language skills, scientific understanding and problem solving.

What you need:

• Clean, recycled plastic food containers, or jelly/ice moulds ...

Finger painting is a great, creative sensory play activity. Have fun mark making with your fingers, hands and some paint and use your senses to explore colour and texture.

What you need:

• Non-toxic, washable paint
• Paint pot, or a washed recycled plastic container (for mixing paint in)
• Paint brush
• Pieces ...

Get busy and creative, turning recycled materials into life- sized images of you. Can you name and label the basic parts of the human body? What about organs like the heart and stomach?

What you need:

• Large piece of recycled cardboard, e.g. a flattened packaging box, or sheet of paper (Top ...

Give your kids some ice cubes and pieces of material, e.g. foil, newspaper and bubble wrap, and challenge them to come up with a way to stop the ice cubes from melting.

This activity is a great way of initiating an investigation into what materials make good insulators. It promotes the development of scientific understanding and problem solving ...