Shapes and colours are amongst the first concepts that babies learn and learning them helps to stimulate connections in the brain that will continue to serve your baby as they learn throughout their childhood.  Learning both shapes and colours with your baby can be fun for both of you.  Here's a fun idea on how to familiarise your baby with both.

Take two potatoes and cut them in half so that at least one of the cross sections makes a circle.  Now carve the other faces into a rectangle, square and triangle. You now have four large stampers!

Dip the face of the potatoes in finger paint and stamp different coloured shapes onto a large sheet of paper.  Practice the stamping and discuss each shape with your baby - count the sides on the shape and point your finger around each shape as you show them.  Start with a single colour and state the colour with each stamp: 'red circle', 'red square', 'red triangle', 'red rectangle'.  Wipe the paint off the face each time and then start on another colour.

When you have played with these for a bit, show the effect of mixing colours; demonstrate how two colours mixed together create a different colour.  Try mixing various combinations of colours to create a varied array.

Playing with shapes and colours will help to cement these concepts in your child's mind and start them on a learning path that will set them up well for school in a few years!

Children learn so many new words and concepts in their first few years, parts of the body are just some of the more complicated words they have to understand - why not teach them through songs?  There are lots of songs that help learn parts of the body, and you can make up or use established actions with all of them to help your babies remember all these funny words.

The Hokey Cokey (or Hokey Pokey as it's known in the USA) teaches arms and legs as well as basic moves and coordination.  Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes teaches those, as well as facial features ('eyes, and ears, and mouth and nose...').  Here we go round the Mulberry Bush has subsequent verses: 'This is the way we wash our hands...', 'This is the way we brush our teeth', and 'This is the way we brush our hair'. You can easily add in new verses to teach more too, as you can with 'If you're happy and you know it...' which also teaches parts of the body with matching actions.

Here's another great example, why not follow the Tweenies with this song?!

Your baby can learn parts of their body well before they are able to talk.  There's nothing more rewarding than being able to show off your baby responding to commands such as 'Where's your nose?', 'Where are your ears?' and 'Where's your mouth?'!

It's a nightmare scenario - finding that your creative toddler has taken a turn at home improvements by scribbling all over the wall in your front room!  While it's important to instill the discipline that crayons, pencils and pens are for use on paper only, why not give your little one's a wall that they can scribble and draw on with chalks?

Blackboard paint can turn almost any surface into a blackboard.  You can create a blackboard in your toddler's bedroom, or paint cupboard doors or the side of a cabinet or wardrobe.  Even inset panels in a door can be turned into a blackboard.  If you're nervous about having chalks used inside, you can create a blackboard outside using any available flat surface.

Blackboard paint can be purchased from most hardware stores.  Traditionally, as its name implies, it comes in black!  Other colors are available from more specialist stores, or online - look for 'chalkwall paint'.  You'll need to prime your surface first if it is at all glossy or an oil based finished (such as a glossed door, laminate furniture or over vinyl wallpaper).  Apply a coat of primer, then when that's dry, start applying your blackboard paint.  You'll need several coats - we'd recommend at least three, but read the paint tin for the manufacturer's own recommendation as paints vary in their consistency.  It will take two or three days from start to the point where everything is dry and ready to use, but once installed, your kids will have a canvas that they can be creative with whenever they wish!

When it gets really stained with light chalk dust, wash it down, apply another coat of paint, and it'll look as good as new again.

Here at ToucanLearn we offer a lot of art and craft based activities, besides keeping children occupied, there are very practical reasons why art and craft is important to learning children.

Before they can talk, art offers young children a way to express themselves and communicate ideas.  Just as their sounds may not make much sense, so their splodges and scribbles may not mean an awful lot to you, but they are communicating ideas and this gives children a sense of freedom that develops further with language.  They are also using their imagination and expressing what they see and experience in an abstract form.

Craft offers a way to explore the physical world.  Art is tactile, you are experiencing different materials and textures, and interacting with objects to understand how they 'work'.  There are malleable materials such as plasticine, sticky tack and dough; there are items that bend into shape and stay that way such as pipe cleaners, wire, even paper when folded and tucked into shapes.  There are runny substances like paints and glue, they can be poured and spread.  The variety of craft materials that a toddler experiences helps them explore the physical world and teaches the how different materials act.

Craft is about making decisions, not important ones, but decisions all the same.  The thought processes that go on whilst your little ones are being creative inform their approach to problem solving.  What are the options to make a googly eye stick to a piece of paper?  Which one is best in this situation?  How do I apply glue to the back of a small googly eye?  As adults these 'problems' are second nature, but to a young child, these have to be learned and the lessons learned at this stage of their lives will inform all sorts of practical needs throughout the rest of their lives.

Of course, craft is also about developing fine motor skills, the ability to colour in within the lines; to stick glitter to parts of the page; to roll a piece of card into a tube and stick it into place.  All of these and so much more rely on the ability to control hands and fingers in ways that are easy for adults but for children form an important part of learning.  How can they learn to write when they get to school if they still haven't mastered fine control of their hands?

In addition to being graded according to the Early Years Foundation Stage areas of learning and development, all the activities we offer at ToucanLearn are classified by one of four overriding key development areas: making, moving, learning and speaking (relating to communication more generally).  Most craft activities are classified as 'Making' activities with the focus on development of fine motor skills, but as you can see, art and craft activities help to promote development in all four of these key development areas!

Some of the best works of children's literature were written for, or inspired by, children and their toys, Peter Rabbit, Thomas the Tank Engine, Peter Pan, the Mr Men books and many more besides.  In the digital age, it is now so much easier to create your own books for your children, and have them professionally produced into real books.  You don't need to pay large sums of money to a vanity press, all you need is a computer and a little bit of talent!

There are lots of book creation services available to choose from.  If you want to create a picture book, even if it only documents your baby's early years, then most photo printing services offer photo books.  Take a look at Blurb, Snapfish or Bonusprint.  If you want to create an illustrated picture story book or a novel, then you may want to look at some of the more specialist options such as Lulu or Booksurge (part of Amazon).  You'll need to lay out your book into one of their specified formats, upload the file and very quickly you can begin to order professionally produced books.  You design every aspect including the cover and all the frontpages.

You don't need to write for a specific audience, just to please yourself.  If you do want to publish to a wider market, books created at Lulu or Booksurge can be made available for international sale at Amazon, and you can pay fees to be listed in standard book catalogues too so that they are available by ordering from any bookstore.  You don't have to get involved with distribution at all, you set your own asking price and receive a royalty on every sale.  You can choose how much you make on each book sold, generally it's more lucrative than going through a regular publisher, although of course you hope that a publisher would do more by way of marketing.

Where publishing was once the preserve of the elite, it is now something that anyone can achieve at a very reasonable price!

From their earliest days, babies and toddlers are creating art in their different settings, at home, at playgroup, nursery and school - the progression of their artwork tells a wonderful story of their development.  From early splodges and hand and footprints, through to detailed pictures of the family, their house and other scenes that they have witnessed.  Every parent is proud of their little one's achievement, and it's lovely to have see their artwork on display in your home.

Here are some ideas on how to display their artwork so that you can be proud of what they make, and they can feel special too:-

• Create a dedicated 'gallery' space for their art; it could be on the refridgerator, a wall in the kitchen, in the hallway or even in the bathroom!
• Look for some cheap frames that you can use in special places, such as the living room or bedroom.  You can shop around for cheap clipframes or frames that come complete with prints - just make sure that you can unclip the back and change the artwork for your own
• Change the artwork regularly so that there's always room for newer art
• Keep a large scrapbook and stick in pictures that you have talken down
• Record the date on the back of artwork and write it in the scrapbook too so that you can look back through your child's artistic development
• Turn your toddler's artwork into Christmas Cards or other custon items, see our post on creating personalised Christmas Cards
• Have your child's best masterpieces scanned and printed onto canvas - this turns art into a talking point!

As we enter advent, there's still time to create personalized Christmas gifts for friends and family, and to create your own Christmas cards!  No doubt you're really proud of your little ones, and what better way of showing the children off to your family than to send photo cards out for Christmas?  While you can photograph your kids and have them appear on the cards you send, you can also photograph or scan their original artwork and use that instead.

Personalized photo gifts were available long before digital photography, but recent printing technology has expanded the array of items that can be personalised.  Vistaprint, Snapfish and Moo are just some of the many companies that have joined the print revolution to offer low cost, custom print runs for Christmas cards and other gifts.  If they don't have the products that you want, just 'Google' for 'photo product', replacing 'product' with whatever you want (eg. 'photo bag', and you'll quickly find lots of suppliers to choose from.

Remember that whenever you have the option to upload a photo to customize a product, you can also upload a scan or photo of your children's own artwork!

Since announcing our tie-in to the Early Years Foundation Stage areas of learning and activity, we've had lots of really positive feedback and more great ideas from a number of our members.  We'd like to thank everyone who's dropped us a line, and we'd like ro encourage anyone with thoughts or ideas about ToucanLearn to drop us a line!

To prevent spam, and to help us manage enquiries, we encourage everyone to use the 'Contact Us' form linked at the bottom of every page of ToucanLearn.  If you prefer to email us, then you can do so, send an email to 'enquiries at toucanlearn.com', replacing the word 'at' with the traditional email 'at' symbol!

We enjoy hearing from you because it shows how many people are using our service.  We appreciate negative feedback as much as positive because it's those points that help us to improve our service.  So, whether you like ToucanLearn or not, please do contact us whenever you wish, for whatever reason; we're genuinely pleased to be able to help!

Cupcake decorating is a fun activity that children can enjoy at almost any age!  If you don't want to make your own cakes, you will find undecorated cupcakes very reasonably priced in any food store.  As well as cupcakes, buy a variety of decorations such as icing in squeezy tubes, marzipan, chocolate sprinkles, silver balls, chocolate drops and any other confectionary you fancy.

Why not invite some of your children's friends around and have a cake decorating party?  Sit everyone round a table and let everyone help themselves to the various decorations.  Mix some drops of food colouring into marzipan and work it through to an even colour - you can make an array of different colours.  The children can make models out of marzipan to sit on top of cakes and they'll love that they can eat them later!

Older children can make animals, dinosaurs, verhicles - anything they like!  Younger toddlers might just want to make squiggles and shapes and just play with the different textures.  Even babies can join in the fun, strapped into a highchair with bits of marzipan to squidge.  Be aware that marzipan contains almonds, so it isn't suitable for babies under 1 year, or for anyone suffering nut allergies.  Click here for a recipe for a nut-free alternative to marzipan from RecipeZaar - you might prefer to make this anyway as it's much cheaper than shop bought marzipan!

Children love imaginative play and will enjoy our ideas for obstacle courses and treasure hunts!  You can adapt these ideas for indoor or outdoor play, and for the garden or a park.

Set up an obstacle course in the garden by taking a variety of items, such as balls, plastic toys (kids' garden tools or some basic toys from inside), string or rope, flower pots and anything else that might be found in the garden.  Create obstacles where your children have to balance, weave in and out of hurdles placed on the ground, jump over and climb under things.  Create a 'river' with two sticks placed a couple of feet apart and have your toddlers avoid the crocodiles in it by jumping over them.  Place a stepping stone in the middle that they must step on.  Have them weave in and out of flower pots to avoid a bear that's chasing them!  Make up different imaginary obstacles and your children will soon run riot with their own thinking!

If you're stuck inside, you won't have so much space but you can still create snake pits to jump over, furniture to manouvre around and other creative problems to tackle!

Create a treasure hunt by taking stones and wrapping them in foil.  Hide them around the garden or indoors and have your children search for them.  Keep your obstacles in place, so they still have to take care crossing the river, avoid the bears and so on!

You only need to invent a few different obstructions and imaginary scenes and your children will be happy running around for ages!

Have you noticed that branded toys always come at a premium, for example a non-branded colouring book is just that little bit cheaper than one with all your little one's favorite TV characters? Well, todays tip is all about creating that branded craft for less...almost for free in fact!

When you're next out shopping, look for the free brochures and catalogues that stores put out.  Go into travel shops and pick up brochures for Disney vacations and any other themed holidays they might have.  You now have a terrific source of images to work with, many of which will include pictures of merchandise with your baby's favourite TV characters on!

Cut out a selection of pictures, and now you're ready to create!  Here are just a few ideas for what you can make:-

• Create a collage with all your favorite characters going about their business
• Mount characters onto cardboard, cut around them and stick them onto straws, you now have fun puppets to put on a show with!
• Make a birthday card for the next member of the family or a friend with a birthday coming up
• Have older children copy pictures of their favourite characters and create their own original artwork
• Take a shoe box or similar, stick characters all over and when they are dry, apply a layer of varnish - this makes a perfect stationary box for all their pens
• Make a paper chain with looks of plain paper, then stick a character to each link to create a themed room decoration
• Punch a hole at the top of several cardboard mounted characters and thread them onto string - this could make a room decoration, or for older children, create a pendant

You'll think of so many ways to bring your characters alive whilst avoiding the premium price associated with most branded goods!

You're probably familiar with the iconic branding of WD-40, but did you know that it can help to remove some of the tough stains and marks that the kids leave behind them?!  We've talked about cleaning stains left by the kids before, but today we'd like to bring the many uses of WD-40 to your attention.  Originally formulated to prevent rust, it was created by a determined scientist in California.  'WD' stands for 'water displacement', alluding to its rust prevention properties, and '40'  refers to the 40th formulation in perfecting the product for its intended use!

Here are some of the many useful tasks that WD-40 will take on:-

• cleaning crayon marks from almost any surface
• removing sticky tack, plasticine or gum from carpets
• removing marks left by stickers
• cleaning grime that has built up on toys
• removing ink stains from clothing, curtains and furniture
• removing glue stains from surfaces, including furniture and fabric
• removing sweets trodden into carpets

Of course, WD-40 has all sorts of other uses besides cleaning.  Here are some more tips that might be useful for parents:-

• lubricating moving parts on mechanical toys such as wind-up, friction and remote controlled toys
• lubricating stiff parts such as dolls arms and legs, wendy house doors and other moving parts
• lubricating furniture, such as draws and cupboard doors
• shining sea shells and stones to be used for craft
• lubricating craft punches
• preventing bicycles and outdoor toys from rusting
• preventing battery connections from oxidising

WD-40's website has a list of over 2,000 uses for their miracle product!  No, we're not being sponsored by them, we just feel that some of these tips might save you a lot of anguish sometime in the not so distant future!

Papier mache craft is one of the cheapest and easiest activities to undertake with the kids - it might be messy, but make your own paste and it is perfectly safe!  It's also a great activity to bear in mind if you suddenly get caught out on a rainy day with a depleted craft cupboard; you'll probably have the resources required in the home.

Make a child-safe paste by mixing one part flour to five parts water.  Place it in a saucepan, bring it to the boil and then simmer for 3 minutes.  Allow it to cool and you have your paste.

For paper, simply use old newspaper.  Cut it into strips, dip it in your homemade paste, then stick it onto your surface.  To apply, take each strip of paper, dip it in the paste to cover it completely then apply it to your mould or over the previous layers.  Add about three layers at a time then allow to dry - of you add too many layers at once it will take much longer to dry.  Build up to as many layers as you need to give the required thickness.

So, what to make?  If you have a balloon then use this as a mould.  Cover the balloon all over with papier mache, when all your layers are dry burst the balloon and you're left with a terrific head to paint and add features to.  To make a mask, just cover one half of the balloon and remove the balloon when your paste has dried.

Why not make a scene?  Take a large piece of cardboard, create some texture by scrunching up bits of paper and laying them onto your surface, then apply your papier mache.  When the paste has dried, paint it and add other features.  Use leaves and twigs from the garden or park to create a country scene, paint it blue and add plasticine ships to make a turbulent sea!

Try making a monster, or an elephant?  ...build a park, with a pond, for children or a treasure island?!  The possibilities are limitless; enjoy craft at its easiest and your kids will love to create!

Bathtime can be a stressful time of the day, everyone's tired, the bathroom can be a hostile environment, and the children may simply detest water - what can you do?!  Bathing is an important aspect of raising healthy children, so the key is to make it an enjoyable experience and a regular part of the bedime routine.

Unless your children have particularly dry skin you can bathe them every day and use bathtime as a signal to relax and wind down for the day.  Even at this stage of the day you can introduce games and craft and even if your children don't take to water naurally, with a bit of distraction they'll come to enjoy bathtime and even come to love it!

Bath Toys

Bath toys are readily available from toy stores and supermarkets.  Even if toys aren't designed specifically for educational purposes, simply having toys and water will lead to natural learning.  Your children will discover the properties of water, how it flows, how objects sink or swim and lots more.  Simply playing with water teaches children so many lessons.

Soap Making

Why not make your own soaps to encourage the children to clean themselves?  This is an activity before bath; soap making kits are readily available from craft and toy stores.  Make sure any kits state that the soaps are suitable for children as soaps can be caustic and irritate the skin, and make them up as instructed.  Add your own essential oils for a variety of scents.

Bath Crayons

Bath crayons are oil based crayons that you can use to draw and scribble on the side of the bath and also available from toy stores.  They are waterproof and scrub off easily (although best to clean them straight after the bath as they can become harder to scrub off if left for days!).  Young babies will enjoy scribbling, older children will love to draw pictures and practice writing their name, numbers and letters.

Bath Paints

If you like to make your own craft materials, you can even make your own bathtime paints.  Mix a mild, baby shampoo with cornstarch and a couple of drops of food colouring.  Make up several colours and you'll have a fun and safe paint to paint on your bath.  Make sure you wipe the paints away as soon as you finish bath because food colouring really could stain if you leave it for too long!

Wooden toys are all the rage again as fast growing oriental woods are rapidly replacing increasingly expensive, oil derived plastics, but they come at a premium, so why not look to make your own woooden toys?  Small wooden toys have become inexpensive over the last few years, but large dolls houses, hobby horses, rocking horses and wendy houses understandably demand a high premium.  Surprisingly, if you are at all into DIY, these need not be difficult to build yourself.  Your local hardware store, or out of town hardware depot, will have all the materials you need.

You don't need to learn how to cut old fashioned dovetail joints, how to whittle fancy posts, or how to fashion intricate parts.  Modern materials and design give you lots of fixings, premoulded parts and off the shelf pieces that make large woodworking projects much more manageable than they would have been 20 years ago!  Adhesives and paints have also come on a long way to give you non-toxic and weatherproof finishes.

Soft furnishings, fabrics and the like remain expensive, but as the cost of clothes has tumbled in recent years, it's not completely silly to look at buying new garments to turn into soft furnishings for your constructions or just for the teddy bears!

If you don't fancy designing your project yourself, there are plenty of books that will give you plans and instructions for projects for children's toys, soft furninshings and large constructions.  In a world where we look to buy everything and have it delivered to our door, it's easy to overlook just how much fun can be had in creating your own work, and how rewarding too!