Making friends, especially if you are a toddler, is not always easy... some children are keen to have 'best friends', others go around in packs and some are simply not interested at all.  When you ask who they played with a nursery and they say 'no one' it can be heart-breaking.  But, we have to remember that some children are emotionally 'advanced' and understand the concept of having a friend; whereas others are more interested in playing along side another child with no interaction at all.

If your child is nervous of making friends or you want to gently encourage them to make some new friends, here are a few ideas for encouraging and guiding them.  Friendship is an important part of all our lives and the importance placed on making friends in childhood is demonstrated by the fact that 'Forming Relationships' is part of the EYFS and is a focus of Personal, Social and Emotional Development.

Here are some tips on how you can help children make friends:

• Give them plenty of opportunity to make friends: see lots of people and do lots of different activities
• Give them lots of praise when they do something kind to another person
• Don't force them or try to make them form friendships with people they don't like even if you like them!
• Try not to interfere when they are interacting or playing
• Be bold and approach people at playgroup and get to know them yourself
• Lead by example, chat to people and make friends yourself
• Talk about being kind, sharing and being a good friend while you are at home
• Support any efforts to make friends even if they fail
• Look at photos of friends and chat about how much fun they can be

Part of the Government's Early Years Foundation Stage areas of Learning and Development covers 'Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy' and one of the focuses is 'Shape, Space and Measures'; in order to introduce the idea of size and comparison, try this simple activity, especially if you have recently been to a zoo!  This can be done when walking along the street to playgroup or when sitting on a bus.  Make it a chatty conversation, and not a mathematical exercise.  Keep it simple and talk about the possible answers.

Ask your child some size related questions:

• Which is the tallest animal in the world?  A giraffe.
• Which is the heaviest animal in the world?  An elephant.
• Which is the fastest animal in the world?  A cheetah.
• Which is the smallest animal in the world? A tiny bug
• Which is the fluffiest animal in the world? A baby bunny?
• Which is the biggest animal in the sea?  A whale.

Go to the library and find an animal dictionary or encyclopedia and look up the animals to see what they look like.  See what other interesting facts you can find out.  What do they eat?  Where do they live?  Do they live in groups or alone?  You could also go on line and look for images of the animals and search together.

Try comparing the size of other things around the house too.  Which is the biggest cupboard?  Run and find it.  Which is the tallest lamp?  Run and find it.  Which is the smallest door?  Run and find it.

Mirrors are a great resource to use in any childcare setting and can be used in all sorts of different ways. When little ones can see themselves and what they are doing, its a great way of encouraging play and exploration and help develop a sense of identity. Choose round-edged mirrors that are large, scratch and shatter-proof. Encourage the children to be gentle before play begins.

Some ideas for mirror-based activities:

• Set up a mirror near the front door, and get each child to take a look in there each morning. Is it an excited face, a sleepy face or a shy face this morning?
• Children love to see themselves in mirrors. Get them to make funny faces and see how scary or strange they look.
• Get the children to look at each other in the mirrors. Try out some expressions in the mirror and get the children to guess how each of them feel.  Suggest a sad face, and a laughing face, a moody face and see if everyone can guess.
• Encourage them to touch the mirrors: are they real people or just a reflection? See if they will have a chat with the mirror image? Make it into a funny one sided conversation... show them how to do it if they aren't sure.
• Build up a tower or a construction and watch it fall down in the mirror.
• Try placing some mirrors at angles to each other so you create a whole little reflection world!
• Get some little characters to play with in front of the mirror. How many are there?
• Set up some blocks and try to move them about in from of a mirror. Is it hard to see which is real and which is a reflection?
• Act out some animal faces in front of the mirror and guess what they are!!
• Wash face, brush teeth and comb hair whilst looking in the mirror. Does it make it harder or easier?

Babies don't recognise that a mirror is reflecting their own image until they are between 12 and 18 months.  The classic test to see if a baby recognises the reflection as themselves is to use lipstick to place a bold mark on their face.  If they know that that are looking at themselves, they will reach up to touch the mark.  Mirrors are still fun for babies, however, because they help babies to focus on objects and track moving objects with their eyes.  They will also think they are looking at another baby and will try to interact with him or her.

More and more councils are collecting recycling now, which makes recycling household waste easier than ever.  However, before you pop them in the recycling bins, how about you have a bit of play time first!  It will be fun, and introduce the idea of recycling as a positive activity

• Squash your milk cartons: wash out some milk cartons or plastic bottles and squash them, squeeze them and try to stamp them flat. What is the best way to get them small?
• Cardboard boxes: try to tear the boxes into shapes and then try to put the box together again! Its harder that you think!
• Climb on a box: if you have a sturdy box, how about trying to stand on it (with some help) and see how long it takes before it collapses. Will someone else have to join you?
• Build up some boxes and cartons and throw a ball at them to see them topple over! Play 'Ten Pin Bowling'.
• Build a tower: how high can your tubs grow?  Build a tower to see how many you can place on top of each other before they fall over.
• Drumming: with some wooden spoons as sticks, set up a drum kit and bang on all the different boxes and tubs to see how they all sound!
• Arms full: see how many tubs and pot and boxes you can carry in your arms then walk about and see if any drop.  Who can carry the most?
• Sort all the different recycling things into piles and see if you can sort by size, colour, shape or material.
• Count all the boxes and tubs and see how many there are of each.

After lots of loud, exciting, destructive (!) play... see who can throw all the bits and pieces into the recycling bins.

This is a great activity to use up some of the Christmas packaging you might have and also have a go at making some cardboard cookies to play with.

Take some brown corrugated card packaging and cut out lots of varied cookie shapes.  Talk about the shapes you are cutting: are they round cookies, square cookies or heart shaped.  Then, cut some white paper into the same shapes to make the cookies toppings.  Think of some fun things to put on top.  Draw chocolate sprinkles, raisins, cherries, grapes, and so on, onto each of the pieces of paper.  Make sure you do a few of each.  Using some tape, stick the toppings on the cookies.

Ask your child:

• What are the colours of the toppings?
• Sort them into groups that are the same
• Count each group and then count all the cookies
• Sort them into groups of the same shape
• Ask for 4 cookies with different toppings
• Look at three cookies together with different toppings and then hide one.  Try to guess which one is missing
• Ask who would like to eat which cookies.  i.e. Granny would like the lemon one, Mum would like the chocolate one
• Lay out the cookies on the floor to make a big shape

Have fun!

Making a collage is easy, fun and a great way for little ones to practice their fine motor skills. Once assembled, they can see their work and touch it too experiencing all the different textures and materials. Collage is actually one of the areas of artistic experience that children should be exposed to within the EYFS, along with painting, drawing, printing, textiles and 3D.

So, how to go about having some collage fun:

1. Find your materials: go out into the park for leaves, to the shop for paper, look in the recycle bins for other materials. You could make the looking an activity in itself by talking about how each item feels, how heavy it is, whether it will stick onto paper and what colour it is.
2. Then you can start sticking and gluing!

Tips:

• Make sure the paper you use is heavy enough to hold the collage. You don't want it ripping.
• Make sure you have plenty of strong but non toxic glue so bits don't fall off!
• Make sure you have plenty of space to really get stuck in!
• Make sure everything is covered i.e. clothing and table tops to ensure no gluey accidents.
• Don't tell the children what to do necessarily; let them experiment!

Collage materials:

• Cotton wool, wool, string.
• Leaves, grasses, flowers.
• Tissue paper, wrapping paper, newspaper and magazine pictures.
• Glitter, sequins, beads.

Other associated activities:

• Foraging for the materials can be fun. Talk about looking high and low, up and down, round the corner etc. Use lots of different words to describe where you are looking and what you are looking for.
• Close work: look at the materials you find closely. Are they rough or smooth, are they prickly or bumpy? Again, describe the items and talk about them.
• Sorting: sort them into little piles and then put them in pots.  Label them for next time. All the buttons together, all the cotton wool together etc.
• Look at the letters that each material begins with: p for paper, and g for glue etc.

Learning to use scissors is a skill that takes time and practice to master. Just like learning to use cutlery or learning how to walk, the children need to be given guidelines to help them, rules to make sure they are safe and plenty of practice to get it right!

Here are some scissor activities to get them trying it out!

1. Holding the scissors - Show them where to put their fingers and how to operate them so they snip. Practice with of strips of paper or old wrapping paper: something easy to cut. Use all the snippings to make a picture!
2. Cutting in straight lines - Take some strips of paper about 8cm wide and see if your child can snip down the middle to make two smaller strips! Then snip the strips horizontally so you end up with lots of little square shapes. Then, snip the strips diagonally so you get a feathery effect.
3. Draw some curved shapes on some small pieces of paper and see if your child can follow the lies to make curve shapes. Glue them together, add some googley eyes and features to make a funny-shaped monster!
4. Shapes - Draw a Square, Circle, Triangle and Diamond on some paper and see if they can cut the shapes out! Colour the shapes and make a shape picture!

These days we can get everything we need from the supermarket whether it be food, medicine, photos, or cabbages but more and more people are trying to make the effort to shop locally from small independent shops rather than faceless supermarkets. Here's an idea for an activity to try and remind children (or teach them for the first time) that different produce used to (and still can!) come from different shops other than the supermarket.  Here are a few new shops to introduce:

• Butcher - selling meat
• Baker - selling bread
• Greengrocer - selling fruit and vegetables
• Pharmacist - selling medicines
• Cobbler - shoe mender
• Ironmonger - selling hardware and tools
• Grocer - selling food
• Off License - selling wine and drinks
• Haberdashery - selling fabric and ribbons
• Florist - selling flowers

Find a few items that might be sold in the above stores and try to learn the vocabulary together.  Play shops and be the different shop keepers selling their various wares.  It's all good practice and good fun!

A lovely way to get little ones involved and interested in reading and writing is to give them their very own letter box.  This is a way to encourage them to send and receive notes between their friends and family.

Find a cardboard box and decorate it. Place it somewhere the little ones can reach (outside their bedroom door or by the front door) and post them some mail now and again. Normally it is best to do this overnight, so they wake up In the morning and find a note waiting for them.

It might be a note from the tooth fairy. Or you could write a note to say how good they have been at nursery.  Its easy to print a certificate to say they have been good about going to bed or some other activity.  Members can find personalised certificates in Fun Stuff at www.ToucanLearn.com.

The notes need not be long, complicated letters. Simply write a short message on a piece of paper, add a heart or a smiley face and leave it for them to find. They will be intrigued by what it says. You could leave a picture for them to colour in or a hand drawn dot to do for them to complete. A little special gift (a pencil, sticker or play ring) could be attached too as a special treat. If you are good at folding, you could leave a paper fan or a paper plane.

Always make time to read the notes to your child, even if you wrote them yourself, and encourage them to leave you notes, drawings, scribbles too. Then you will have an idea of how nice it is to receive them!

Sometimes, you just want to break free - do something different, try something new, break the rules!  It's the same if you're a child.  So often we insist that the children follow a routine, do things in a certain order, and follow various rules.  However, just occasionally, its fun and exciting to do things in a different way.   Here are just a few ideas to suggest to the children to shake things up a bit.  You could ask their ideas and see what they come up with.  Make sure they understand though, that this is a special, unusual kind of day and not the norm...just in case they get any ideas!

• Have a picnic breakfast: pack breakfast and go to the park or countryside and have a lovely picnic.
• Paint the leaves: take a paintbrush and some poster paints and get the children to paint some leaves on low branches in the garden.  It's great fun!
• Spread a rug in the living room for a picnic lunch if it's raining.  Wrap the food as if you were going on a real picnic!
• Get the children to choose dinner.  Show them what you have in your fridge and get their suggestions for what to make with it.  You may need to pop out to get more ingredients.
• Blend a breakfast cereal.  Take handfuls of different cereals you have in the cupboard and make a new special brand.
• Have frothy hot chocolate (warmed very slightly in the microwave) rather than milk, just for a change.
• Make a robot out of cardboard boxes and cartons... any recyclable rubbish you find at home.  Be as creative or zany as you like and decorate the robot in a crazy way then invite him for tea!  Set a place at the table and serve up dinner!
• Get paintbrushes and paint the outside of the house with water.
• Eat something you have never eaten before. Go to the supermarket together and choose your menu.

All children love making a noise so why not encourage them to make their own instruments made from things at home. Here are some ideas:

Yogurt Pot shakers: take used yogurt pots and fill with lentils.  Cover with paper and then tape down to secure.  Decorate with stickers or pictures taped round the pot.

Crisps tube long shaker: put a handful or large pasta shapes into the tube and pop on the lid.  Tape down to secure.

Ice cream tub drum: put some dried bean or peas into a used ice cream tub and bang to hear them shake around inside.

Tubey shake: Take along wrapping paper tube and pop in a round ball or bell. Turn upside down to hear it roll down.

Trumpet: take a kitchen roll tube and decorate.  Add some tassels on the end and ribbons to make it look great  Simply toot down the tube!

Tin drum: take a biscuit tin and add some metal bottle tops or little metal spoons.  Shake for a or bang for a metal sound.

Marble rolling: pop some marbles in a small metal tin swirl them to make a metal rolling sound.

Plate tambourine: Use a paper plate and punch hole round the outside.  Take some nuts and bolts and metal items and tie them round with string or wool.  Shake to hear them clang together.

Now, just put on some music and have a jamming session!

Clothes Pegs are fascinating for children, they are a strange shape, unusual texture and have fascinating clippy capabilities!  They can be a source of great interest and fun - with a bit of adult supervision to ensure they don't clip them to their little fingers. Playing with pegs can be education in all sorts of ways.  Using pegs is a great way to improve fine motor skills.

Peggy Ideas:

• Count the pegs into a container.  How many are there?
• Sort them by colour into little piles.
• Put them into some used containers with lids and see the different noises they make when you shake them.
• Show your children how to open and close the pegs and see how many they can clip round a used ice cream box or container in one minute.  Then time them to take them all off again.
• Peg out some washing together or wash some dolls clothes and hang them out to dry.
• Print some photos.  Hang a string in your child's room and peg the photos to the line as a way of displaying them.  Or hang up art work like a gallery.
• If you have wooden pegs, draw some patterns on them with felt pens to make them more attractive.  Or stick on some sequins for a sparkly peg!
• Use pegs to hold together papers or drawings or letters from school.  Get your child to decorate the pegs to make them look really pretty.
• If you stick a magnet (from craft shops) to the back it could be stuck to the fridge door so you don't lose things.
• Get the children to match socks on washing day.  Ask them to peg them together and then you can fold them securely.
• Hide pegs in the garden and get the children to find them like a Peggy Treasure Hunt.

Thinking about things and remembering things is usually easy for children - they have excellent memories!  By the age of 3, there are trillions of of connections that are forming the brain. By doing activities and games with your children it can help in the formation of those connections.

Try these activities to see how good they are are remembering names and places.

What colour?

• ... is the neighbour's car?
• ... is Granny's front door?
• ... is Daddy's coat?
• ... is the nursery fence?

Take 5 things...

• Put 5 objects on a tray. Take one away and see if your child can spot what's gone?
• Choose 5 ingredients (a carrot, potato, leek, pepper etc) and put them in a sauce pan. Put the lid on and pretend to cook it  Then try to recall what when in!

Go to the shops...

• Play the memory game "I went to the shops...". Name an item you each bought as you take a turn and try to recall all the items as you go. You could choose alphabetical things to make it easier!

My name is... and I like to...

• Simply state your names in turn and tell the others what you like to do.  It may be true or made up!  See how many things you can remember.

I Went on holiday and I took...

• Choose items in turn that you took on holiday and see how many you can recall.

Games of this sort are all great to get children thinking and getting them used to recalling information.  It's a great way to see how well they are learning.

It's really a vital skill to have and telling the time can be easy to learn if you make it fun.  Teaching the clock can be hard, but once children get familiar they will feel confident enough to lear how to tell the time. 

• Start by counting the numbers together, get familiar with the clock face and the numbers.  Name the numbers and count round the clock.
• Watch a real clock and how the hands move round.  Spot the big hand, the little hand and the second hand go round and explain each tells us different information.
• Search for different clocks and watches and alarm clocks and digital time displays rond the house.  You'll be surprised how many clocks there are including the DVD player, oven, burgler alarm, alarm clock etc. 
• Listen to clocks.  Find clocks and watches round the house and listen to them.  DO they tick?  Listen to the ticks and explain each tick is one second.
• Go online and search for different clocks and watches to look at.  See if you can find a few videos of clocks chiming and ticking. 
• Make a clock.  Take a paper plate, or a round piece of card.  Make 2 hands for the clock and use split pins to secure them to the centre of the clock.  Write on the numbers in the correct place.  Decorate the face of the clock to make it look really swish.  Then use the home made clock to try and teach the time.  Start with the hour hand and move round to the different numbers to get the idea of the hours.  Then look at the minute hand and the number of minutes in an hour.

Take it slow and keep it nice and easy...

Kids instinctively love music, whether it's nursery rhymes, pop music, lift music or classical they do tend to stop and listen when they hear music being played.

All children, it seems, also like to make loud noises. Whether it's shouting, singing, blowing a trumpet, or just banging around they love to be heard. But what are the benefits of introducing music to children from a young age?

Why instruments are good for children

• Hand eye co-ordination. To hold a spoon and bang a saucepan lid takes aim, and action to make the noise happen effectively.
• Singing and learning new songs is good for children as it helps them learn new words and announciate words properly that they already know.
• Singing may also improve their understanding of words and encourage them to branch out with their vocabulary.
• Listening is greatly helped by music. Getting children to listen to the sounds of the music, beat out a rhythm and imitate the noise they hear is good for their listening skills and can even benefit their mathematical skills.
• Even if you can't sing or play an instrument, you can encourage your child to enjoy music. Play them lots of different types of music and listen to them together.
• Have a dance and try to hear whether the music is fast or slow. Good exercise!
• The children don't care if you can sing or not... as far as they are concerned you are playing and interacting with them so they are happy, so don't be discouraged if you don't sing pitch perfect! And, if they see you having a go... they will too!
• Make your own instruments by putting beans or pasta or lentils in a bottle to make a shaker or banging some tins with a wooden spoon.
• Do clapping and slapping games. Clap a few times and see if your child can copy. Then clap a rhythm and see if they can copy.
• Sing songs and nursery rhymes together. Sing loudly, softly, fast and slow.
• Try making music with your own body... slap (gently!) your cheek with a finger, or clap your thigh, flick and click your fingers, clap hands together.
• Do action songs... I'm A Little Teapot, Row Row etc.

Enjoy!