This week at Kindergym @ Home we played with newspapers. Collect the used paper from around like house like junk mail, newspapers, wrapping paper, tissue paper. Raid your grandparents’, friends’ and neighbours’ recycling stash and then let the newspaper fun continue throughout the week!
Newspaper Sensory Play
Scrunching up left over wrapping paper or newspaper, or ripping sheets of newspaper into strips, the sound and feel of the crumpling/ripping newspaper is lots of fun. Encourage your little one to sit in the middle of the paper, kicking, throwing and catching newspaper balls.
Song: Shake my sillies out! (Playschool – Playschool Favorites)
Snowball Fight
Scrunch up newspaper into balls. Throw and catch the snowballs. Ambush an unsuspecting adult with a good sense of humour.
Song: I tricked you ( Franciscus Henri – Hooray for Mr Whiskers)
Newspaper Basketball
Scrunch up the newspaper and see how high you can fill the box with newspaper, by throwing as much newspaper back into the box! Use your left arm. Now your right
Newspaper Peek-a-boo
Use a transparent scarf or hands to play peek-a-boo in the box. Crouching down really low, and then jump up like a jack in the box. Hiding different toys in different boxes and play guessing games is also fun.
Song: There is someone who is hiding? (Playschool – Playschool Hip Hip Hooray)
Newspaper Freeze
Use crockery eg dinner plates, work together to trace circles of different sizes on the newspaper.
Cut out the paper circles, helping each other cut and stabilize the paper.
Clear a space to safely move! Spread out the newspaper dots & Crank up your favourite tunes and Dance!
Stop the music every 20 sec and when the music stops, you find a spot to stand on and “freeze”
Older kids: Remove the circles as you go, but don’t remove participants. Its lots of giggles to squeeze onto the last dot all together
Song: You can stamp your feet (Playschool – 50 Best Songs)
Newspaper chains/garlands
Cut up newspaper/junk mail into strips.
– How are you going to cut the paper? How wide/long will the links be? What happens when you use scissors with a decorative edge?
Link the paper chain together?
–What shall we use to join the links? What do you think will work? What else could we try-How many links long is our chain? Is it as long as your bedroom?
And here’s a challenge for the bigger kids: https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/paper-chain-stem-challenge/
Song: The paper song (Playschool – Oomba Baroomba )
Each time your little one rips, scrunches and throws, they are developing their critical thinking skills. When thinking, planning and organizing their world, children are experimenting, collecting data and making observations about what happens when. Through play, comparing size, textures, what is similar, what not, what paper scrunches, what doesn’t, what sound does it make. -this is research. This process is refined on a daily basis as the child grows over the next 5 years and beyond. It is interesting to note that when a child engages in activities requiring them to plan and think information floods the child’s neural pathways to the brain encouraging the neural pathways to connect and strengthen creating creative thinkers and problem solvers.
