Excellerations® Standing Puppet Theater and Big Mouth Animal Puppets from Discount School Supply (gifted) are quite the most underrated beneficial toys for a child. Puppet play whether guided by an adult or the child will benefit the child’s development in the early years in so many ways. A theatre alongside the puppets have the potential to improve language skills, creativity, social emotional awareness, imagination, role play and so much more. Language development is enhanced through each verbal interaction as they listen, mimic, or initiate the play. The puppet can be the voice or instructor social skills such as manners or to use their words to communicate needs or expressions. Emotions in the early year develop so rapidly and sometimes feel so much larger than they can grasp. The puppets are the perfect way to teach children about the wide range of emotions and how to process them. There are so many more benefits of puppet play in the early years. The power they have to deliver information to children and help them retain it is like no other toy. Puppet play will let a child be able to connect and set a foundation to retell information they've learned and remember it.

Just in time for the Holidays Grow Wild Co. has a promo and giveaway you can’t pass up! Promo: $100 Off a Mini Mud Kitchen along with a Giveaway: Geoboard for US residents only.   To Enter on Instagram:  1)Follow @growwild.co and @tinkerwonderplay  2)Tag as many friends as you can to enter! Each tag must be in a separate comment.  3)Like and save this post.  Enter to win by Wednesday, December 2nd Winner announced on December 4th. Random generator will pick the winner. Winner will be announced over our two accounts only, via Instagram stories. **Disclaimers. Promo code will be active until December 9th for holiday delivery. Promotion is for the Mini Mud Kitchen and shipping rates will apply. If the winner is local to the San Francisco Bay Area, Grow Wild Co. will honor shop credit towards a Deluxe Mud Kitchen. Geoboard will be shipped even if a kitchen is not purchased. This giveaway is not affiliated or endorsed by Instagram. Now a little about this invitation to make hot cocoa! You can use one packet of hot cocoa with water or you can add brown liquid water colors. Provide foam cubes and pom poms as marshmallows, mixing utensils, camping cups/bowls and tis the season for hot coca! When children are given the opportunity to play it is one the best ways to make connections across and amongst many learning opportunities. They are not just playing with hot cocoa, it is science and math in action; helping to lay down basic foundation and giving them the tools to enhance their cognitive skills. Through pouring, scooping, measuring they explore these concepts. Children also gain physical learning through water play, such as precision in pouring, eye-hand coordination, and other skills. Exploring with water is captivating, engaging, engrossing and absorbing to almost all children. When a child plays engages in sensory play alongside dramatic play the variety of materials and textures are stimulating the mind & body while igniting their imagination. It is play based learning at its finest, stimulating the 5 main senses, & it's child-directed exploration.

Recycled berry baskets, cups, & pom poms are all you need to invite a child to create a Christmas tree STEM style! STEM Challenges are a great way to get children thinking and doing even with simple supplies like these recycled items. Opportunities for hands-on play with different materials will allow children to learn and extend their knowledge and creative thinking skills. STEM preschool invitations are designed to engage and stretch their thinking by problem solving. Introducing the engineering and design process is a natural fit due to the fact that children already like to build. Obviously depending on the age of child there can be a great deal of mess, this is part of the process for a child. It is all about your threshold as an adult for how much mess you are comfortable with. There is no wrong or right way to do this activity, the possibilities are truly endless, and there is beauty even in all the mess. Safety Notes: Anytime a child, no matter the age, is provided with or near any choking hazard supervision is of the utmost priority. Anytime boundaries need to be established to ensure safety before inviting a child to play is a great opportunity to guide a child to interact with objects and materials in a safe manner. Therefore having discussions or modeling before they engage in loose parts play is ideal. If it is not within your threshold of comfort to provide your child or children in your care with loose parts that is completely understandable.

If you don’t save pouch tops already start doing them now! They are such versatile and colorful recycled items that can be reused for process art, loose parts play, creating and tinkering. For this invitation to create it will specifically focus on threading the caps to create holiday garlands/wreaths or making gifts such as a mobile or jewelry. When a child threads objects they are practicing using their fine motor pincer grasp in order to manipulate the caps. They enhance their fine motor skills by building hand muscles and dexterity which are essential for a proper pencil grasp. Their hand-eye coordination is enhanced while being able to line up the holes on the caps with the string. Color recognition and visual discrimination are enhanced when the children are recognizing the differences in the colors, putting the caps in groups, creating patterns, or sorting them. With just string and bottle caps the possibiltles of creating unique holiday decor and gifts are endless. Jewelry: Mobile: Garlands & Wreath:

To set this invitation we used our Grow Wild Co. Mud Kitchen all with natural materials that was foraged. From acorns, moss, twigs, leaves, rocks, pinecones, water to mud, this kitchen was filled with plenty to create a Thanksgiving Dinner. Outdoor mud kitchens provide opportunity to practice practical life skills, make sense of the world around them through dramatic play, and engage in science by experimenting with natural materials. Nearly all children are drawn to mud and messy play is of great importance. Research has shown that there are endless benefits in playing with mud/natural materials and building healthy immune systems. Learning through play is all about allowing children to foster a myriad of skills at their own developmental level. A mud kitchen is an optimal creative environment where it meets the diverse needs and interests of children at their own pace while instilling wonder and play. With all the cooking that is happening with the holidays approaching this invitation is the perfect way to connect what’s going on in the world around them and also igniting their imagination.

Children have a natural desire to make sense of their world, to create order. Play is the greatest way for a child to process the world around them. Small world play is simply when you set an invitation to explore where children use items to engage in scenes from their own experiences, environments, books, pictures, fairytales, or to expose them to new ones. Small worlds are perfect for exposure to different habitats and an easy way to incorporate loose parts + sensory play materials to enrich the experience and make it more realistic. To create this Forest Small World Play in a sensory bin I placed tree blocks , neutral tree blocks , forest animals , acorns, leaves, moss, rocks, flat marbles, pine cones, moss balls and fake grass. These types of invitations are an ideal platform for nurturing children's imagination. Play in this form provides them with an opportunity to explore new materials, act out scenarios from real life, build language, practice social skills, and gain an understanding of the world. Safety Notes: Anytime a child, no matter the age, is provided with or near any choking hazard supervision is of the utmost priority. Anytime boundaries need to be established to ensure safety before inviting a child to play is a great opportunity to guide a child to interact with objects and materials in a safe manner. Therefore having discussions or modeling before they engage in loose parts play is ideal. If it is not within your threshold of comfort to provide your child or children in your care with loose parts that is completely understandable.

What may seem like an easy developmental milestone to conquer, learning to take things in and out of containers can be quite the tasked for a baby/toddler. Typically babies/toddlers naturally learn to take things out before putting them. Therefore an invitation to explore foraged loose parts to drop in a bottle, exposes them how to learn to put different objects in the container through play. This invitation is so much more than a bottle and loose parts. It’s an exploration that a child can play with, engage with, and be successful with. All the while they are enhancing fine motor skills, hand-eye coordiation, cause and effect, and spatial awareness. Having an invitation that provides a child to focus and work on something that they can conquer instills confidence and gives them a feeling of mastery. Safety Notes: Anytime a child, no matter the age, is provided with or near any choking hazard supervision is of the utmost priority. Anytime boundaries need to be established to ensure safety before inviting a child to play is a great opportunity to guide a child to interact with objects and materials in a safe manner. Therefore having discussions or modeling before they engage in loose parts play is ideal. If it is not within your threshold of comfort to provide your child or children in your care with loose parts that is completely understandable.

The integration of literacy into visual arts strengthens literacy skills as well as fostering creative thinking. After reading the story "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds you can set out this invitation to paint by offering Colorations® Tempera Paint on butcher paper from Discount School Supply. You can take a piece of cardboard or construction paper and cut out a circle in the middle. In the story one of Vashti's masterpieces is where she painted around a circle, therefore inviting the child to explore this technique of painting with a negative space connects the literacy experience. There is something about the hole that inspires some real interesting creativity in this invitation. The progression and layering of this painting process is amazing to watch. Creative activities, like painting, help the brain develop. The right side of the brain is used for emotional and creative responses, while the left side of the brain focuses on analytical processes and logic. Painting benefits children by using both sides of the brain. When children develop a painting they choose the elements, match and mix colors etc and at the same time look critically at what they have done. This connection between the two sides is how they reach their full potential.

Environments® earlySTEM™ Specimen Viewers encourage little scientists with real plants and animals! Children can hold, turn, and examine bug and plant specimens. Through observing the insect and plant anatomy it broadens their knowledge in the world of science. The viewers provide an intuitive way for child to get up close and personal with the specimens. Adding the light table to this experience is an excellent resource for sensory input. Children are often calmed by the glow of the table and the visual stimulation enhances their experience as they explore. Also adding actual figurines and similar materials that represent the specimens bring is a more hands on sensory element to the invitation. With the holiday’s approaching check out these Specimen Viewers and so much more on Discount School Supply’s Gift a Guide.

Absorbing nature around us and gathering natural materials as much as possible in the early childhood setting provides opportunity for the child to connect and become aware of the world around them. Yvonne Lacet is an internationally celebrated artist and photographer who works on projects in which the landscape, and nature play an important role. Her book Leafy Critters looks to the natural world for inspiration and artistic materials to engage children or adults to create animals through natural materials. To set this invitation you can go forage a variety of twigs, leaves, stems, acorns, rocks, and flowers. Place the materials in a tinker tray, provide a base of ( thick paper , mirror , light table , contact paper , or tray) and let imaginations run wild. Open the pages of the book to provoke the child to replicate or be inspired by the the designs and patterns within the book. As they do this it will challenge their imaginations to think outside the box with natural materials and also provided a great way to pay attentions to all the details nature provides. It’s an amazing way children can explore textures, express creativity, and connect with the natural world.

The power of wonder and laying the foundation for that creativity through the process of art is essential to children. "When children explore art ideas, they are testing possibilities and working through challenges, much like a scientist who experiments and finds solutions. Art allows children to make their own assessments, while also teaching them that a problem may have more than one answer. Instead of following specific rules or directions, the child’s brain becomes engaged in the discovery of “how” and “why.” MaryAnn Kohl Discount School Supply’s Paint Scrapers are the perfect tool for exploring and experimenting with resist art techniques. Scraper Art can be used to reinforce important developmental skills; such as, eye hand coordination, fine motor skills and creative expression. Scraper Art also enables children to explore paint media, color theory, shape designs, predict outcomes and to learn about the important principle of cause and effect. The added beauty of this invitation is that it’s extremely calming and fun for adults to do as well! To do this invitation you or the child who is old enough need to place dime sized dots or designs of paint ( BioColor , Tempera , or Acrylic) followed by letting the child scrape the dots and drag the colors to form abstract designs. I would recommend using thicker paper . This would also be such a beautiful gift that you could frame and give to your loved ones for the holidays!

This invitation is set with Discount School Supply’s Environments® earlySTEM™ Life Cycles Nesting Puzzles plus small world habitats of the animals. The puzzle blocks focus on familiar animals: butterfly, frog, chicken and show each of the life stages as a separate, identified puzzle piece with actual full-color photos and text. Teaching children about life cycles is a perfect way to help them understand the world around them and to connect them with nature. Often times when children are interested in animals they love, they have lots of questions. These hands on visuals are perfect for deepening their connection with understanding the animal. Setting small world play alongside these puzzles to invite the child to make a real life connection with the information they are learning about the animals, specifically their habitat. Many small worlds incorporate sensory play materials to enrich the experience and make it more realistic. Since the hands are the instrument of learning sensory experiences are essential in early childhood. “If it hasn’t been in the hand, the body and the heart, it can’t be in the brain,” Bev Boss With the holiday’s approaching check out these Puzzles and so much more on Discount School Supply’s Gift Guide.