Some play ideas for you

Rainbow Curtain Fun

Take a rope and tie it between two kitchen chairs to make a washing line (we used a skipping rope). Pop some shower curtain rings on the rope and your child can have fun threading playsilks through the rings. My four year old was really engaged in this activity and loved ‘hanging out the washing’. It’s great for developing manual dexterity.

Once she’d done that, we decided that it would make a great rainbow theatre curtain that could be swept open and walked through. So it ended up turning into a little concert stage and we took turns appearing through the curtain and singing songs, with lots of clapping and bowing. We may well use it as a puppet show curtain later on, too. It’s very easy to assemble and pack away again. Have fun!

 
A Medieval Headdress

My 4 year old can’t get enough of any sort of costume.  This one is a medieval style that’s easy to assemble (and dismantle!) with no sewing required.

Just take a long strip of bubble wrap about 13cm wide, and roll it a few times until it makes a firm tube.  Put some sticky tape along the seam to keep it together.  Then wrap this tube around your child’s head to determine how much of  it you need.  Leave a tiny extra allowance so it’s not too tight, then trim it off and sticky tape the ends together to make a circle.

Next, take a playsilk, drape a corner into the circle and wrap the length of the playsilk round and round your tube circle.  Tuck the ends in and you’re done!

  

                                                          

Pick another playsilk for the veil and pop it on your child's head.  Then place the circle firmly on their head and you have an instant medieval outfit!  It would also be perfect head attire for a nativity costume for either girls or boys. It’s a quick and easy way to keep a veil on, even during active play.  (See the photo on the left of the princess escaping the clutches of the “dragon”).

When you’ve finished with that, just take it off and unwrap the playsilk from the circle.

Keep the circle in the dress-up box for next time!

A Superhero cape

Today we picked out a vibrant blue playsilk, draped it around my daughter’s shoulders and she ran around the house and the back yard being a super hero. The silk is so soft and flowy and it billowed behind her. It was the perfect superhero cape!

 Sing a Rainbow

Part of motherhood that I really enjoy is unearthing all of those nursery rhymes and songs I knew as a child, but had long since forgotten about. This is another gem from Ruth, a wonderful children’s music teacher I know, who uses her set of 7 playsilks to “Sing a Rainbow” with her students.
Tie each silk together in the order of the colours in the song to make a long colourful rope: red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. Then you or your child can pull each silk out of a box as you sing along.
We had some outdoor fun with a variation of this in the back yard. We formed the rainbow rope into a circle and Miss A ran around it, singing along as she passed each colour. Then she tried stepping and jumping in time around inside of the circle, where the circumference was a bit smaller.

Dress-ups

This is probably the most popular use of playsilks with my daughter at the moment.
She often asks for a ‘princess dress’ which is a playsilk wrapped around under her arms and tied it at the back. You can fold it before you tie to make it the right length for your child.
She also loves to see how many silks she can put on at a time. Here she is with a hat, dress, belt and robe. The robe is like a reverse ‘princess dress’. Start at the back, bring it around under her arms, but then tie the ends at the back of her neck, like a halter neck. It provides an extra bit of ‘swish’ to the outfit.
What can I say, kids love colour!

Peek-a-boo fun for growing brains

Peek-a-boo is such a simple, easy game to play with babies and it’s even more fun with a brightly coloured playsilk. My son is 10 months old and he delights in pulling a playsilk over his head and then yanking it off again with a giggle. Our playsilks are a little sheer, so he is able to see through one when it covers his face. I tested this theory out myself by playing ‘Jack is Quiet’ with him, hiding under a silk and then letting him yank it off my head. I could see him from under the silk, but he couldn’t see me. I managed to catch a little bit of it on video (be warned that I’m not much of a singer, but thankfully this song has only one note!):

Peek-a-boo is not only fun, it’s a way to help babies understand that people and objects exist even when they are out of sight, also referred to as ‘object permanence’. It’s an important cognitive developmental milestone. A variation on this game might be to take a favourite small toy, cover it with a playsilk and then ask your baby to find it. If they lift up the silk and look for it, they are aware that it's there even though they can't see it. If they appear confused by the disappearance of the toy, lift up the silk and show them where it is. With a bit of repetition, they will soon understand what's going on. While every baby is different, this milestone is common from eight months onwards.

So indulge in little peek-a-boo fun with your baby: it's good for them!

Learning to tie shoelaces

 This playsilk idea might help preschoolers who are asserting their independence and learning to tie their own shoelaces.  Start the process off for them by taking two playsilks and folding each one in half over and over again until they resemble ropes, then tie them together in a double knot.  Tie the knot a little way down the silks, so that there is a good length left without it being overwhelmingly long for your child, as shown below:

Ask your child to sit on a step, take off their shoes and place a foot on top of the knot.  Give them one playsilk in each hand and guide them through the process.

The bow at the end is going to look a little funny due to it being two-toned, but they’ll get the idea.  Let them practice each little step until they’ve mastered it and can move on to the next one.

By using two different coloured silks, your child will be able to follow your instructions more easily (especially if they can’t always tell their right from left).  As long as they can distinguish between the two colours, they’ll be able to follow along.  By learning the technique on a larger scale, they can focus on the steps in the process and don’t have to concern themselves with the manual dexterity needed for much smaller, thinner laces. Once they know how it’s done and have had enough practise they can move onto trying it with shoelaces and it won’t seem nearly as daunting.  The look of self satisfaction on a child’s face when they achieve this milestone is nothing short of wonderful!

A beach for turtles

We recently had a day at the beach and since then, sand & sea have featured in Miss A's conversations and playtime. She's also fascinated with turtles, thanks to Lynley Dodd's wonderful book The Smallest Turtle, so we made some out of an egg carton and decorated them with crayons. Miss A likes to spread out a yellow playsilk for the sand, and a blue one for the water and makes the little turtles scitter scatter across the sand and into the sea.