The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

... Or the season of turning up the heating, glowering out of the window at the persistent, chilly drizzle and reaching for the biscuit tin? If I remember rightly, it's getting pretty cold, dark and wet in Britain (and an awful lot of other locations in the temperate zone) now. Littluns may be getting tetchy about having to spend more time inside and mummies might be running low on inspiration for ways to entertain them, so here are a few of our favourite Indoor Play ideas that might make the winter months less painful.

Although we're in Malaysia, we need lots of indoors inspiration, too - tropical storms and tropical heat are often enough to drive us back inside for days! Orla is pretty good at letting me know when she's bored, so I have to stay on my toes to provide her with a variety of diversions that don't cost a fortune and will help her to develop key skills.

BUILD A 'BOUNCY CASTLE'
Gather up pillows, beanbags and cushions and heap them on the floor. Throw a couple of double duvets over the top and throw yourselves about! It's great fun for mums and tots alike when cabin fever is setting in, and you can turn the central heating down, too - all the jumping about generates a LOT of heat!



MAKE A MEAL OF IT!
You'll need paper plates, PVA/Pritt craft glue, scraps of fabric, ribbon, wool, foil, wrapping paper, leaves, sequins, pictures cut from magazines... Orla has a craft box, full of bits and bobs that I've collected together and can pull out at a moment's notice. She loves dabbing glue onto the paper plate and playing with different materials and textures to build her own 'dinners'.



Her craft box..



... includes poster paints, pencils and crayons, wool, ribbon, fabric scraps, magazine cutouts, stickers (each sheet cut into smaller pieces so she doesn't use them all at once!), sequins and foil shapes, chalks, dried leaves, paper flowers, polystyrene trays for glue and paint, set of cheapie brushes from WHSmith, Pritt paper glue and craft glue, yogurt pots...

Some activities might require a bit more preparation...

* Search through your digital photos and copy them into folders to make themed 'slideshows' for your little one. Orla's favourite is her Animals folder (see 'Animal Magic')- she presses the 'enter' key to move through the pictures, calling out names and sounds, and identifying colours. We've printed out this set of photos and put them into a plain A5 photo album which cost a couple of pounds from Paperchase. When we're out and about, I snap photos of diggers, cement trucks, buses... or you could choose autumn, winter or Christmas images to fascinate your child and to extend his/her vocabulary.

* Kitchen Creations! Perennial favourites include playing with cornflour gloop (you can colour it with food colouring, but avoid contact with clothing and prepare to have your little angel running around with green and red hands for a day or two!), jelly squeezing, cold spaghetti, and other kitchen cupboard staples... all allow your child to explore a range of sensations and textures. Baking is a great way of involving your little person in what you're doing AND getting things done (mince pies, gingerbread men and cookies, anyone?) and they can have heaps of fun decorating their creations! So what if it's messy? It all wipes up with a damp cloth...


MAKING MUSIC...
Gather together a few milk bottles or jam jars, fill with different levels of water and provide a chopstick - you may find you have a mini Mozart on your hands. Make a rainmaker from an old plastic bottle and a cup of rice - your child can decorate the outside with the contents of that craft box! A few potatoes in a shoebox make a wonderful rumbling noise when tipped back and forth and beads in a jam jar make a great, tinkling sound...

Follow up your 'jam' session with a fantastic 'musical genre' disco! Get busy compiling iPod playlists of rock, pop, classical, Latin, World, jazz, blues, country - anything you've got on there - and enjoy flinging yourselves around the living room at your own personal night (or afternoon?!) club! It's a fun way for your little one to learn about different rhythms - Orla is old enough now to recognise the changes in tempo and style and she instinctively alters the way she moves and dances to a variety of music. She's developing a real taste for Latin rhythms - salsa classes by the time she's two, methinks!

Water, water, everywhere...

It's hot and humid here in Penang almost every day, so we're always keen to indulge in a bit of water play to cool down. Orla loves water - born under the sign of Pisces, she's a regular little fish! She nips down to the pool with Daddy most days, and is a confident and enthusiastic swimmer; she has no need of Mummy or Daddy to hold her in the water, but strikes out on her own with just a little air in the panels of her Floaties suit!

Of course, not everyone has access to a beautiful swimming pool all year round, or even to a garden large enough for a paddling pool during warm summer days. You may not have time for, or access to regular swimming lessons, but it's worth making some time to be inventive with water play. Children are fascinated by water and it has so much to teach them as they develop key skills.


From a sensory perspective, water is amazing stuff. You can't hold it in your hands, but it can cover you completely... it can change in temperature... you can mix it into other liquids to make them runnier, or to turn solids into gloop... you can even make water solid, through making jelly or ice! You can explore sounds with water, power a waterwheel, float boats, blow bubbles... the possibilities for fun experimentation are endless!


Orla loves to join in with 'grown up' water activities, too - she brings her little watering can down to fill from the hose while we're bathing the dog, and she likes to help with washing up, sitting with her feet in the bowl and washing plastic cups and unbreakable plates with a soapy cloth. Mimicry is an important part of development, and if you talk about what you're doing, too, you're expanding your child's vocabulary and understanding of language.

Orla's Water Music!

Water and music are two of Orla's favourite things, so this seemed like a perfect activity to try. Unfortunately, my timing was a bit off... She had a restless night last night, and even after a long nap this afternoon, she wasn't at her best. However, she was happy to let me show her what to do...


We have a shelf full of empty jam jars, saved for Giles's rather good onion marmalade and other preserves; so in between batches, we can make use of the jars. We started by hitting the empty jars with a chopstick to hear the sounds they made, before adding different levels of water and hitting them again, to hear how the sound had changed. When all of the jars had different levels of water in them, we tried running the chopstick back and forth along the row, and then tried hitting various jars in different orders to play 'tunes'. Orla had a try, but after five minutes or so, laid down her chopstick and picked up the jars to drink the water out of them instead. I think I'll try this again in a couple of weeks when she's not as tired!

Kitchen cupboard creations

When I've got mundane jobs to do in the kitchen that are done faster without help, Orla joins me on a tablecloth spread on the floor, surrounded by melamine bowls, each containing a tablespoon of some intriguing and tactile substance. She has a couple of empty bowls to mix things in and a couple of spoons to scoop the ingredients up with if required. You can go as tidy or as messy as you like, depending on the substances you choose!

We use pasta shapes, rice, couscous(all either cooked or uncooked for different textures), different cereals - oats, cornflakes, rice crispies, etc - dried fruit, flour... anything that comes to hand in the store cupboard (though I don't recommend sugar!). Orla is rapidly and completely absorbed, experimenting with fingers and mouth to experience the different textures of the ingredients around her. She loves running couscous or flour through her fingers, and the cereals and fruit come in handy as on-the-go snacks! I avoid adding water to the mix these days after one rushed and naive afternoon, when I had to try to remove a floury cement from both daughter and kitchen tiles...

Create a Treasure Basket

I put together the foundations of Orla's treasure basket just before she was six months old. I had read about the benefits of heuristic play - children's exploration of everyday objects and experimentation with them - and the idea of a treasure basket that she could dip into and that I could add to, update and regenerate in order to create something that she could enjoy for many months, or even years, really appealed to me. The fact that it costs almost nothing to make was an added bonus!

The idea is to collect objects that are made from materials other than the smooth, shiny plastic that most children's toys are made from, allowing the child to feel, mouth and play with a wide variety of shapes, sizes and textures. Aim to collect 20-30 objects to begin with; over time, as your baby grows old enough to handle other objects, or requires new items to add interest, you can increase to 60-80 objects. You may need to find a bigger basket, too!

I began with a shallow, straw bread basket, approximately 16 inches in diameter. I collected together cotton, silk, wool, fleece and felt items, wooden spoons and hairbrushes, a bamboo calligraphy brush, loofah, sisal and sponge objects, grosgrain, satin and glitter ribbons, tin boxes and metal spoons, a rubber ball, a feathered shuttlecock, large smooth pebbles, a straw tablemat, a ball of silver foil, cardboard tubes, postcards and thick paper coasters... and so the list goes on. As you can see, I was able to pick most of them up in half an hour as I wandered from room to room. Since then, I have found or acquired silk purses, individually knotted beads, a fat pincushion (minus pins!), a hessian chopstick sheath, wooden top and toys, to name but a few - and a much larger and deeper woven willow basket with a handle!

Keep the basket away from everyday toys, somewhere it can be put away between playtimes. When you want to use it, choose a time when your child is happy and rested; clear away all other toys and introduce the basket, allowing him or her to choose the objects that look most appealing. Let them play for about 30 minutes or so, or until they begin to lose interest. Some items (the paper and card) will disintegrate and need to be replaced; others will last the lifespan of the treasure basket, when you can return them to the drawers they came from...

Orla has spent countless hours enjoying her constantly evolving heap of treasures and I've loved finding new additions for her to examine. And because the point of the exercise is non-directed exploration and discovery, I've been able to sit back, watch her indulge her natural curiosity - and to enjoy a HOT cup of tea and the Guardian quick crossword, too!