One thing that struck us as we wandered around The Avenue Children’s Centre and Kindergarten when we visited there, was its embracing of multiculturalism from a decorative point of view.

While some of us may not experience multicultural communities within our centre, the inclusion of all cultures into our programs sends an important message of acceptance to of our children. Some of the ways The Avenue incorporated multiculturalism into their centre was through the use of  dolls from all over the world …

flags, including our Australian and Aboriginal flags …

and the extensive use of some very beautiful sari style fabrics.

All around the walls we saw tribal and cultural decorations.

While the clever use of fans and umbrellas was awesome.

This beautiful umbrella positioned over a light looked truly magical!

Even these gorgeous Dutch clogs …

were incidently positioned to create points of interest for the children.

All so beautiful and respectfully done.

These are all lovely examples of ways you can introduce multiculturalism to the children in your care.

As we mentioned in our post on The Avenue Children’s Centre and Kindergarten, having a centre in an old house immediately cries out “homely”!

This feeling started as soon as we came down the sideway and had to negotiate our way around the strollers and bikes at the front door – so delightfully inner city!

Inside the staff help nurture this feeling of being in someone’s home by the use of lamps strategically placed around the whole complex.

They have many indoor plants …

and just like at home they have quite a few pets – Silly Billy the rabbit, who is free to hop around the backyard …

two gorgeous mice which the children are allowed to handle under supervision …

and plenty of fish in bowls dotted throughout the different rooms.

We noticed a variety of music being played in the background around the centre, both indoors and out. Such a lovely touch.

The use of these cane drawer units, just like you might have at home, keeps all the children’s construction materials stored in one place, and also gives a top surface for other uses.

In fact, at The Avenue, they use lots of earthy cane basket for storage.

And who doesn’t love the earthiness of timber furniture?!

Everywhere we looked we noticed carpet rugs were used …

as a cosy way to warm up their timber flooring.

To top it off, there are plenty of photos of the children and their families around the place, as well as these lovely informative pictures of each of the staff members.

Considering the amount of time some of the children spend at The Avenue each day, it’s really nice to see that the staff have worked successfully to create that inviting home-away-from-home feeling!

We have been chatting a lot lately to various teachers’ groups about creating irresistible play spaces inside and out.

After a very busy few weeks we found we had some time on our hands and thought we would create a beautiful new play space on Sherry’s back porch. With grandchild number 11 on the way, it is obvious there will be littlies around for quite a while yet and the kitchen (although large) was bursting with child oriented stuff!

We wanted to create a playing space that was safe, accessible and easily supervised from the kitchen (where the adults could be having a well earned cuppa and chat) for all the age groups.

We wanted to do what we always advocate, which is that you don’t need to spend a heap of money if you use what you already have at hand and repurpose other peoples’ stuff as much as you can. Naturally we headed over to Resource Rescue first to see what we could find to use as the foundation.

They have end rolls of thick plastic which would normally most probably be used as cafe curtains or table protection. We grabbed a roll and cut it to the right height to weave in and out of the porch uprights to make a wind break as it can be quite cool out there.

Resource Rescue have sheets of foam which they call yoga mats and we placed these on the floor to make it soft for kneeling and sitting on.

We also found a big piece of upholstery vinyl with felt on the back and covered the foam sheets with it to unify the space.

We pulled out some shelves which we had been using for our workshop gear but didn’t need any more, so they were placed at the end of the porch and nailed onto the post for stability – one of the children is an inveterate climber!!

Sherry already had quite a few baskets and other containers, but not quite enough, so we whizzed out to the op shop and came back with a heap of cheap bootie – baskets, a blackboard, wooden boxes, mirrors and trays.

We hung our old bunting up under the roof and added a lantern which we had used for a lantern walk a couple of months ago and we popped up a couple of old windchimes for some beautiful sound.

When the children arrived for a play, we didn’t say anything – just let them discover their new playing spot for themselves.

They got stuck straight into it! So just an afternoon of fun for us, at very little cost and a cosy new playing space was created. You have to love that!!

We took our portable water wall, which we had rigged up for a recent Water Workshop we ran …

and popped it up on a very ordinary looking fence and thought that a good use of the water would be to have plants underneath as the under fives wouldn’t remember to recyle – it is much more fun to see it drain away down the sideway!

 The children dug out the soil …

popped in some plants we had already …

then tried out the water wall.

Of course this then moved onto, “We’d better wash the soil off the ground!”

We think the children did a great job of their new garden and they are very happy with their two new play spaces!

Okay ‘Z’ is not for celebrate, but celebrate we are!

We are very excited to be involved in the BIG 20,000 ‘likes’ celebration taking place over at Deborah Stewart’s wonderful Teach Preschool Facebook page.

That’s TWENTY THOUSAND people following Deborah on Facebook … AMAZING!

Then of course there’s her wonderful Teach Preschool blog, Twitter, and her music, not to mention a brand new Preschool to run!  Deborah is a wonderful sharer of all things Preschool and a very highly valued and respected fellow early childhood educator whom we are proud to call one of the best friends we’ve never met!

To celebrate Deborah’s amazing milestone many of her preschool blogging friends, from all over the world, including us here in Australia, have joined up to help her celebrate ‘The ABC’s of Teaching Preschool” .

Never ones to miss a good party we have selected the letter ‘Z’ to celebrate with Deborah, and as she is musical, we have chosen to celebrate through song!

This song is called ZOOM and we always like to teach it to our children when we are discovering and exploring the many aspects of flight, aliens and outer space. Each one of those topics we find always lead onto many varied and exciting experiences. You can get an idea for the tune right here!

Up in the air I fly,

Zoom zoom a zoom zoom zoom.

Up in the clouds I fly,

Zoom zoom a zoom zoom zoom.

Zoom zoom,

zoom zoom,

a zoom zoom, zoom zoom zoom.

Zoom zoom,

zoom zoom,

a zoom zoom.

If you’re looking for some more fun flight and space ideas please check out the links below!

::: More Flying Machines

::: Unidentified Flying Objects

::: Balloon Rocket

::: Pendulum Play

::: Little Purple Alien

::: Little Purple Aliens – Part one

::: Little Purple Aliens – Part two

::: Moon Sand

::: Moon Sand Recipe

::: Jells Park Revisited

::: Kinder in the dark

::: Facebook

CONGRATULATIONS Deborah and thank you for making such a huge difference in the lives of Children, Educators, Tertiary Students of Early Childhood Education, Parents, Carers and Bloggers the world over … You are irresistible indeed!

We are currently putting together a document on “irresistible play spaces”. As we have mentioned before, mirrors are perfect for brightening up, enlarge and enhance play spaces, so as part of our document we just couldn’t go past including the use of mirrors as a great example of this!

We have seen many on our travels around kindergartens and schools.

Many are commercially made and are simple rectangular ones …

while others are the three sided kind which can be almost wrapped around an activity or area.

There are small ones to pop onto the tables and work benches …

or large floor ones …

which clearly define the play space.

We rigged up our own simple homemade ones which were very effective and cheap.

The basis was light weight mirrored tiles stuck onto firm card which had been folded in half to enable them to be slotted over our table dividers.

We used these in all sorts of ways. Sometimes just for the children to check themselves out …

or for self portraits …

We love the idea of using mirrors to brighten up an area …

or to reflect, therefore enlarging small play spaces.

We love using mirrors to create irresistible play spaces!

When we are setting up imaginative play areas we like to use natural props that we have sourced  – rocks, logs, sticks, leaves, bark etc.

Sometimes these goodies need a bit of modern day help, such as hot glueing rocks to build stacks …

or securing mini tree cookies together to make furniture.

We even glue bark onto frames to create mini cubbies …

as well as recycled blocks onto bases to make bird houses.

We also like to make shelters (which look a little like teepees) from such things as palm leaves, willow sticks or other pliable materials.

To make the walls we use either fine wire, pipe cleaners or that plastic covered wire that is used to hold plants onto stakes.

We twist two pieces of wire together at the ends (exactly the same way we did when we showed you how to make little fences) …

Then it is twisted around each piece of stick or palm leaf the same way as with the fences, until the teepee is as long as you want it. You need to repeat this further up the sticks or leaves to give the structure strength.

and if you tie the tops together …

and shape it round …

it makes a fabulous teepee …

for whatever little animals …

or people you make to put in there …

making for an irresistible miniature playscape indeed!

You can make fences for your imaginative play areas with a wide range of materials.

At our miniature playscape workshops we have taught people to create them by using pop sticks…

twigs …

bark …

wooden beads …

dowelling …

bamboo …

skewers …

grass …

palm fronds …

and brush.

We have discovered that any imaginative play props need to be free standing so the children don’t get frustrated, so when you make fences, make sure that they either have a stand, like this bark one …

or are bendable like this one.

To create a free standing fence using wire …

simply take a strip of pliable wire a little more than twice the length of your desired fence and bend it in half . These plastic coated garden twist ties are ideal.

Place your first ‘stick’ into the fold and make one complete twist of the wire. Add the next piece of  ’stick’ and twist the wire again.

Continue the pattern – stick – twist – stick – twist – stick – twist, until you get to the end. If the wire is too short you can easily attach another piece onto each end to extend it.

As you will need two rows of wire to give your fence strength you may find it easier to do them simultaneously but that is entirely up to you!

Dinosaur set ups are one of those imaginative play spaces you could have going all year round … both inside and out!

We find there is always somebody wanting to play with dinosaurs so luckily we have bucket loads of them …

big …

medium …

small …

even skeletal!

indoors …

outdoors …

everywhere dinosaurs!

We like to add plenty of natural material like textured fabrics, tanbark and sand, logs, twigs, rocks, stones and pebbles along with our irresistible lifelike tree fern and grass plants for some lovely colour…

You can even add salt to create a dinosaur haven!

Over the last couple of weeks the children have worked so enthusiastically on their flags for our garden bunting that it only seemed right they should be involved in the final process of sewing the flags up!

It wasn’t rocket science, we just needed them to sew straight lines in order to create a pocket on each flag through which we could run the cord to hang them up.

To the delight of the children, Donna brought in her sewing machine and invited them to have a go.

Oh wow the boys thought this was FANTASTIC!

After all anything with a motor was going to attract these boys to play!

They were fascinated with the whole sewing process, from winding the bobbin, to threading the cotton and pushing the foot peddle to make the needle run up and down.

Under instruction they managed incredibly well to direct the fabric in a straight line through the machine.

We saw some great team work in the process. One child at a time directed the fabric while two others took turns in raising and lowering the foot lever on the machine while another controlled the reverse button and a fifth child cut the threads, all the while agreeing that Donna should be in control of the foot pedal … phew!

Once the sewing was all done it was time for the children to thread the bunting onto the cord …

then Jarvis’s wonderful dad’s Stephen, strung it up in the playground.

We were so impressed with the end result …

as this project had held the children’s interest for over two weeks!

Perhaps this was due to the assorted art techniques they learned along the way.

It is another wonderful group project produced by our children to jazz up our outdoor area ….

and we think their garden bunting looks irresistible!

Quite bizarrely as we were gazing out of the kinder kitchen window a while ago (probably waiting for the kettle to boil), we saw quite a big fishing rod next to the back fence in an upright position. Interestingly it was on OUR side of the fence!

We have no idea how it got there or who planted it in our garden, but we left it there long enough for vines to grow up it so that it blended in with the surrounding plants.

One day we decided that we would love a flagpole in our yard and were tossing all sorts of ideas around when Donna came up with the great idea of using the fishing rod!

We brought it around to the playground and popped it into an umbrella stand to see if a recycled fishing rod could work as a flag pole … and it did!

Then we untangled the vine and added an Aussie flag to the top!

The children loved the idea of having a fishing rod for a flag pole but something was missing!

Last week we added some bunting to the pole to give it a bit more oomph.

Now, not only do we think our ‘fishy flag pole’ is unique …

we think it’s totally irresistible too!