Ravina Sewani

Things you will need:Liquid soap, squeeze or push bottles, food colouring or water-colours, small cups, dropper, plastic test tubes, ice cube tray (preferably white), hand-wash bottles. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection.<ol><li>Fill all the bottles with water. Add a few drops of dish wash and then a few drops of water-colours.</li><li>Give a good shake to all the bottles.</li><li>Let the fun begin!! Let the children use small cups, test tubes, droppers, ice cube tray and mix colours randomly.</li><li>You can make it exciting by using glitters, ice-cold water.</li></ol> Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will help kids towards discovery of secondary colours on their own. This activity also greatly improves a child’s motor skills, hand &amp; eye co-ordination.

Colour Laboratory

Things you will need: large sheet of paper, coloured paper, scissors, gum, crayons, markers or coloured pencils. How to:With the help of your grandchild(ren) set this activity up as follows: <ol><li>Draw a tree on the large sheet of paper. Be sure to give your tree lots of branches!</li><li>Cut out a colour paper shape to represent your child. Write your child's name on the shape and paste it on the trunk of your tree.</li><li>Cut out shapes for all of your present family members and others important to you — including pets. Write names on the shapes and paste them on the lower branches of your tree.</li><li>Cut out shapes for all your past family members and others important to you. Write names on the shapes and paste them on the upper branches of your tree.</li><li>Draw a picture on each shape that tells something about that person.</li></ol>

Significance:This will introduce your child to their family members and help them understand the generations in the family.

Family Tree

How to:You can gather a few kids and teach them slime making! Kindly do this activity under an adult’s supervision only. There are ready-made slime making kits available in the market which you can buy for this activity. If not, you can use ingredients available at your house to make a slime. One such simple slime making method is as follows:1. Add 7 tablespoons of skimmed milk (without milk fat) to a cup. Then add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to the milk. Gently stir the mixture until you see solids being formed.2. Let the solids sink to the bottom of the mixture and then remove the extra liquid using a filter. Let the solids drain for a few minutes.3. Add ¼ teaspoon of baking soda to the solids and knead together to form a slimy mixture.The slime formed will be white in colour. If you want to make it interesting, you can add food colour in the milk before adding vinegar. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will improve your child’s sensory skills. It also relieves stress. This activity also enhances your child’s motor skills.

Slime making

How to:Play doughs are very much like clay but they are safer for kids to use. Give them different coloured play doughs (available in the market easily) and observe your child creating wonders. You can sit with your kids and teach them create different things.A temporary solution can be using the flour available at home and kneading it with water. You can add a bit of food colouring to make it attractive for children. Happy Gaming!

Significance:It will enhance your child’s imaginative and motor skills.

Play dough

Things you will need:Water, cooking oil, blue food colouring, 2 litre transparent bottles, funnel. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection.<ol><li>Fill about half of your bottle with water using the funnel.</li><li>Now, add several drops of blue food colouring. If you are using liquid colouring, you can directly add 3-4 drops. If you are using powdered food colouring, mix the powder with a small amount of water. Now add these coloured drops to the jar.</li><li>Shake the bottle properly so that the food colouring mixes well.</li><li>Next, using the funnel, add vegetable oil in the bottle but leave a few inches at the top. Close the lid of the bottle.</li><li>Turn the bottle over slowly fro 2-3 times and observe what happens!</li><li>You can make this activity more interesting by adding a few shells, water animal toys, glitter colour. You can also mix blue and green food colouring to produce a more ocean-like colour in the bottle.</li></ol> Happy Gaming!

Significance:The activity will greatly enhance your child’s motor skills and help them learn about ocean and its life in a fun way. It also teaches about different densities of oil and water.

Ocean Bottle

Things you will need:Large container to freeze ice, water, water colours, paint brushes, salt. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection.<ol><li>Pour water in a large container and keep it for freezing over night. Freeze a block of ice.</li><li>Sprinkle salt over it.</li><li>Using paint brushes, paint colours of rainbow on the ice block.</li><li>See the water runoff from melted ice in the form of a rainbow.</li></ol> Note:Carry out this activity either in your backyard or veranda. You don’t want your insides of the house looking like a rainbow! Happy Gaming!

Significance:The child learns properties of water and also melting, mixing of colours is so fun.

Rainbow Ice Melting

Things you will need: moulds (ice cream or Popsicle or egg moulds with holes), water, food colouring or water colour, Popsicle sticks, white thin cardboard How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection. <ol><li>The night before you plan to do this activity, fill a Popsicle mould or an ice cube tray with water and place the Popsicle sticks in place.</li><li>Add a couple of drops of different watercolour to each section of the mould or tray. Remember the more colour you add, the more vibrant and intense your ice paintings will be. Add at least 2 drops of colour to each section of your ice mould.</li><li>Freeze the ice-cube or Popsicle mould tray overnight.</li><li>Run your frozen trays under a cold tap, or set them in the sunshine for a brief minute.&nbsp;This will be enough to loosen your paint pops and will slide out easily.</li><li>Take a large piece of white cardboard as the canvas on which your child(ren) can paint on together.</li></ol> Note: You can use this activity as a fun way for kids to practice writing numbers or letters, or to practice writing their names.

Significance:This activity will improve your child's motor skills and introduces an interesting way of painting.

Coloured ice painting

Things you will need: shaving cream, glue, ziplock bag, food colouring, white cardboard, pencil, eraser How to:<ul><li>Mix equal parts of shaving cream and glue into a ziplock bag and add your desired food colouring.</li><li>Seal the bag and squish the bag together until all ingredients are mixed together.</li><li>On a rigid material like white cardboard, ask your child to draw the layout of their art.</li><li>Once the foam is ready, cut off a corner at the bottom of the bag and ask your child to pour the foam on their art layout like piping icing.</li><li>Once the art has been completed, set it aside so the foam can dry and solidify overnight.</li></ul> Happy Painting!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child's motor and creativity skills.

DIY Foam Painting

Things you will need:Black clay (a lot of it), rolling pin, glowing star stickers. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them and help them with risky steps for protection.<ol><li>Roll the clay into a flat circular or any shape.</li><li>Kids can randomly lay out the star stickers on this rolled out clay.</li><li>Alternatively, you can show them pictures of constellations and they can lay out the star stickers in the shape of the constellations.</li><li>If you repeat this activity some other time, you can make it more fun by displaying planets.</li></ol> Happy Gaming!

Significance:The child gets an idea about stars, planets and constellations. It also enhances their motor skills while handling the play dough.

creativity development activities

Activities are an interesting way to teach important life skills to children. Here are a few suggestions for you.