MAMA Children’s Activity Post: “Goldilocks & the Three Bears! (#MARCH_PLAY)

I’m currently co-hosting #march_play on Instagram with a bunch of lovely other accounts;

Each day we have a play prompt to guide our activities. My favourite so far has been ‘fairytales’. When looking at this prompt it dawned on me that I hadn’t really read any traditional fairytales with my son as we mainly read the newer ‘Gruffalo style’ books. I therefore saw this as an opportunity to share one of my favourite fairytales with him; ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. In the morning I told him the story and we then watched an animated version. He really got into the whole “Who’s eaten my porridge?” and the concept of different sizes.

In the afternoon I set up an invitation to play based on the story. Here is the equipment I set out;

• Tuff tray (could use activity mat).
• Painting clothes (I now use an old puddle suit which is great!!)
• Different sized card strips (width = small, medium, large).
• Paw print stamps – small and medium were potato stamps I had cut out, the large one was a gravy granules pot with three corks strapped to it with hairbands (a rare moment of genius for me!)
• Brown, red, yellow and blue paint (water based, non toxic).
• Paper plate.
• Paint brushes.
• PVA glue.
• Card cut outs of different sized bears.
• Cotton wool/Pom Poms/tissue paper to collage with.
• Three different sized bowls with matching spoons.
• Porridge oats.
• Lolly pop sticks (added later for mixing).
• I’d also found some cuddley toys which played out the story we went through earlier (I moved these before we got messy though!)

The first thing my son wanted to explore were the bear prints! Whenever we’re out and about he’s always looking for “tracks to follow” and the thought of making his own seemed to really excite him. He squirted out the paint himself and painted onto the bottom of the stamps.

I helped with the first print to show him how you have to push downwards firmly. After this he was away and went through the Daddy bear, Mummy bear and Baby bear footprints very quickly!

Then it was the porridge he was interested in. I reminded him of the porridge in the story and we went through how; Daddy bear’s was ‘too hot’ and a hot colour is red, so we mixed the red paint into his porridge in the big bowl.

We then moved onto Mummy bear’s porridge, in the medium sized bowl, which was ‘too cold’ and mixed the blue paint in with that. Finally, baby bear’s porridge in the small bowl was ‘just right’ and I felt yellow would suffice for this!

Once we’d mixed up our ‘porridge paint’ we added some PVA glue to each bowl to make it ‘sticky porridge paint!’ My son then experimented with painting the bear’s, pouring the porridge paint everywhere, mixing it with his hands and doing a bit of collage. Mainly he was interested in making mess which is the whole point with messy, arty, sensory activities!!!

After this he went back to the idea of paw prints and wanted to make his own! So we got the brown paint back and he did some footprints on a piece of card to go with the bear prints!

Inevitably this activity was quite messy requiring a deep clean in the tub afterwards! This play prompt had lots of different levels and it was lovely to take the theme throughout the whole day and include sharing some of my childhood memories with my son. Why don’t you have a go too with your favourite fairytale!