Let's All Dance: The Princess and the Frog

Since discovering Let's All Dance and their engaging, tailored and well pitched ballets for children, we've been to see The Owl and the Pussycat and most recently the Princess and the Frog. Short and (importantly) affordable, these productions feature two energetic dancers who engage with the audience and even have the patience to pose for a photograph with every single child after the production. This openness is indicative of the ethos of Let's All Dance which was created by founder Orit Sutton (who is always around to chat at performances) to combine fantastic dancing and beautiful costume with "crystal clear storytelling to engage and delight young audiences". We were sitting beside another family who admitted they were rather addicted to the series.

The Princess and the Frog is an original ballet and score, intended to open up classical ballet for the youngest of viewers. Based on a fairytale with an important message, the dancers bring to life the spoilt princess only concerned for her own games, and a frog desperate for a friend. Losing her golden ball into the pool, the princess uses the frog to retrieve it, promising a friendship she had no intention of keeping. However, little by little the frog and the princess become attached and as the princess's behaviour changes, ultimately she is able to free the playmate she has grown to love. 

As I've written before, one of the unique elements of the Let's All Dance Ballets is their intimacy. You feel closer to the dancers than in a normal ballet, with the Owl and the Pussycat it was almost as if the dancers had come to dance just for us in our own home, they were so close you felt as if you were on the stage with them. Though the Princess and the Frog was in a larger theatre the dancers still achieved this proximity to the audience, coming out into the aisles while they danced and inviting one lucky little chap onto the stage to take part in the performance.

Through having children I'm increasingly loving rediscovering fairy tales and myths and they remain core favourites in the bedtime story selections. Usborne does a great selection (from the very well known to the fabulous and more obscure) as part of their brilliant Early Readers series, likewise Ladybird has a wide selection and through the years has produced various versions of the Princess and the Frog - some strikingly 80s in style! Albert Einstein famously noted: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” The moral messages, the story construction, the imagination, their foundation in much adult referencing and fiction... Like myths and biblical stories, such tales form a canon of references that help us to understand our culture better. Seeing these stories come alive on stage in such a memorable way really adds to the magic of this discovery. We are loving Russian fairy tales at present. I'm even indulging in some adult editions. I highly recommend The Bear and the Nightingale and its sequel The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden, and many of the ten year olds in our life are devouring the inventive School for Good and Evil.

Why not do some follow on science too inspired by the story? I've found that Spring is such a perfect time to explore the theme of life cycles. We have six brilliant Safariology life-cycle model sets which come in four or five stages of a creature's development and encourage exploration, sorting and play. The frog edition comes in five parts and is scrumptiously tactile for hands-on learning.


A few years ago I set up a simple pond-like sensory play tub with the frog set using a base of green water beads. This fun little resource (not for children who still mouth) grow from tiny beads with the addition of water, and they are slimy and squishable to the touch. Once the weather improved we also incorporated some of these little models in a spot of outdoor water play. We are also fans of pond dipping. See here for some associated summer activities.

Let's All Dance will be touring with their new production, Alice in Wonderland, from May.

Please visit their website for more info and to book tickets:

www.lets-all-dance.co.uk

Disclaimer: We received tickets for the performance for the purposes of review. All opinions are very much our own.

Sensational Butterflies

There is something equally soothing and awe-inspiring about the experience of being surrounded by hundreds of butterflies in technicolour flight. Adults still stand in wonder when a passing butterfly takes a fancy to their colourful attire and settles. Toddlers dance and gaze with infectious joy. In recent years we have visited a number of butterfly houses, and been treated to Damien Hirst's live butterfly artwork at the Tate Modern. It is particularly convenient to have one available at the heart of London's Museumland - hosted by the Natural History Museum - each summer. 

A week or so ago Culturetot and I popped into Sensational Butterflies on our way back from a wonderful CBeebies Prom at the Albert Hall. Sourced ethically from around the world (Africa, South America, North America and Asia) there is a wide variety of colours and shapes of butterfly and moth. As you become accustomed to the surroundings you also gradually start to spot all the eggs clustered on leaves, and the weird and wonderfully formed caterpillars munching in the vegetation. The marquee is peppered with facts (apparently some butterflies hear through their wings) and houses a room with hanging and hatching chrysalises. I spoke to a woman who had been there for hours!

A couple of years ago we grew our own butterflies, which was a really interesting experience. The process lasts around a month. In the true form of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the little nippers, who arrive in the post, rapidly increase in size over the first week. After a few days the chubby chaps begin to move their way to the top of their habitat and (if you are lucky) before your eyes they start to hang from their ceiling and (I did not know this!) emerge from the skin of the caterpillar to form a chrysalis. After all the caterpillars are attached, you move them into a hatching net. Again, it came as a slightly unnerving surprise, that the chrysalises shook and twisted when they were disturbed.They were not hatching early as we initially thought, but do this as a defence mechanism to ward off predators. How clever. On hatching we fed the butterflies fruit and after a couple of days we set them free. One of the five had an under formed wing and couldn't fly, so we also ended up with an unexpected pet for rather longer than we anticipated...

Other than the well loved classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we have a couple of other books that are particularly good to accompany a butterfly-watching occasion.

The American Museum of Natural History, which has its own summer Butterfly Vivarium, has produced in recent months some brilliantly simple and engaging board books on science for the very young. One of these is a gorgeously designed Caterpillar to Butterfly, which features real photographs, basic facts and creatively graduated flaps detailing the progress of a butterfly's life cycle. We learn that butterflies taste with their feet and a butterfly's body needs to be warm to fly, and can see the rather astounding process of transformation in a series of simple steps.

I also rather like the Life Cycles series for the slightly older reader. Containing great photographs, diagrams and facts, they certainly provide an excellent guide for a parent to talk through with a child that is full of Whys?

Disclaimer: We received a copy of Melissa Stewart's excellent Caterpillar to Butterfly for review purposes. All other costs and materials were our own. Sensational Butterflies this year is open until 11th September at the Natural History Museum, London.

Ten Great Easter Activities for Tots

We love marking the seasons, creating new traditions and reviving the old, learning about the Church's year and discovering the rhythms of nature together. Here are ten great Lent and Easter Activities the girls have really enjoyed over the last two years:

1. Lent normally starts somewhere around Valentine's Day and Culturetot in particular loved her themed sensory basket. I found a set of measuring cups in the shape of hearts and threw in a base of Risotto rice, foil and satin confetti, dried flower petals, feathers, wooden hearts and - the absolute winner - pom poms of various shapes and sizes. Culturetot really enjoyed scooping and pouring, sorting the items, collecting the pom poms and stacking the cups. All great for sensory awareness, fine motor development and colour matching practice.

2. I make seasonal play baskets for the girls too - the first of these was for Easter last year, and it was so successful I've ensured that we have never been without one since. As we were flipping our pancakes this year we still had high hopes for snow and the promise of a snowman-building day, which has now completely eluded us for the last two years. We compensated by allowing Peter Rabbit and his friends to continue their adventures in our winter snowscape as long as possible and then swiftly replaced the chilly scene with an Easter themed discovery basket. The last two years this has revolved around the theme of spring, Easter and the cycle of life. Last year I started with an aesthetic grass base and added flowers and petals, rocks, feathers, eggs and baby animals for Culturebaby to discover and play with, along with some clips for fine motor practice. This year the theme is more yellow and nest-like with a wide variety of eggs, chicks, nests, feathers and, Culturetot's favourite: pompoms. I also added a favoured themed toy - the egg shape sorter for Culturetot.

3. I've found that Spring is such a perfect time to explore the theme of life cycles. We have six brilliant Safariology life-cycle model sets which come in four or five stages of a creature's development and encourage exploration, sorting and play. I buried the chicken models amidst the Easter sensory basket for Culturebaby to unearth and order. She's also been using a set of cheap opening eggs to create her own hatching chicks.

Last year I also set up a simple pond-like sensory play tub with the frog and turtle sets using a base of green water beads. This fun little resource (not for children who still mouth) are fun to grow from tiny beads with the addition of water, and they are slimy and squishable to the touch. Once the weather improved we also incorporated some of these little models in a spot of outdoor water play.

4. A really simple activity, either for a specific walk, or for any time you are out and about is to spot, photograph and identify spring flowers popping up. We've also been watching the snowdrops wane and make way for other shoots in our own garden. It's been an effective way to teach Culturebaby about flowers, new life and do a spot of revision myself.

5. We have a brilliant local art class for Tots in St Albans called Patchwork Penguin. Combining storytime, messy play and a range of opportunities to create art, the class also ensures that we get the chance to celebrate the seasons, explore favourite books and get messy in a way rather more tricky in the confines of a winter kitchen. It was also the first place Culturebaby learned, a couple of years ago, to sit down in a group and really concentrate on a collective story. Some of our Spring activities were particularly cute and provide a great source of ideas to try again at home. These chicks were made with sponges and a triangle of orange paper and sticky eye, were simple to create even for the smallest artist, and looked so effective. The daffodil was formed from shiny and tissue paper and part of an egg box.
 


6. One of the most accessible ways to learn about the journey from Lent to Easter for tots is through the simple story of the good shepherd, who loves each one of his animals so much that he is prepared to endure great perils to save even one. I wrote about how to create a simple story play set and a couple of great picture book versions of the story here.

 7. In the same post I also talked about how much we enjoyed creating our own Resurrection Garden for Holy Week, complete with live cress as grass and model characters. Over the course of the Easter Triduum we gradually changed the scene, as Jesus died; his friends and family mourned; and ultimately the empty tomb was discovered with Easter Sunday and the Resurrection. You can find further details about this activity and suggested picture book titles here.

8. We almost have a decorative tree for every season these days, but there is little more uplifting than a gorgeous blooming Easter bough decked with symbols of new life to brighten up the room. It's a new tradition for us as a family but one I adore. Paperchase in particular does some absolutely beautiful decorations. Selecting the branches and decorating the tree with our unbreakable items was a lovely shared experience for the family. I'm very much looking forward to doing the same again this year.

9. Themed colour sorting and counting activities are always a good way to engage both the girls in their various interests and provide a versatile material that can be used in different ways. Culturetot has really taken to these miniature wooden eggs, and has spent a lot of time sorting them and putting them into containers. Culturebaby has been using these eggs and a set of numbers to count the correct amounts of eggs into sections of a paint dish. This has really helped with her precision of counting as well as her numeral recognition.

10. One of the girls' favourite joint activities is creating imaginary culinary offerings, hosting picnics and tea parties. I love it when they use materials I have offered them in other contexts (such as our Easter sensory basket) in their own ways. The've been reminiscing about Shrove Tuesday and cooking up rather a few pancakes this week, complete with pom pom yokes. They've also been careering about the house brandishing their easter baskets and collecting a host of unlikely material. I've rarely seen them so occupied for such a long time. A bargain at £1 for a packet from Poundland.

Spring is Coming by Elisabeth Lebret

Spring is coming, spring is coming, birdies build your nest!

Weave together straw and feathers, doing each your best.

Spring is coming, spring is coming

Flowers are coming too.

Daisies, lilies, daffodillies

All are coming through!

Spring is coming, spring is coming 

all around is fair.   

Shimmer, glimmer on the river, joy is everywhere.

Disclaimer: The majority of ideas and materials are our own for these activities, with the exception of the fantastic Safariology models which were sent to us on request for a variety of activities and review purposes over the last year by Asobi Toys UK. We cannot recommend these educational items enough. As mentioned in a previous blog, the gorgeous resurrection garden idea came from this great blog post by The Encouraging Home, and the great Spring art ideas came from the clever and creative Jo at Patchwork Penguin. If you are St Albans based, this is a simply fabulous class for little ones.