A Parent’s Guide To Tuff Trays

This one from Early Years Careers uses different types of dry food and textures. Why not create a farmyard scene with them? The different foods could represent the areas in which the animals live. Include a farm building, animals and small world people to bring the imagination alive.

What do you do with those vegetables that are near the end of use? Why not gather them all onto the Tuff Tray and challenge the kids to make different shaped potato heads? 

Whoever wins gets to put it on daddy! 😉

Great for the outside.

Fill the Tuff Tray with water, and any rocks/stones that can resemble the seaside. 

Now gather your ducks and place a loop shaped object on their backs. Simply use a hook or stick to gather them up with the kids.

There are loads of ways to do this. With leaves, just collect a few different ones from the ground and place them altogether. Or add a range of small, hard materials such as pulses, pasta and rice to the Tuff Spot and mix them together. Then offer some small sorting bowls and chunky tweezers, allowing the children to sort the materials into the bowls using the tweezers. This activity will support children’s fine motor skills alongside their hand eye coordination.

Do you ever feel you're lacking in space for all the PlayDoh to come out? If so, this one's for you. 

Gather all the PlayDoh pots and open them up along with a set of materials for the 'monster's' eyes, legs and arms. Then let the kids create the most scary and silly PlayDoh monsters!

Add a bit of height to the Tuff Tray fun by putting a large / wide stick (something like a mini-tree branch) and place it into a pot or vase with soil or sand.

Add some pens, paints and buttons that can hook onto the tree to make it a truly Magic Tree.

We love this one from Adventures and Play. Tuff Spots make the best Dens too!

How Emma set hers up:

"We used a duvet cover. We don’t own any brown sheets to represent the soil so I used a green sheet to represent the grass. I realised that if I folded the duvet cover in half it fitted around most of the Tuff Spot Stand. I had three sections left which were uncovered. I used two pillow cases to cover two of the sections and one would be the entrance."

This one again from Adventures and Play. 

To introduce the concept of gravity to a toddler I used balls purchased from PoundLand. I set our Tuff Spot Stand so that one side was high whilst the other sides were at their lowest setting. I placed two empty Pringle tins and a cardboard bottle bag inside the Tuff Spot.

If your children are into drawing then this is perfect. 

Tape together a few pieces to paper into one huge canvass. Then place the pens and colours in the centre of the Tuff Tray and let their imagination run wild. 

If you can get them to tell you the story as their drawing it, even better!

This is a great idea for children that love building and creating structures. Add lots of different sized  blocks and trees to the tray alongside some wet sand and spades. Allow the children to use the wet sand as cement to also create buildings and structures. This will support the children’s creative development and their problem solving skills.

Gather together your growing materials; soil, bucket, used toilet roll and any toy animals that want to join the fun.

Get them planting seeds into the soil and think of the Tuff Tray as their growing station.

Use different textures for the land and grass. We used wet sand for one side and dried foods for the other.

Then use something blue like marbles or beads to represent the river. Make a pathway for the goats and sheppard those goats over the bridge!