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Home » Tuff Tray Ideas

Tuff Tray Ideas

February 7, 2020 by admin 11 Comments

One of the things we use most especially in the warmer months is our tuff tray. It’s great for messy activities or just as a great child height outdoor table for craft and more small play like set ups. I didn’t manage to blog much about our tuff tray play last summer, so wanted to put them all in one place now. Some of these I covered up overnight and left in place for a few days and others were a bit more short lived. The best thing for me about this kind of outdoor play is that we can come back to it over and over again throughout the day and the tuff spot keeps the mess contained to one place.

Dinosaur Tuff Tray Ideas

This is a super simple set up using Schleich Dinosaurs. Schleich are our favourite brand of dinosaurs as they are tough and sturdy. The dinosaur skulls also get used a lot, one fun thing to do is cover them with wet sand and then use a paintbrush to uncover them like finding fossils.

Dinosaur tuff Tray

 

We made the dinosaur bones below with air drying clay and added those to the sand too. It made a brilliant ( almost non messy ) set up that we kept running for weeks.

dinosaur bones made with clay

 

Leaves, Diggers and Conkers Tuff Tray Play

This was another super easy play tray to set up. We collect old leaves, conkers and pebbles and put them in the tray with some diggers. Charlie spent many happy hours moving things around and finding more leaves to add to the mix.

leaves and conkers play set up

 

Sand and Diggers Tuff Tray Play

I used wooden blocks and little diggers for this tray. We made track marks with the diggers and moved sand from place to place.

 

Sand and digger play tray

 

When the tray was accidentally left out in the rain we carried on playing after adding metal trucks, spoons and muffin tins.

digger and wet sand play tray

Easy Road Tuff Tray

This was actually one of Charlie’s favourite set ups and is so simple! I used a chalk pen to draw the road and then added animals, blocks, a little sand and cars and trucks. Hours of fun playing and minutes to set up.

Road tuff Tray

Leaf and Playdough Towers

This is a great one for slightly older children. We used straws, play dough and leaves to build towers.

Leaf and play dough towers with straws

 

Mud or Sand Pie Kitchen

Charlie loved playing with the wet sand to make “cakes”.

Tuff Tray Mud Kitchen

Sinking and Floating

You might need a slightly deeper play tray for this one, but we really enjoyed making and testing boats.

Older children can use a straw to blow to boats across the water. Experiment with different types of materials and adding different weights to the boats. Fruity boats are always a fun way of using up leftover fruit skin.

 

Fruity boats floating in a play tray

 

Beach Tray Play

This started off as a beach small world and then we added rubbish to demonstrate human effects on environments. It was a really fun effective way to get across how important reducing our rubbish is.

Can you think of any more ideas for us?

There are lots more fab Tuff Tray ideas over on the TTS Blog.

Tuff Tray Play Ideas

Filed Under: Toddler Learning Activities, Toddler Play Tagged With: toddler learning activities, tuff Tray

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Joanna

    February 17, 2020 at 9:27 pm

    So many great ideas here on how to use a simple tray as a play ground. It’s great especially when the weather is not great, as it can be used indoors. Children loves getting their hands dirty when they play, so the sandy construction site and the dinosaur archaeological site are amazing ideas that can provide so many hours of good fun.

    Reply
  2. Anosa

    February 17, 2020 at 9:41 pm

    You’ve shared some lovely ideas, I don’t think my brother and SIL have a tuff tray but how handy it is for the kids, creating different activities for them.

    Reply
  3. MELANIE EDJOURIAN

    February 17, 2020 at 9:47 pm

    These are all really good ideas. My son loves dinosaurs and diggers so he’d love both of those to play with. I’m sure they’d keep him occupied for hours.

    Reply
  4. Yeah Lifestyle

    February 17, 2020 at 10:03 pm

    So many wonderful ideas to keep little one’s imagination captivated and to keep them busy. I know my kids would enjoy each one of your suggestions here.

    Reply
  5. Charli

    February 18, 2020 at 10:38 am

    So many great activities here – and with so many possibilities for learning whilst playing. I’ll definitely be doing a Tuff Tray with my little one when he’s a bit older.
    C x

    Reply
  6. Rhian Westbury

    February 18, 2020 at 3:02 pm

    Sensory things like this sound like a great idea for kids, although much better for the nicer weather so the mess can stay outside x

    Reply
  7. Jenny

    February 18, 2020 at 10:50 pm

    We used to use our tuff spot all year round but it doesn’t get used any more. I need to dig it out and try some of these,

    Reply
  8. Kira

    February 19, 2020 at 2:10 pm

    These are absolutely brilliant ideas for the tuff tray . We love ours and use it come rain or shine 🙂

    Reply
  9. Liam Wilkinson

    February 19, 2020 at 5:54 pm

    Some wonderful ideas here, my son would love the digging around for Dinosaur fossils, excellent!

    Reply
  10. Natasha Mairs

    February 20, 2020 at 11:06 am

    I love these! I used to make loads of different kinds of sensory tubs for my kids when the were little. They loved the messy mud ones the most.

    Reply
  11. Anne Fernando

    March 29, 2021 at 11:55 am

    wonderful ideas,
    Thanks for sharing it.

    Reply

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