5 Kid-Friendly Activities to Get Their Creative Juices Flowing

If you have heard that the rules around mobile phones and electronic devices in early childhood settings have changed, you are right. If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, these changes are already in effect.

Here is a plain-English breakdown of what changed, why it happened, and what it means for your family.

Why Did the Laws Change?

The changes were introduced as a child safety measure. In 2025, Australia’s Education Ministers agreed to amend the Education and Care Services National Law to address concerns about the potential for personal devices to be used to capture, store, or transmit images of children in care without authorisation.

The intent is straightforward: children in early learning settings deserve an environment where their privacy and safety are actively protected.

What Changed Nationally

From 27 February 2026, amendments to the national Education and Care Services National Law took effect across Australia. Under these changes, educators and staff who work directly with children are restricted from using personal electronic devices in care settings.

Before this, from 1 September 2025, all early childhood education and care services nationwide were required to have written policies in place addressing the use of digital devices.

What Changed in NSW

NSW moved ahead of the national timeline. The Education and Care Services (Supply, Authorisation and Use of Devices) Order 2025 took effect on 6 November 2025, applying across NSW’s 6,000 or more early learning services, including long day care centres, preschools, and family day care.

Under this order, educators and staff must use service-issued or service-authorised devices rather than their own personal devices when working directly with children.

What Counts as a Personal Device?

The definition is broad. A personal device is any device owned by an individual (not the approved provider) that is capable of capturing, storing, or transmitting an image. This includes:

Mobile phones
Smartwatches
Cameras and tablets
iPads and laptops
Hard drives, USB drives, and memory cards
Wearables such as camera glasses

Who Does the Ban Apply To?

The restrictions apply to anyone working directly with children at a service, including permanent and casual educators, students on placement, volunteers, contractors, and allied health professionals delivering programs on-site.

Parents, carers, and other visitors are not covered by the ban. In NSW, parents and carers remain free to use their personal devices during drop-off, pick-up, centre visits, and events involving their own children. There are also authorised exceptions for essential purposes, including emergencies and health or disability support needs.

What About Screen Time for Children?

These new laws specifically address staff device use, not children’s screen time. Screen time limits for young children are not mandated within childcare regulation at a national level.

The relevant guidance comes from the federal Department of Health and Aged Care’s 24-Hour Movement Guidelines, which recommend no screen time for children under 2 years, and no more than 1 hour per day for children aged 2 to 5 years. These are health guidelines, not regulatory requirements.

What This Means for Your Family

If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, their service is already required to operate under these rules. Any educator or staff member working directly with your child should not be using a personal device to take photos or videos. Only service-authorised devices should be used for that purpose.

If you have questions about how your centre handles digital devices or image capture, you are well within your rights to ask. Most services will have a written policy in place that covers exactly this.

At Clovel, the safety and wellbeing of every child in our care is at the heart of everything we do. If you would like to know more about how we support your child across our centres, we would love to have that conversation with you.

Children are naturally curious about the world around them and inherently creative. Providing activities that nurture that creativity and spark imagination helps children become better thinkers and problem solvers and teaches them how to express themselves in exciting ways.

We’ve gathered a list of 5 activities that your little learner is sure to love, and each can help nurture creativity in unique ways.

1. Glitter Bottles

Making glitter bottles is a fun activity that will require the help of a parent.

In this sparkly activity, simple household ingredients like water, school glue, food coloring, and glitter are combined to create a slow moving, swirling glitter galaxy in a water bottle.

Making the glitter bottles themselves involves using fine motor skills and can be used to teach children about primary and secondary colors (“What happens when we add red and blue food coloring to the water in our bottle? It becomes purple!”).

Glitter bottles are an excellent sensory tool and can be used when children are feeling anxious, angry, or upset. Shaking the bottle and watching the glitter swirl and fall has a calming effect and teaches children how to maintain control and work through their big feelings.

2. Unicorn Fizz

This colorful activity is nothing short of magical! Once again, it’s likely you have all the required ingredients tucked into your pantry to create this fizzy experiment. As with most messy art activities, consider where you’ll be making your unicorn fizz. If you have white carpet in your home, you may want to enjoy this activity outdoors.

Pour vinegar into small dishes and color with food coloring. Give your child a disposable aluminum pan and have them sprinkle in a layer of baking powder then glitter.

Give your child a plastic pipette or dropper and let them suck up the colored vinegar and drop it over their pan. He or she will be amazed by the reaction caused when the vinegar meets the baking soda.

Not only does the activity teach children about cause-and-effect relationships, using the dropper supports the fine motor skills needed to hold writing instruments.

3. Straw Painting

This will likely be another outdoor activity due to the mess factor…but, hey, getting messy is fun!

For this creative activity you’ll need heavy-weight paper, liquid watercolors (buy them online or at your local craft store), eye droppers or pipettes, a straw, and a metal tray.

Place a few colors of paint in dishes and your paper on the metal tray. Give your child a pipette or dropper and let them drip a few drops of each color on their paper. Hand them a straw and let them blow the paint around the paper, creating colorful bursts with spider-like legs. Help them engage their creativity by asking what they’re making…spiders? Flower blooms? A celestial solar system?

This activity is wonderful for nurturing hand-eye coordination, writing readiness, and teaching about secondary colors.

4. Cut and Paste Worksheets

Yes, cutting and pasting is an oldie…but it’s also a goodie! Learning to manipulate scissors builds hand strength and fine motor skills. And the act of cutting and pasting increases a child’s visual perception. Add to that the fact that children find it engaging and fun, and you’ve got the perfect activity to keep them interested for hours.

The linked website has tons of free, downloadable worksheets for children of all ages. Some worksheets have children cut along a trail or path. Others have them cut and paste simple shapes. We think you’ll find something here for children of all ability levels. We also think you’ll be amazed at just how focused children are when mastering this important skill.

5. Ooblek

What is ooblek? Only the stretchy-est, gooey-est sensory activity out there. Trust us when we say, your little learner is sure to love it…and the best part? It’s made using two household staples. Easy peasy!

To make your own batch of ooblek, help your child stir together a 2:1 ratio of cornstarch and liquid dish soap…and that’s it! You can add a few drops of food coloring to make it more colorful, but the resulting substance is what’s called a non-Newtonian fluid (as is quicksand). Children will be fascinated by the fact that, when tapped briskly, their ooblek feels like a solid substance. But when they dip their hand in slowly, the ooblek acts like a liquid.

Let your child roll ooblek into shapes then watch as it slowly melts in their hands. It’s a fascinating, easy-to-do, at-home science experiment your little Einstein will love!

And there you have it—five wildly creative activities that will keep children engaged for hours while nurturing their naturally creative natures.

Here’s to enjoying creative play!

For any information about our Educational Programs, give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or fill in this contact us form.

Thanks for reading,
Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986

Lyn Connolly

Founder and Company Director

Lyn Connolly is the Founder and Company Director of Clovel Childcare & Early Learning Centres, a family‑owned group of eight centres across Western Sydney established from her first service at Merrylands. Active in early childhood education since 1977, she also serves as President of the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW, representing providers in state and federal consultations, media, and public hearings.