Dinosaur Day

This week I had intended for us to do lots of dinosaur activities, to link in with Dino week on CBeebies. It didn’t quite go to plan. We’ve had a really busy and fun week going out and about so never got round to doing some of the activities I had planned. We read lots of dinosaur books though and watched a great programme on Netflix called ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ which Harrison loved!

We have done a few bits though, so I’ve put them all together to snow you!

Our first dinosaur activity started off on Sunday night where I found myself putting dinosaurs in my freezer! I found a few different shaped containers, half filled them with water and popped in a toy dinosaur, and managed to squeeze them in the freezer.
Obviously, when we took them out on Monday afternoon, the dinosaurs had frozen into the water.

I then popped them into our big plastic tray that we use for messy/water play, and gave the kids a few tools – plastic knives, toy hammers and screwdrivers and sticks. Immediately Harrison told me that the dinosaurs were ‘stuck’ and started using the hammer to try and get it out. It was lovely watching them trying to get the dinosaurs out using the tools.

However, it was a LOT harder than I had anticipated. The ice started melting and we talked about it melting (Harrison immediately compared it to ice cream!) and becoming water, which they thought was magical. Harrison realised by dropping the ice from a height he could break some of the ice but I had to discourage this as shards of ice started flying everywhere – unless we were all wearing goggles (which they probably would have loved and it would have added an extra role play element to the activity!) It wasn’t very safe. It was a good discussion point as we talked about being sharp and Harrison straight away recalled an incident before Christmas where he saw me cut my finger with scissors. I was starting to think we would never get the dinosaurs out without leaving them to melt, when I thought about how we try to melt ice….I filled up a spray bottle with warm salt water. The kids loved squirting the ice with the water and watching it melt really quickly. This was also great for fine motor control as they had to squeeze the trigger on the bottle. This was a brilliant activity for introducing some scientific concepts.

Then we did my favourite…handprints!! I’d found a lovely little dinosaur poem on Pinterest (there was no link so can’t credit it) which I thought would look really nice with the kids handprints.
On the corner of a4 sheets of paper (the kids chose their colours) we did a handprint, which I then added a head to the thumb bit and a tail to the other side, and popped on legs using felt tips. I then copied out the poem.

We’ve used the poem a couple of times this week to get them moving about when we haven’t been able to get outside.

Our last activity was by far the messiest and ended up with the kids in the bath. Graham drew some dinosaurs on coloured paper (he’s much better at drawing than me!) and I let them loose with a tray of yellow, brown and green paint. They enjoyed mixing the colours up to make ‘mud’, and then using their fingers and paint dabbers to blob paint onto the dinosaurs.

Once they had dried, we stuck them onto paper, and I used their dinosaur names and characteristics from their dino money jars.

Obviously if you are more creative with words than I am you could write your own dinosaur characteristics!

**the winner of the ‘Let’s Potty’ competition was Kim Campbell**

Valentines bits and pieces

Another beautiful day….or not! I don’t like moaning too much about the weather as living in central Birmingham we are fairly protected, especially compared to these poor people in Somerset and other areas that are pretty much underwater!

Anyway, we turned the radio on to try and block the sound of the wind and rain, cranked the heating up and made some lovely Valentines cards. We had been sent a box of craft goodies by Baker Ross, which was perfect timing for the Valentines cards I had planned.

I had originally planned to make some pop out Valentines cards, but in the box from Baker Ross was a pack of pre-cut pop up heart cards,very similar to the ones we were going to make! For a pack of 8 cards it costs £2.56 on their website, so not badly priced!

Of course, I cheated and used these instead of making them, but if you want to have a go at making your own, here is what we were going to do:

1) Fold a piece of card in half
2) Draw a heart in the middle. Make sure the crease of the card goes through the middle of the heart.
3) Cut the heart out, leaving a small piece each side of the card intact
4) Make sure there is a crease in the middle of the heart.

The ones that I was sent came in a choice of red, white and pink.

We used a selection of the embellishments we were sent, as well as some of the materials I had already put in our Valentines Craft Box.

These included:
Felt tip pens*
Sticky gems*
Feathers
Felt Roses*
Bows
Sequins
Glitter
Pearlized gems*
Buttons
Tissue paper
Foam shapes

I put the embellishments in a serving tray and let them choose whatever they wanted and decorate however they liked. The items from Baker Ross were great as they were all self adhesive – usually with similar items we use a glue stick and they drop off, so I end up using glue guns but these had little sticky pads on the back. I wasn’t a massive fan of the little bows though, as they weren’t stuck together, so one gentle pull and they come undone. I really liked the felt rose stickers !

The kids really enjoyed decorating their cards and they looked really cute. I joined in and made a Valentines Card for their daddy – I’m clearly not as artistic as my kids!

When we had finished making these ( the other four cards have been out away for next year!) Harrison asked to do some more sewing, so I quickly made a heart with holes in to sew, which after the initial knot he did pretty well independently, and I sat with Alex to make a hanging heart.
I cut out a heart shape from red card and then cut out the centre. Using the bits and pieces left over from the cards he decorated it. I noticed doing this that his fine motor skills are really coming along. He’s coming up to sixteen months old – he took the lid off the rather small glue stick, managed to put glue on the back of quite small buttons and shapes and press them onto the heart without much help, which I don’t think is bad going for his age! His pen grip is almost spot on as well, which is amazing.

We used lots of textures whilst doing this – soft foam, hard and smooth buttons, fluffy feathers which is perfect for a young toddler, especially Alex who loves using his thumb to explore texture.

We looped some red wool around the heart and hung it on the wall. Hopefully we will add some more hanging hearts the week!

Disclaimer
* denotes products that we were sent free of charge from Baker Ross for review purposes, and are available to buy on their website. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Valentines Biscuits

Today we did some heart shaped biscuits. The didn’t turn out exactly how I planned but were really nice and easy to make. I was going to melt some white chocolate and mix in pink food colouring, then dip the biscuits in, but somehow I managed to burn the white chocolate. It went all lumpy so used dark chocolate instead. Maybe didn’t look as pretty but I know I prefer the taste of dark chocolate.

I followed a basic biscuit recipe that I’ve used before.

Ingredients

100g (4oz) butter or margarine (we used Stork)
100g (4oz) caster sugar
1 egg
175g (6oz) plain flour

1) Grease two baking sheets with butter to stop the biscuits sticking, and preheat oven to 180°/ gas mark 4

2) Sift the flour into large bowl and add the butter.

3) Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

4) Stir the sugar into the mixture. Break the egg into a small bowl and beat well. Add to mixture in big bowl and stir until it forms a dou

5) Sprinkle a clean work surface with flour and put dough onto it. Roll the dough out until it it is about a quarter of an inch thick.

6) Use a cutter to cut out the shapes (we obviously used hearts) and carefully place onto the greased baking tray.

7) Bake for 12-15minutes or until golden brown. Leave them to cool completely on a wire rack.

That’s the basic recipe.
Like I said, I intended to melt white cooking chocolate and mix in a drop of food colouring to make it pink, but it went all lumpy. Typically, I had no more white chocolate ! We melted a bar of dark cooking chocolate in the microwave, taking it out and stirring every ten seconds or so to make sure it didn’t burn. We them had loads of fun dipping the biscuits into the chocolate and then sprinkling red sugar on to make them pretty, and left them to cool and set in the fridge.

The gorgeous Rachel at Candy Floss Cloud had a go at these biscuits with her little one, along with some other lovely Valentines activities…check her blog out here

Pirate handprints and paper plates

We managed to get outside and play today as no rain and hurricane force gales – yay!!!!

This afternoon after a good run round in the garden we made pirate handprints. If you read my blog regularly you will know I love handprints – anything can be made out of handprint with a bit of imagination and they are fantastic to keep and look back on.

This was a slightly trickier one as it involved painting the kids hands three different colours – if you have ever painted your hand you will know that it really tickles and you automatically want to close your hand, so this took the two of us, one holding kids hands and the other doing the painting!

We painted 3/4 of the palms a peachy skin colour (orange mixed with lots of white paint!), the 1/4 of the palm by the wrist red and the thumb red, and the rest of the fingers black.

Once the handprints had dried, I added black stripes to the red bit to make a pirate bandanna, and an eye patch, eye and mouth.

We used the left over peachy coloured paint to paint a paper plate. Again the top part was painted red and black as a bandana, and red and mouth added afterwards.

What do you think mi hearties?

Pirate Castle

This was definitely more of a mummy and daddy made activity activity as although easy to make is a bit fiddly. Older kids would enjoy painting and decorating it though.

You will need:

4 equal sized rectangles of cardboard (mine were about 5 x 7 inches)
4 cardboard tubes
Black paint
Tape (I used black duct tape)
Scissors
Straws

First of all take one of the rectangles of cardboard and place one cardboard tube to the side of it.

Cut a slit roughly half way up the tube

Cut a slit halfway down the rectangle

They should slot together. Repeat this for each ‘wall’ of the castle – so each tube and each rectangle will have two slits in, so they all fit together. Don’t forget to cut out an archway in one of the pieces as a doorway.

Cut little squares out of the top of the cardboard tubes to create turrets.

Paint it all black (might be easier to take it all apart to do this). I used for the inside of the castle. I did this because I had used toy packaging for the cardboard and the one side was shiny and printed on, which is a nightmare to paint! It also gave it a little bit more strength.

I then wrapped black duct tape (can you tell I love the stuff?!) around drinking straws, although you could just paint art straws black, and created a flag out of the tape (yes I’m obsessed!!) but black paper would work just as well. I did intend to finish it off by adding some skull and crossbones stickers but, as with a lot of things when two toddlers are about, they disappeared!

Harrison immediately wanted to play with it, so in our big play tub I tipped out our tub of lentils, some sparkly gems as treasure, and added in a cardboard ‘x’. Our pirate small world/sensory tub was finished with some Happyland pirates and our sponge sail boats. We dug for treasure by scooping up the lentils with spoons and poured lentils down the turrets of the castle.

Lots of fun!

Pirates: sponge sail boats

Today we had a go at making some lovely little pirate boats from kitchen sponges. We had great fun and a good way of introducing some science to the kids by talking about floating and sinking and wind!

To make these you will need: scissors, duct tape (we used plain black but you could buy the funky stuff!), kitchen scourer sponges, lollypop sticks.

First of all, cut the two corners of the sponge to make a kind of house shape.

You then need to make a little slit in the middle of the sponge (might be easier with a knife) the same width as the lolly stick. This is where the mast will go.

Overlap two pieces of duct tape, and then turn it over and tape two more pieces onto the back, so no sticky bits are showing.

Trim it so it is nice and neat. Cut a small slit at the top and bottom of the sail and thread it onto the lolly stick.

Your ship is ready to sail!! We added a skull and crossbone sticker to make it piratey!

We filled up our big tub with water and added in some ‘treasure’ and sailed our pirate ships (yes, I know there is a car mat underneath, couldn’t find the tarpaulin!). We used a bicycle pump to create ‘wind’ to move them along and blew on them as well. We balanced treasure and the little men from a playset on them, and it held their weight pretty well. Every so often we had to squeeze the water out of the sponge but we had great fun! Of course, it descended into splashing and wave making, and both kids needed a change of clothes afterwards, but that’s what happens with two toddlers and a big tub of water!!

Pirate Treasure Map by Toucan Box: a review

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed an excellent craft kit from ToucanBox. Today we used the other box that we were sent, and yet again I was very impressed!!

We have started our pirate theme week today but were also visiting my nan. The Toucan Box set was perfect to chuck in my bag to do there , as it is low mess and literally everything we needed was contained in the box!

We were sent a lovely pirate treasure map set. When I say it contained everything, I mean everything – even down to the glue stick, paint brush and teabag to stain the paper!

We made a pot of tea using the teabag provided (and had a cuppa with it – bonus!) and left into stew to go nice and dark as the very simple step by step instructions directed. We scrumpled up the paper and then used the paintbrush to ‘paint’ on the tea, and left it to dry. Whilst it was drying we made the parrot puppet- a cardboard cutout which we decorated with the mini felt pens included, and then glued on the feathers, googly eye and jumbo lolly stick. The only thing I would say is the glue stick didn’t hold the lollystick handle or eye on very well – I’ve used my glue gun to make it more secure. Perhaps some sort of sticky back or sticky pad would hold it better? Minor details though!

Once the paper had dried we decorated it with the pirate stickers and felt tip pens. What do you think?

The prices for Toucan Boxes vary depending on what level of subscription you go for, but single packs are available which give a months worth of craft ideas for just under £20, which would make a lovely gift idea.
The lovely people at Toucan have given me a code to share with you to claim a free taster box! Just visit their website <a href="http://www.toucanbox.com
“>here  and enter the code TOUCAN.
Enjoy!

* I was sent this and another Toucan Box for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

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Chinese New Year: horse pictures

As 2014 is the year of the horse, today we did some horse pictures.

I am rubbish at drawing (even my stick men look a little odd!) and I don’t have a printer to print off a template but luckily we have a play dough cutter in the shape of a horse which we used as a template.

Instead of just getting the kids to paint the horse, we did some bubble wrap printing. I’d seen this on various websites and sounded much more fun and a great way of adding texture to a picture, especially as they both love playing with the rolling pins when we are baking or playing with dough.

I taped some bubble wrap onto rolling pins and rollers and gave them a paper plate with some brown and white paint on, and some pieces of red paper. We rolled the pins and rollers into the paint lightly – just enough to cover the wrap otherwise just saturates paper – and rolled them over the paper. Because our horses were going to be quite small, I thought it easier for them to roll on bigger paper and then cut the horses out afterwards. They had great fun doing this!

Once they had dried we drew round the cookie cutter and cut them out, and then backed them onto white paper to make them stand out, and then Harrison stuck them onto red card. We made a mane and tail for them out of black wool.

Whenever we get paint out, the kids inevitably end up painting their hands – we are all a bit obsessed with handprints – and today was no exception. Turns out that brown handprints make excellent horses, with the help of a blob of brown paint for a head and a googly eye. I was going to try and write their names in Chinese on their pictures (aided by Google translate!) but the writing was way too intricate and artistic for me to attempt!

Chinese New Year: dragons, fans and lanterns

We did a couple of things today for our Chinese new year wall today, mostly involving lots of red, yellow and orange paint!

First of all we did some lovely Chinese dragons using our handprints. We painted our hands red and did some sidewards handprints on white paper and did the same over the top with orange and yellow paint. Once they had dried we cut it out and stuck it to red paper, adding legs and head made out of paper.

To save on washing up paint trays, (yes I’m lazy!) we used paper plates for the paint. The paint had all swirled together and looked really pretty – far too pretty to throw away – so we turned the plates into fans! We spread the paint over the entire plate and then pressed the plate to a sheet of paper. This left a lovely print on the paper (which we used in our next activity!) and left a marbly type effect on the plate. We left the plates to dry and cut them in half and then the kids decorated them with black felt tips.

Using the print off the plate, we made a lantern. Once the print had dried we cut it out and stuck it to red paper, adding detail to the top and bottom with black felt tip.

Our Chinese wall is looking great!

Chinese New Year: lanterns

Today, to kick off our week of Chinese New Year themed activities, we made some Chinese lanterns. These were really easy to make and so pretty.

I had set all the things last night, including a tray with some sparkly pom poms, feathers, red and gold sequins and glitter. As soon as Harrison saw these (at 6.45am!!!) he wanted to get stuck in!

I had done the cutting of the lanterns already for Alex, and for Harrison I had folded and drew lines on it as a cutting guide, as we are working on scissor control and this was a perfect activity for doing this.

Start off by folding a piece of A4 paper or card in half to make along thin rectangle shape (heard this being called ‘hot dog fold’ – the opposite way is ‘hamburger’!).
Make a series of cuts along the fold line (we did about ten cuts) but don’t cut all the way to the edge of the paper.

Open up the paper (this is the stage when we decorated it) and then using either tape or glue stick the two short ends of the paper together.

Attach a strip of paper as a handle and there is your lantern!

Traditionally they should be red and gold, as these are the colours of wealth, luck and prosperity but we made a few in different colours as well. We used all sorts of bits from our craft cupboard to decorate it but could be as simple as drawing or painting on them. You can make them as table centrepieces, or string a few of them together to make a garland of them.