The Very Hungry Caterpillar hats

Today we have been pretending to be The Very Hungry Cattherpillar, with our hats!!!
These were really easy to make. I cut two strips of green paper out, (for each hat)  and glued one end together to make one long strip. I then measured it round their heads for an idea of size – too small and it fall off, too big and it slips over their faces! When the size was about right I used a piece of sticky tape to make it into a band. 

I then cut out two larger red circles and two smaller yellow circles, which Harrison stuck on as eyes.

We finished by attaching two swirly antennae made from purple paper. 

We then had loads of fun crawling around pretending to be the caterpillar, eating lots of food and making up our own version of the story!

Paper mache pizza

Harrison loves playing with his Melissa and Doug Pizza Party set but because it comes apart he couldn’t use it properly with his market stall. A mooch in the craft cupboard provided me with two cardboard circles, no doubt from all the packaging in Christmas presents, and it was perfect for a pizza!
We used the smaller one as a trial, and I think we’re going to use the other one with felt toppings for a busy bag.

To begin with, Harrison helped me roll up some paper into a sort of long thing sausage shape. We used just sheets of a4 paper but newspaper would better(I really need to keep newspapers for this sort of thing!). We then curved it round the edge of the circle to make the pizza crust and taped it down with lots of masking tape. We didn’t stick to the base, although you could, we just laid it on the top.

Then we got some kitchen roll and ripped into bits, and pasted it on with a mixture of PVA glue and water. We covered the entire pizza, making sure none of the masking tape was showing as it’s really difficult to paint over, and then left it to dry and go hard overnight.

This morning, we chose our paint colours – brown for pepperoni, light brown for the pizza crust and dabbed on red and yellow for cheese and tomato, and blobs of green as peppers. Harrison did the red and yellow dabs and I did the rest as he is still at the age of splodging paint anywhere.! We left it to dry and then I gave it a final coat of PVA/water mix to seal it and harden it. It looks great and is perfect for the market stall. We’re also waiting for a paper mache ice lolly and cake to dry so watch here to see how they turn out!

Feel free to share your ideas for making play food!

Melissa and Doug Pizza Party Review

For Christmas, Harrison and Alex had some Melissa and Doug sets. I had asked for these as they looked lovely and when we played with them I was even more impressed.

Melissa and Doug are an American company that specialise in toys that promote creativity and imagination. Most of their toys are wooden which I especially love as I have a soft spot for wooden toys. They last longer and always look much more beautiful than plastic ones!

My personal favourite is their pizza party set. You can buy it from the entertainer http://www.thetoyshop.com/Baby-and-pre-school/Wooden-toys/Melissa-%26-Doug—Pizza-Party/p/377523.

It comes presented in a beautiful wooden tray that holds the set together. My only tiny criticism is that it doesn’t have any sort of lid – but that literally is the only negative thing I can say!

It is a beautiful wooden pizza with Velcro on so it can hold together or be ‘cut’ with the wooden pizza cutter tool into six slices. This is brilliant for early numeracy skills. We’ve been using it to count! It is also a way of introducing basic fractions to children. We’ve already started talking about haves using it. If I was still teaching in schools, i’d definitely be using this for fraction lessons!
It comes with over 50 ‘toppings’. These are small round discs with a picture of mushrooms, peppers or salami on and have Velcro attached so they stick to the pizza slices. You can put three toppings on each slice. Again this is fantastic for numeracy skills. Harrison likes to ask me which toppings I want and I can give him various answers e.g. two mushrooms and one pepper. We also had fun sorting out the toppings and making sure they were in the right space!

So far we have had loads of fun with this, and we can use it alongside our toy market stall and kitchen for brilliant role play. It’s also given me a great idea for a craft activity – watch this space!

If you’re looking for a lovely durable toy, I would definitely recommend this!!