Bastille day

 Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet!!

As you know I like to try and link activities to holidays and events so I can gain inspiration and teach the two AJ's about the world around us, today is officially Bastille day in France, celebrating the storming of Bastille prison and the beginning of the French revolution!

After a lovely long walk with daddy in the woods very early this morning, my peaceful cup of morning coffee was shattered by cries of "Me have pancakes now!!" and a very excited little boy racing into the front room.  I like to try and include food into the theme if possible to help them explore new tastes or learn about the origins and just to keep food fun!  Today's French menu was Crepes with Nutella and bannana for breakfast, Toddler friendly version of Croque Monsieur (cheese and ham toastie!!!) for lunch and BBQ for tea.   

After a yummy breakfast I put YouTube on and found a video of last years military parade, I tried to find a live stream of this years but to be honest I'm rubbish at technology!  We didn't watch the whole thing as it's very long, but Arthur loves horses and pretended to ride around the front room whilst they were on, and marched when the military men and women came on, he also enjoyed seeing the airplanes leaving the trails of blue, white and red smoke behind them.  Soon I changed the video to the fireworks over the Eiffel tower, and within minutes was met with cries of "Me draw fireworks now!" So leaving the video on for inspiration I gave him some glitter pens and let him create his masterpiece, whilst I cut out a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower out of glitter paper to put on top!

I then made some rainbow foam dough from Fun at home with kids in blue, white and red for Arthur to play with in the garden, it really does feel lovely and will definitely make it again, but after being smooshed and squished and rolled over and over it soon turn a lovely shade of brown!  Arthur then asked for water to be put in it, and I thought why not, lets see what happens, and we ended up with a slimy puddle of melted chocolate looking stuff that was still fun to play with for a bit before boredom and hunger struck!

Overall today Arthur practiced his colours, used fine motor skills to squeeze the glitter pens and practiced his marching and skipping movements for physical development, strengthening larger muscles.  He also had a swimming lesson in grannies giant paddling pool!  Alyssa is being baby led weaned so she got to explore a few new tastes and see the videos with her big brother, I didn't trust her with the glitter pens or foam dough though!!

Crepes

Fireworks

Foam dough

Muck

Cheese and ham toasties

Yummy

Voila!