Robot costume making

Arthur had a friend come and play today, and he was doing his usual robot impression using Alyssa's treasure box, and his friend joined in also, apparently enjoying robots too.  So I grabbed the silver card from the craft room and made a simple robot outfit for both of them in minutes with just a stapler, and they had great fun doing their "I am a robot!" impressions.  

Once Arthur's friend had left I sat him down with some scraps and a glue stick and let him customise his robot a bit, adding buttons and things.  It was great seeing him get exicted about his costume.  So much so that I didn't manage to get him to stay still enough to get a good picture!  That's another one to add to the dressing up box for future fun and games.

Head may be a bit big!!

All the pieces

Adding the buttons

Laid out flat

Being a robot!

Naan-sense with a toddler

With a recent over abundance of courgette, I have been non stop freezing, chopping, grating and cooking courgette.  I have made rissotto, lasagne, soup, and tonight I decided to make a scrummy vegetable curry.  My darling husbands reaction was the usual 'where's the meat come in?' then he suggested I make naan breads to go with it.  I then decided it would be a great activity for Arthur and I to do together as he enjoys cooking, and we haven't ventured into the bread making side of things yet.

It was great watching him sift the flour, with a bit of help from to to keep him under control, and funny watching his face as he tasted the salt.  I even let go a bit and trusted him to pour the liquids in himself, his mess was actually quite limited for him for a change.  I started the kneading off for him and showed him how to do it, then let him have a go, it's really good for motor skills and coordination, and he was copying the describing words I was using too, which is broadening his vocabulary.  I then put it in the bowl and, to add a bit of magic to it, told him that we had to leave it for the elves to blow air into it and make it bigger!  At this point he went off for a walk with grandad to keep him amused and distracted whilst it proved.

Once he returned we took the out dough, which unfortunately didn't rise very much, and I separated it into five balls, Arthur then rolled then out flat and pricked them with a fork.  I had to be very watch full that he didn't get too excited and start destroying the bread, luckily he was concentrating really hard.  I then gave him a garlic butter mixture and a pastry brush and told him to paint the bread, I touched up any places he missed.  Then I really let loose and gave him a small bowl of mixed seeds to sprinkle on top, I did add the occasional ones where he missed, but he actually did really well and didn't make any mess at all.

I then cooked the rice and reheated the curry I made whilst he was asleep, and cooked the naan under the grill.  Not only did they look amazing, but they tasted great too, and Arthur excitedly ate it all up, but left most of his rice and curry, but it was sweet watching him try and copy me putting curry in my naan to eat it!

 

Overgrown courgettes!!

Sifting

Tasting salt

Stiring

Mixing

Kneading

Proving

Rolling

Pricking

Painting

Sprinkling

The amazing final product!!

"I have a dream" introducing race and equality

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I have a dream" speech, so I decided today to talk a bit about race equality with Arthur.  Obviously this is a very deep subject for a toddler, so I literally just talked about there being lots of people in the world and we all have different colour skin but we are the same.

Activity wise, whilst listening to the speech revisited here on Radio 4  by various notorious speakers, I drew around Arthur's hand a number of times, which he loved, and let him colour them in using various colours.  Whilst he was doing this I made a simple Dove out of paper, which he loved trying to make also, and told him the Dove was a symbol of peace.  He then enjoyed flying the Dove around the room for a bit.

I then thought a simple way of showing him different types of people would be for me to cut out a number of faces from magazines and get him to glue together a collage, especially as he enjoys sticking.  Well 20 minutes and various catelogues,  super market magazines and junk mail from the recycling bin later, lots of white people, no Chinese people, and a very limited number of Black and Asian people later we have a not very diverse collage!  It amazed me really, and made me realise that I've never really noticed the lack of diversity in advertising.

Our last activity was another hand print and sticking activity seeing as Arthur enjoys them so much, I drew round his hand and cut it out in various colours of paper and together we stuck them down in a circle. 

Apart from books on various feasts and festivals, gods and legends, I also realised I don't really own any children's books containing different colour children, they generally contain monsters, caterpillars, and Gruffalos.  Although I have read Handa's Suprise to Arthur from the library before and definitely recommend it as a great story, I realised I definitely need to invest in some more books!

A definite eye opener of a day for me, although probably not really for the children, but Arthur had fun and Alyssa was playing with her toys and listening too.

Colouring the handprints

"Folding" paper

Paper dove

Sticking the pictures down

Almost done

Some added colouring

 

 

 

 

Circle of hands

P.S. You may notice Arthur has a black eye on his left eye in the pics, my poor little man ran into the bathroom, slipped and headbutted the toilet!! I would say that was the worst moment of my life, but honestly, that was the day I slipped down a set of concrete steps whilst he was a baby and he went flying out of my arms!! Daddy has taught him to say "check out my shiner!" boys will be boys!!

16 ways to entertain children when you are ill!

There are times when you are ill, but still have an energetic toddler to deal with and you don't know what to do.  This has been me the last two days, after a night of sickness, there was no way I was able to run around the following day.  So it got me thinking of different ways to keep Arthur amused whilst lying on the sofa/bed, I also thought that some of these could be useful to mums breastfeeding a younger child.

So here we go.

1. Mummy says (like Simon says)
2. Dancing and musical statues, only energy needed is pushing pause on the remote
3. Doctors and patient, be prepared to have a spoon of medicine forced into your mouth
4. Hairdressers, I used a baby brush for less chance of snagging/tearing/tangling hair
5. Fetch, burn off some of that excess energy by simply getting them to chase after a ball and bring it back, you can even make it more fun by getting them to pretend to be a dog and bark and do it on all fours.
6. Set up a tent / den with lots of cushions and lie down and read
7.  Have special colouring books, magazines (ours are a collection of Cbeebies mags that nanny buys) that only come out when you are tired/poorly
8. Sofa peekaboo, lie down on the sofa and get your little one to hide and pop up from various points of the sofa
9. kiddie board games, card games, jigsaw puzzles
10. Play dough
11. Activity dices, (obviously best made before hand, if not just write on scraps of paper in two bowls!) one dice says and action, one says a body part ie wiggle + fingers
12. Hide small toys deep in a ball pool and get them to rummage and find them all
13. Finger/hand puppets
14. Song sack ( bag full of small toys relating to nursery rhymes, if your up for singing/noise!)
15. Play cook, use a play kitchen and get them to make you food
16. Give up and call the grand parents!!

Arthur 'Cooking' tomato for poorly mummy

Peekaboo

Playing hairdresser

Teaching mummy colours and shapes

Reading with props to bring to life

Finger puppets

A medieval day!

After Arthur received his toy knights from granny and grandad yesterday, knights have been the topic of conversation, and king Arthur.  So today we decided to take Arthur to Buckland Abbey to look for knights, we were hoping to see some Armour on display or some pictures.  When we arrived we were lucky enough to find out that they were having a medieval weekend with people in costume and various extra hands on displays. 

Arthur got a chance to try making marks with a quill and ink, and look at various sets of Armour. He also saw some medieval style cooking, and tried a medieval cup and ball game.  Alyssa enjoyed getting involved and touching various plants and a wild boar skin, as well as just enjoying the sights and sounds. 

Whilst looking around the abbey he enjoyed looking at the boats,  and a giant statue of Sir Francis Drake, and all the displays in the kitchen.  We managed to get through the abbey in record time as Arthur was over excited and running from room to room, but at least he was having fun.

Once home we looked at a pop up knight book, I read the story of the sword in the stone with Arthur, and used a cardboard sword from his dress up box and a bean bag covered in a blanket to re create the sword in the stone, King Arthur of course was the only one able to retrieve the sword!  I also used a plastic cup and a pom pom to make a toddler safe cup and ball game. 

Arthur learnt some new words today, and saw some new sights, we were very lucky that the event was happening on the day we decided to go, and It is such a lovely place with lots of estate walks and a trails.

Quill writing

Armour

Wild boar

Costumes

Medieval kithenware

Medieval style cooking

Knight on the wall

A medieval banquet

Cup and ball game

Reading time

Sword in the stone

King Arthur

Trying the game

"King Arthur and Mike the Knight"

Potato picking

Granny and grandad returned home from a holiday in France today,  leading to a very excited Arthur, some lovely presents, including a knight and horses play set ( I sense some knightly fun tomorrow maybe??) and a much missed run around the field with Benson the dog.

So after a lovely morning at a friends birthday party, instead of being tired and falling asleep, an excitable little boy was saying "me go field now with Benson, see 'Olly'!!" So quick change and off we went following granny and grandad.  After a run around the field and a swing on the tree swing, Holly the dog turned up with her owner, Arthur likes Holly, as Benson doesn't play fetch but Holly does.  So a quick game of fetch later and we were digging for potatoes in the veg plot after daddy noticed there were still some plants left in the plot. It's great that Arthur is getting first hand experience of where food comes from,  and hopefully over time he can learn more about life cycles of plants etc and appreciate how lucky we are to have the food, especially with Harvest festival coming up, as not every year is ideal crop weather.

Fetch with Holly

The tree swing

In grandads boot

Group shot with Benson

Digging

Bagging

Looking for potatoes in the mud

Wind swept Alyssa

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