Colour fun with building blocks and foil

I returned to work today from maternity leave, a sad day as it means my baby girl is growing up to quickly and I barely seem to have noticed!  It is also the beginning of a whole new routine, daddy was left alone to deal with them today, and cook the roast dinner for tea, something that he is just so much better at than me!! 

After spending a bit of time reading with my babies and having final cuddles, about twenty times, I headed off to work.  When I got back we had about half an hour till my yummy roast chicken I had been dreaming off all day was ready, so I decided a quick play was in order.  Seeing the building blocks scattered all over the floor already, I remembered a post by One perfect day, about building blocks and tin foil.  I quickly grabbed so squares of foil and sat on the floor with the Aj's, I wrapped one block up for Alyssa to explore, and at the same time told Arthur what I was doing, he soon copied and wrapped them up too, I said they were like presents, and he quickly unwrapped one and I cheered "Yay It's a blue brick!" next thing I know he's getting me to wrap up more as quickly as he unwraps them, and copying me cheering to the colours inside.  We also wrapped up one of the ittle fire man for some extra silly fun, and so it continued and before we knew it it was time for tea!

Even sometimes just half an hours play can be the best part of the day, well that and the hugs I got when I returned home.

What's this??

Making a big present

Wrapping!

Unwrapping!

OOOOOH! Shiny!

"It's a green brick!"

"It's a fire man!"

 

Family foraging fun!

We love two things in this family, food and things that are free, so what better way to combine the two than a family foraging day.  We headed out into the woods, we found some elderberries and some sweet chestnuts.  Whilst picking up the chestnuts, Daddy found a mushroom on a tree, it was a poisonous one so we didn't touch it, we also aren't brave enough to pick any mushrooms as we don't know very much about them.  In the same area was a fallen tree, Daddy got his phone out to use as a torch to look inside and we found a Geocache, which was a fantastic suprise.  I would love to take the children Geocaching properly, but I don't have a good enough phone for the app or a GPS system.

After a stop off at home for lunch and a change of clothes from the rain,  we then headed out to the field to look for more things, blackberries, hazelnuts and more elderberries.  Arthur had great fun searching for the nuts on the ground, and eating the blackberries as fast as we could find them.  I think foraging is a great activity for a family, it's educational, it makes a walk in the fresh air a lot more exciting an interesting, and you come home with something at the end of it, for free!  

All set to forage

Common puffball mushroom

Surprise geocache

Elderberries ready for freezing

Keeping dry with mummy

Hazelnuts

Finding an acorn

The best use of wellies

Apples! Printing and other apple related fun!

Today Arthur was looking through some old Good Food magazines that his granny had given me, and I realised that I could keep them in his toy kitchen as his own recipe books just like mummy uses.  Whilst looking through them and me telling him what the picture were, he told me he wanted to make an apple crumble for daddy!  We had no apples, but I knew Granny and Grandad's apple tree needed picking, so whilst he was out with them for the morning, I picked two carrier bags full of windfall apples for them and us.  

With such a large amount I chose a couple of ropy looking ones and cut them for Arthur to have a go at apple printing,  the joys of building work means our downstairs is a large un-carpeted space where he can paint with out causing too much damage, and we have a large roll of cheap liner paper.  Alyssa had a go at painting too, although I was constantly having to stop her trying to eat the apple and paint! But she soon got the idea of banging the apple down and had great fun! 

After a bit of a clean up we went for a walk through the apple orchards at Cothele, Arthur had his first attempt of map reading and looked very important telling me what ways we needed to go.  When we reached the orchard he stood next to a sculpture of a hand holding an apple, looked at the cider press and looked at all the different types of apple trees.

Once home we cooked our oaty apple crumble and our fish pie for tea, Arthur was still very hyper from our walk so wasn't much help, he was into everything and grabbing everything and had a two second attention span, but he enjoyed trying to peel the carrots, measuring out the oat and mashing the potato. 

I now have to find the time and energy to prep all the apples for the freezer now, or maybe just eat lots more crumble!!

Painting together

The finished masterpiece

Arthur leads the way!

Apple art

Apple

Apple tree

Helping with the crumble

European Day of Languages

Today has a very European theme to it for European Day of Languages, I have always loved languages, and always been the kind of person to attempt to speak the native language if (big IF) we ever travel.  I also find it interesting how many words we use every day without realising we are speaking a foreign word, I found some wonderful examples including pyjama which is Indian from English leap.

 As I am a food lover, this obviously is a key part of the day!  So what better way to start than Pain Perdu for breakfast. (AKA French toast, gypsy toast, eggy bread!)  We then continued the French theme by me introducing the song Frere Jaques to the two Aj's, I also sang it in English a few time as well, Arthur's favourite part is the bells at the end and he soon started joining in with the ding dang dong!  I then tried some other languages including Dutch, German and Spanish from these translations, I can't say my pronunciation was good, but it was fun trying and exposing them to different languages!

We then moved our culinary adventure to Germany where we made Pretzels to go with lunch, these are a child friendly recipe so are not traditional, but they were still lovely, and Arthur enjoyed shaping them, whilst Alyssa enjoyed eating them!

After dinner I let them play with an Italian themed tricolour spagghetti, I used food dye to colour it red and green for the Italian flag using a technique from the blog One perfect day.  Arthur had great fun mixing it from bowl to bowl and using his motor skills to work the tongs.  We also managed to create a lovely spaghetti print as it was still wet, similar to string painting.  I mixed blue and yellow together to get green, which is why it printed more yellowy.

Our evening meal will continue the Italian theme with Pappa al pomodoro using the wonderful tomatoes we picked from the tunnel house on Tuesday, Arthur will be chief bread ripper!

Making Pretzels

Not bad for first timers!!

Mixing the triclour

Tong practice

A work of art!

Having fun!

We're gonna need a bigger spoon!

Pretty colours

Home made Autumnal Play dough

I have seen so many recipes and ways of making Play dough, and even seen another person make it, but have never had a go myself!  So I decided after seeing recently a post from Nurture store that it was about time I tried, well we tried! 

A friend of mine gave me a recipe for a microwavable version, which sounded more appealing to attempt with toddler in tow compared to the stove top method.

2 cups flour
2 cups water
1 cup salt
1 tbsp cream of tartar
3 tbsp oil

mix together, microwave on full power for 1 min, stir and repeat.  Once it looks play doughy reduce time to 30 secs, when it looks right tip out to cool, then knead well adding colours / smells / glitters etc.

I let Arthur mix all the ingredients together, then once the microwave came into play I took over as it did get quite hot.

I then divided it into four balls, added nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice to the balls and then ready mixed paint for colour.  I could have made the colours and smells stronger but as it was my first attempt I left it quite mild, but Arthur didn't seem to mind and was very excited to play!

I think I was getting carried away and having just as much fun as the two Aj's whilst playing with the dough, I added the leaves and bits from our Super quick natural sensory bin from yesterday for added fun.  I made a tree, (sort of) and a hedgehog (of sorts!) to help encourage Arthur to make more things with the play dough other thn just cutting it, which is also good for his motor skills!  Big mistake as next he was saying make a rabbit, make a tree, and playing away with all the pieces nicely.  Then came make a Starfish, make a shark! Not quite fitting in with the woodland / autumnal theme, but then who am I to stifle his imagination, mummy did as mummy was told!!

It was so nice playing with the scented play dough, much nicer then the shop bought stuff, and the smells and colour theme really added to the play, also now I know how cheap quick and easy it is to make, I'm not so worried about Arthur mixing it all together into an unusable brownish lump, so my fear of him using more than one colour at a time is over!

Adding ingredients together

Looks a bit like pancake mix

It worked!!!

After adding paints and spices

Alyssa exploring

My tree?!?

Woodland scene

Playing

Rabbit in the wood

Shark anyone?

Arthur creating

Hedgehog?? No wonder I got a C in GCSE Art!!

Super quick natural sensory bin

Whilst Arthur was at nursery, Alyssa had her first hair cut, very proud mummy as she was so well behaved!  And as she is almost crawling we spent the morning encouraging crawling skills using the pop up tunnel, playing peekaboo and crawling through. 

Once Arthur was finished nursery it was time for  Tunnel House Tuesday out the field, today we picked tomatoes and potted strawberry runners to create new strawberry plants for the new season.  There wasn't very much else to do out there today apart from a little light weeding, so I soon found us at home with an hour to fill before tea time. 

I decided to set up a quick sensory bin using some natural objects, I grabbed some leaves from the trees and plants near the house, then added to that the pine cones and conkers that I already had, Lastly I added some tractors of Arthur's for an invitation to play element.  Alyssa dove straight in and grabbed the pine cone, she loves these, and Arthur grabbed the tractors and played with them alone away from the bin, enjoying putting things on the back of the tractor.  It was so simple but the added element of things for the tractor to carry, and different sensory sensations for Alyssa kept them both amused till tea.

Ready for play

Alyssa and her pine cone

Exploring textures

Tractor fun

Autumn sticky window art!

Autumn is now officially here, and i'm suffering with the beginnings of my first seasonal cold starting in my ears and throat.  Peace is my best friend today so I was a very naughty mum and let Arthur watch Disney's Alice in wonderland with me whilst I let the pain in my ear subside and my ability to stand without falling over come back. 

Once mid morning arrived, and the film had finished (my days start at 6-7am!!) my energy increased enough for me to try an Autumn activity I have been seeing a lot recently, and looked easy to prepare and clean up after, as well as the added bonus of being quiet!

I stuck some sticky back plastic to the window, drew a basic tree shape onto it, and cut out various Autumnal coloured leaves, I also cut out a little silhouette of a bird, hedgehog and rabbit for a bit of extra fun!

Arthur got stuck in staight away, and got a little upset when he ran out of leaves, he was even nice and let Alyssa stick a leaf up as well! I will definitely try this again with some different pictures and bits to stick on.

Making a start

Alyssa has a go

Rabbit in the tree

Ta Dah!!