This week is Arthur's first week at school, so for the first time ever I have a large amount of one on one time with Alyssa, I've never really managed to have lots of time with Alyssa as generally Arthur has been around as well, so I was keen to get the most out of it and do lots of things with her. The 13th of September is Roald Dahl's birthday, so I decided to start things off with a week of Roald Dahl themed activities.
On the Monday, after we had dropped a very excited Arthur off to school, we sat snuggled up on the sofa just the two of us and watched 'Fantastic Mr Fox.' Then I drew some simple fox and badger faces onto some card for Alyssa to colour in, whilst I fetched the pop up tunnels so we could play at digging and crawling through tunnels. Once the masks were made Alyssa wanted to have a go at cutting and wanted more masks made, so I went with it and let her try cutting, before she did more colouring, and before long it was time to pick Arthur up from school. (He really enjoyed it and came running up to me saying "Mummy I had a great day!!")
On the Tuesday we snuggled again on the bean bags in our cosy corner, and I read "The giraffe and pelly and me," from beginning to end, Alyssa did get a bit fidgety as it was a good 45minutes long, but was very happy to stay and listen, have a little snack and drink, and look at all the illustrations. Then after this I drew some giraffes and let Alyssa loose with yellow, brown and orange paint. I had done this as a finger painting activity, as I had done it with Arthur when he was only about a year old, but Alyssa insisted on using a paintbrush, which was fine with me.
The next day we had a workman in knocking down plaster off a wall, so due to the dust being created we were confined to the front room, so I decided to drown out the drilling and banging by watching 'Matilda', which Alyssa enjoyed, and then I put on the original 'Charlie and the chocolate factory.' Alyssa loved this and danced to the Umpa Lumpas and found them funny. Whilst this was on we coloured in 'Lollipops' and I wrapped tissue paper in old sweet wrappers so we could set up a pretend sweet shop when Arthur got home. The two of them had a wonderful time playing sweet shops, Arthur wanted to be the shop keeper, and play soon digressed and they were pretending to cook the sweets to deliver to the sweet shop in their play kitchens which was brilliant to watch, and I didn't want to ruin it by telling them you don't put chocolates in the oven to make them.
On the Thursday we decided to do a little bit of baking, so I thought we would go back to the Fantastic Mr Fox theme and make
Mrs Bean's famous nutmeg ginger apple snaps, unfortunately as this was an almost last minute idea, I didn't have any ginger, but we went ahead and made the biscuits with what we had, unfortunately the ginger was really needed and the biscuits didn't taste bad, but also didn't taste amazing! But Alyssa had a great time making them and licking the bowl without having to fight over it with her brother. Whilst they were cooking Alyssa settled down at the kitchen table making more chocolates, this time out of play dough, using an old chocolate box and various cutting tools, occasionally pretending to feed them to me whilst I washed the baking dishes.
 |
| Concentrating on keeping in the lines |
 |
| Painting away happily |
 |
| Checking the scales in the sweet shop |
 |
| Cooking the chocolates |
 |
| Play dough chocolate fun |
 |
| Apple snaps |
|
|
