Sock Matching Game

Sadly those infamous housework fairies still refuse to visit my house and do my housework for me! Grr!
However those pesky Sock fairies are always popping up causing a nuisance!  You know the ones. They love odd socks and come and take one of a pair of socks so when you do the laundry you find lots of odd socks and are unable to find the other!
I come up with a game to use this to our advantage and teach the girls about matching.

I collect up all these odd socks found when doing the laundry and pop them into a bag. Once this bag gets full its the girls job to sort them out and see if they can find any matching pairs. A simple fun mathematics game.

Pine cone bird feeders

Whilst out on woodland walks the girls love to collect all sorts of leaves, twigs and pinecones. I always take an empty bag with us to save me getting weighed down with pocket fulls!
Leaves are good for leaf rubbing, twigs are good for sticking etc but what to do with the pinecones?  I can think of quite a few Christmas crafty things to use them but i'd say September is abit early for the xmas crafts yet.
I then remembered a craft that I last did a very long time ago using pine cones as bird feeders.

Its a very simple craft needing only pinecones, some peanut butter, bird seed and ribbon or string.

Tie the ribbon/string round the top of the pinecone so that you can hang it on the tree. Using a knife coat the cone in peanut butter.

 Put some seed onto a plate or bowl and roll the cone around in the seed so that the seeds stick onto the peanut butter.

 Let the peanut butter harden then hang.

Simple as that really!
Hope the birds like them! :)

Woodland Walk

Autumn is a lovely time of year and great for walks in the woods exploring our surroundings.
There is so much to do and see in the woods and Its great for sparking off conversations about nature.
We had a lovely family afternoon in our local woods. We climbed tree's ( Daddy enjoyed reliving his childhood!), spotted birds nest, build dens with fallen branches and twigs, had leaf fights and collected various autumn things (leaves,acorns etc) to examine further at home. These can also be used for Autumn sticking pictures.

Im also a keen photographer so a great place to capture those stunning autumn colours too!

Butterfly Growing

This really has been the highlight of our Summer! Such a fantastic and educational experience!

I recently saw this butterfly growing kit by InsectLore on Amazon.com and decided that I must buy it for Abigail's birthday!
Butterfly Garden LIVE

Abigail was so excited to receive this gift and I too was very excited about getting started.
It comes with a voucher. You enter this voucher online and choose the delivery date for you caterpillars.
The Caterpillars are delivered in a little plastic pot. This is where they stay until they form their chrysalis. They are tiny little caterpillars.
Watching the caterpillars grow was great and they practically doubled in size each day!  They really were Very Hungry Caterpillars! :) After a week they were all happily snug in their cocoons.
Seeing them turn to Chrysalis's was a great experience too. I watched one closely and he seemed to literally push his way out of his caterpillar skin!

After about a week in their cocoons they started to hatch out and stretch their butterfly wings. This was the girls favourite bit.
After a few days of studying them we let them free into the garden. The Butterflies were friendly and happily sat on our hands before flying off.

Ive put together a little slideshow of the caterpillars journey to becoming beauty butterflies!

Shopping lists

The girls actually quite enjoy supermarket shopping with me but we still have the odd times of meltdown and boredom.

I used to let the children hold my list for me but then I found it was retracing my steps trying to find the dropped list! Then I progressed to letting my eldest carry her little plastic shopping basket. This of course then meant that little Lucy wanted one too! Needless to say they both ended up with their baskets.

I could see though that the novelty of this was wearing off so decided to take it a step further by giving the girls their own shopping lists.

Theses are just simple hand drawn pictures for them to find whilst making our way round the isles. If you had more time or decided drawing wasn't your thing then you could find pictures off the internet to print out.

 

               

  

Knowing the layout of the supermarket I try to spread out the items they need to look for so that it keeps them interested through out the whole trip.
This has been a huge hit with the girls and they do look very sweet searching out the items on their lists. :)

Marble race game

My husband found a old piece of pipe insulation in the shed and asked if I had any use for it for Craft or something. Of course I claimed it as I was sure I could find a use for it somehow.
The other day the girls were playing with small balls and the idea came to me to turn it into a marble run. I cut the pipe into two halves using a serrated knife. A marble was the perfect size to fit down the inner curve.
I attached one end of the foam pipes to a wooden stick and taped that to the patio windows. The other end of the foam pipe was placed into a tray to help contain the marbles.

 

This kept the girls entertained for ages and they insisted it stay there for quite a while. Who would of thought a simple bit of foam pipe insulation could lead to soo much fun! :)

Pasta Necklaces

The girls love Pasta so much much and the cupboards are bursting full of all different shapes and sizes I thought we could spare abit of Penne to make some necklaces.
Firstly the girls choose some paint colours and set to work painting their pasta 'tubes' and 'tunnels'.

Once the paint was dry and the paint covered hands were cleaned we set about threading the pasta.
The look of concentration on the girls faces were great!

The girls were so pleased with their finished necklaces :)

Garden painting

When the weather is good why not take the craft outside and paint on a larger scale.
I used a roll of cheap lining paper and taped it to the outside wall and also a strip across the floor to catch any drips etc.

We had a few old kitchen roll middle tubes ready for recycling so made them into large stampers for the girls to use with the paints. I cut small snips all along one end of the tube and bent the ends backwards. I used various thicknesses between the snips to make different patterns.

And you know the best thing about painting outside?  Any mess can just be hosed down afterwards! :)

Recycled Crayons

My daughters love colouring and we have a HUGE tub or crayons. Every now and again I have a clear out of all the tiny little bits of broken crayons. Those tiny bits that are too tiny and never get used.
Well after seeing some inspiration on Pinterest I decided to have a go at recycling those broken crayon pieces.
I used an old silicon mould and filled it with the broken pieces of crayons. I popped the tray in the oven at 230 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Beware... they are VERY hot when you take them out!!

These new butterfly crayons are prefect for taking out in my little Busy bag for when at restaurants etc.
The girls love them and what better way to recycle. :)

Princess castle cake

I cant believe my first born has turned 4!  Those years seem to have disappeared in a wink!

I like to attempt the girls birthday cakes and this year I had a request for a princess castle cake.
After some research I came up with a plan of how to create this cake.
I used an 8inch maderia cake and used swiss rolls to create the turrets. To finish off the pointy spires I used waffle ice cream cones.
I was reasonably pleased with the finished cake and glad to say Abigail and her friends loved it! The finishing touch for her Princess party. :)

Puppet Theatre

Abigail loves puppets and has started to enjoy making up her up puppet shows. She has a great imagination so i though id harness this by making her her own puppet theatre.
I looked at buying one but found most were large wooden ones. As beautiful as they are, they were very large and bulky to store.
With this in mind I came across someone who made doorway theatres to sell. These wer stunning but well above my price range. I thought I would try to have a bash at making one myself.
Its not as elaborate but does the job and im sure Abigail will love it.
It has a tension rod across the top to secure it to any doorway without the need of any permanent fixings.
Making my own also meant I was able to adapt it to add some little pockets at the back to hold puppets between shows.

I also made a few extra puppets to add to her ever growing collection of both finger and hand puppets.

Update -

Abigail received her Puppet theatre for her birthday and im pleased to say its been a huge hit!  She loves it and we have all watched many of her puppet shows. Its been popular with lots of our visiting friends and even Daddy has been spotted having a play too!

Personalised Canvas bags.

The time has come for Abigail to leave preschool and head for Big school! <sniff, sniff>

We wanted to make something for the teachers that wasn't too expensive or complicated as there were 6 staff to make for. In the end we chose to decorate canvas bags.
We picked them up for £1 each at Hobbycraft and also bought our fabric paint there too for £2.99.
As the preschool is called Bumble bee's we decided to go with the bees on the bag too.  For this we used Abigail's thumbprints in yellow.  I then added the details with a thin black brush.

We added the names of the staff too by printing them out using a nice front from the computer and using them as a template to paint them neatly.

The end result was quite pleasing. We added a small box of chocs to each bag and they were ready to go. The teachers were really pleased with their bags and we received many nice comments.

Groombridge place

We decided to have a family day out for my Birthday and headed off to Groombridge place. Its a beautiful place with massive gardens and various different things for the children to see. 

The girls loved exploring and seeing the beautiful Black Swans.

 Whilst there we were lucky enough to see a Bird of Prey show. We saw amazing birds and it was quite an experience to see a massive Bald Eagle swooping low just over your head.  

Groombridge is also home to many free roaming peacocks and a Zeedonk which is a rare cross between a Donkey and a Zebra.

Swimming

Quick little proud Mummy boast :)

Very proud of Abigail with her swimming. She has just gained her stage 2 swimming badge. The national average age for this is 5-6 yrs so at almost 4 she's doing very well.
At last weeks lesson she even managed to swim (unaided) a whole width of the pool which is 7meters! My little fish!  :)

Girls hairstlyes

Getting better now at the french plaits! Ive got more confident doing them and have even moved on to double french plaits.
Double half plaits.

Iv'e started getting even more adventurous now and attempted some Bow hair styles. They looked fab but need to invest in some kind of gel or something to help hold Abigail's flyaway locks in place! 

Fire Station Open day

Living just up the road from the fire Station, we took full advantage of their open day.
We wandered down to admire the large engines and meet the firemen. Whilst there we got to watch a demonstration of a road traffic accident. They used various bits of there equipment to cut the roof off of car to safely remove the trapped driver. The girls really enjoyed this and it led to some interesting questions! (ie What colour socks do fireman wear?)  I also used it as a little reminder of how important it is to be wearing your seatbelt in the car.


 The girls were allowed to climb inside the engine and have a look at the equipment which was very interesting too. 

Water play

A favourite activity with the girls is Water play. Finally we got some dry days so after clearing the water tray of rain water we got out playing again.

We used food colouring to colour the water adding abit more interest and also added some glitter too.
Lots of pouring and splashing. I added different sized bottles and encourage lots of talk about quantities and capacities. Ie which size bottle will hold the most?
I also introduced a new item to the tray. A pipette. I picked theses up really cheaply from Ebay. A pack of 10 was only a few pounds.
This was great fun and is also very good for the pincher grip, which helps with pen control for writing.