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. :)