Making a Hat

The other day E wanted to make a crown. It had to be purple and it had to be sparkly.

 

I found some purple card and measured it to the size of E's head. The only sparkly things I found were one pipe-cleaner (which I bent into a bow shape) and a little loose tinsel. E got to work decorating her crown using markers and stickers, pasting on coloured paper shapes, and using coloured tape to attach the sparkly things. She sang the "Making a Hat" song from Play School as she worked. When it was done, I stapled it together for her. I think she was quite proud of her creation.

The next day the crown became a boat for E's Jemima doll, with a wooden spatula for the mast and an empty playing-card box for the sail.

-Polly

Puppet Show

E had a little, plastic Spongebob Squarepants toy that was always getting lost and has a broken foot, but she liked it because it was her only Spongebob toy. One day when she was looking for her toy, I decided to make her this set:

I printed pictures of some characters from the show, stuck them on cardboard and added some pop-sticks to make puppets. I added black outlines to the Patrick and Sandy puppets after the pictures were taken to make them more cohesive.
Here's E putting on her Spongebob Squarepants puppet show:

It was even better than the television show.
-Polly

Snip, Snip

E is quite proud of her new skill:

We took advantage of the back-to-school sales yesterday and bought some new stationery, including these safety scissors for E. She spent a good chunk of today practising her grip and the open-close action and eventually managed to cut a fringe all the way around a piece of paper.

Snip, snip, snip!
-Polly

Things that make me Smile

Inspired by Kaylah's post over at The Dainty Squid, here's 10 things that are making me smile today (in no particular order).

1. The lovely, cool breeze that lets me have the house open for once.

2. This freshly-picked basket of parsnips from our vegetable garden.

3. E playing happily with her train set.

4. Actually, watching E play with any of her things. She's gaining so much coordination and language skills and all that stuff that kids do. And I'm so happy that she seems to be over her horrible tummy bug.

5. The marigolds that are flowering in our garden. They're so bright and cheerful!

6. Having watched E and her dad build a robot together. And then playing with it.

E did really well identifying gears and placing components. She'll be building robots on her own in no time. :) Her new saying is "That cool robot!"

7. Parcels in the mail. Doesn't E look so sweet in her new dress?

Thanks Maple :)

8. A letter from my sister.

9. This little one kicking me in the belly.

10. Finally getting around to making new bunting for the living room.

I used last year's local map-book. I usually make fabric flags, but this paper one was so easy and looks pretty, too. E was inspired to make a 'flag picture' where she pasted triangular pieces of wrapping paper onto a piece of card and drew in lines for the string.

Having not posted in a week, I certainly had a lot to share. What's making you smile today?

-Polly

Shapes, Colours and Numbers

E's been having lots of fun and learning with her blackboard and chalk lately. She's also discovered KidsTV123 on Youtube. Here's some of the activities we've tried:

Shapes:

I drew some different shapes onto the board and had E identify them. We counted the sides together and spoke about each shape. I specified a colour to use and she tried tracing or colouring each shape, or she'd choose her own colour and name it.

E's favourite shapes song: "Shapes Song 2"

Numbers and colours:

We drew this fun little number rainbow and sang "10 Little Numbers," pointing to each number as it came up in the song. E can name all of these colours and numbers quite easily. Some more favourite numbers songs are "Numbers Song" and "The Big Numbers Song".

I wrote E's name onto the board so that she could trace it, and again so that she could attempt to copy it. She had a go at writing "Mum" and her dad's name, too.

Cleaning the blackboard can be as much fun as writing or drawing on it:

One more favourite song around here is "The Solar System Song".

-Polly

Keeping Cool

It has been really hot here over the last week or so. Mostly we've been staying indoors where it's air-conditioned. E has lots of new toys to play with, or else she'll draw on her chalkboard or play the piano or watch Play School. On Christmas day it reached 40°C. We were lucky enough to spend some time with friends in their pool. Yesterday we got out of the house for a while and took E to Chipmunks (an indoor play centre). Here she is in the ball-pit:

Perhaps we're all overdoing the air-conditioning, as last night we had a blackout for a few hours. At least it was around sunset, not at the hottest part of the day. It still got hot in here, though. E cooled off with a candle-lit bubble bath.

How's the weather where you are?

-Polly

Happy Birthday, E

E is 2! As a big 2-year-old, there's some things that she just MUST do: like wearing pigtails and taking her own lid from her yoghurt tub.

To celebrate, we spent a whole day at Scitech. Then we came home and had a little party,

with blowing out candles:

...eating cake:

...opening presents:

...and playing with balloons:

She wore her new Dora the Explorer party dress, too.

Here's a clearer picture of the cake:

I made it using the instructions in the Women's Weekly "Kids' Party Cakes" book that my sister gave me. I used strawberry packet cake for the body and a chocolate cupcake (recipe from "The Joy of Vegan Baking") for the head. I changed the decorations a bit from the book and I think mine turned out cuter. I gave the ladybug lollipop antennae, malt sticks for legs, piped icing pupils and smile. I also used dark chocolate melts for the spots instead of the suggested 'freckles'.

I think we succeeded in making E's birthday extra special. Thankyou also to all the interstate family who sent gifts in the mail. ^_^

-Polly

Playdough

I made up a new batch of playdough recently. For the green, I added what I thought was a lot of peppermint essence to make it smell nice. It still just smells like playdough. Here it is with a picklebums duck puppet and some dried kidney beans:

E called the grey playdough, "moondough", because it looked like the moon when I rolled it into a ball and she does like all things 'space'. I added silver glitter to that one.

I also made blue and yellow. It keeps really well in zip-lock bags in the fridge.

-Polly

Alternatives to a Paintbrush

This week, E had a lot of fun painting with some new techniques.
First, I gave her some empty toilet-paper rolls and some kitchen-sponge paint pallets (ideas both from Mummy Musings & Mayhem). The cardboard rolls make neat circle prints on the paper.

After a while, E decided to get her hands into the paint, too. She even picked up the sponges and did some painting using those.

Another technique that I introduced was this idea from Making Boys Men. It's simply using a balled up plastic bag instead of a paintbrush.

This could also be interesting if you covered the ball with something even more textured like bubble-wrap. I think that all of these paintings would work well as home-made wrapping paper (particularly if we used thinner paper), but really we just did it as a fun activity for E.

-Polly

Paper-Plate Jellyfish

Last week E requested that we make a jellyfish. We'd previously done "J is for jellyfish". We did drawing and play-acting and saw some real jelly fish at the aquarium. This was the first time that we actually 'made' one. So here it is. How to make a jellyfish.

Materials (for one jellyfish):

• 1 paper plate
• scissors
• masking tape or double-sided tape
• paper streamers
• coloured markers
• (optional) string

Method:

Cut the paper plate in half. Stick a row of tape (sticky-side up) along the straight edge.

 Tear the streamer into pieces approximately the length you want the tentacles. Stick each piece to the tape. We made 10 tentacles for our jellyfish.

Put some more tape around the outside of the plate.

Stick the other half of the plate on top.

Colour and decorate your jellyfish however you wish.

All done!

You can then add a bit of string to the top if you would like to hang it up. 

E just had fun swirling it around and singing "Two Jellyfish" (we made two).

Happy crafting,

-Polly

Icy Hearts

What do we do when it's 40 degrees C outside?

Stay indoors and play with ice. :)

Earlier in the week, we had a couple of really hot days and I thought it would be the perfect time to give E this activity. I coloured some water using food dyes and froze it in a heart-shaped muffin tray. That's it. I put them in a tub with a few ordinary ice cubes. They were a lot of fun to play with.

They were fun to stack.

Some rubber ducks got in on the fun.

When the ice started to melt, it made icky-looking green water. We added some dish-soap bubbles.

I actually refilled the muffin tray and we've done this activity a few times. One batch had glitter added. The glitter wasn't really noticeable until the ice melted. Then we had pretty, glittery water. :)

We also introduced a second tray for transferring the slippery ice to and a strainer-spoon and a few small containers for scooping and filling. Lots of fun for a hot day or two.

How have you been keeping cool?

-Polly

Scooping and Sorting

E has been playing with beans. :)

I've seen these sensory tubs all over blog-land and figured it was about time I put one together for E. Although I love all the themed ones that people come up with, I wanted to use what we already had at home and put it together in a short time. So, no theme for us this time. Our tub was filled with dried kidney beans, pom-poms of different sizes and colours, pipe-cleaners curled into spirals, a little fabric heart and bow, a plastic shot-glass, two silicone cupcake liners and two different sized scoops. In the picture, E is scooping beans into the little cup. You may have noticed one of her mo-men there, too. A couple of them got in on the action.

Later, we took the pom-poms from the tub and E did some transferring and sorting. Using kitchen tongs, she moved pom-poms between different bowls and sorted them by size and then by colour. She also got out a wooden spoon and mixed them around, pretending to make a cake (one of the 'bowls' was actually a cake pan). She poured the 'ingredients' into the pan and put it into the 'oven' (a cardboard box). Then she served the pieces back into the bowls. I love watching her imaginary play. :)

A couple of days later, we got out the beans again. This time I set it up as a 'spooning' and transferring activity. All the beans were in one bowl and I gave E the task of using a spoon to transfer them to a second bowl. She was very careful not to spill any, but the roasting tray was perfect for catching any spilled beans and really easy for her to carry, too. When she'd transferred all the beans, she picked up the bowl and poured them back into the original bowl and started again. I guess 'spooning' in the other direction seemed backwards.

-Polly

Skinned Knees

E was so excited to go to the park to play some soccer with her new ball that she tripped and grazed her knees before she even got there. It didn't stop her from having a great time at the park. When she got home, we dealt with the skinned knees (and elbow and hands and chin).

Antiseptic cream, bandaids (including some Dora the Explorer ones), surgical tape and lots of shiny stickers. That should fix it. :)

Oh, and she also got some new shoes earlier in the week. Her "shiny shoes," as she calls them.

-Polly