Dinosaur Week @ Messy Play

This was the week that Daniel (3) and lots of the other kids had been looking forward to. On the craft table we decorated card T-Rex's & Diplodocus' using natural things inc lentils, pasta & egg shell. Some of which had been left over from our paper plate turtle craft. Daniel was a little upset when I hadn't made a Triceratops as this is his favourite dinosaur!

One of our pools was filled with spaghetti that I had dyed green & red using food colouring & some oil so it didn't stick together. We used our rakes & spaghetti spoon in this pool & had lots of fun, its a very strange texture, almost like worms!

Joseph (4.5) with spaghetti hair!

In our other pool we had it set up much like in our 1st messy play session, making our dinosaurs a small world with card squares, plastic mountains & trees.

In one of our sensory box's we had some more of our coloured rice, with various scoops & tubes. Rice is always popular & usually ends up everywhere!

For the other box I froze some of our smaller dinosaurs in water (with food colouring) in silicone cupcake cases, along with regular ice. It took quite a while for the dinosaurs to melt out of the ice so we added some warm water towards the end of the session to help melt them.

We used green paper on the floor for painting, with some dinosaurs (and kids) to make footprints!

The finished work of art

We also had some play dough out to make dinosaur footprints in.

Lots of great messy creative fun, everyone is looking forward to the next weeks theme - Tea Party!

x Jo x

P.s. we are still working on our letters of the week however the letter J is turning in to the letter of the summer, even tho the boys aren't at pre-school we are out so much we haven't had much time :-)

Messy Play...

I thought it was about time I got around to sharing the rest of the details from the group messy play session that I held. So as well as the paper plate turtle craft (click for more details) we had lots more fun...

Painting with cars on a big scale (the boys have done this at home before but on a smaller scale see here)

Joseph(4.5) enjoying painting with his friends.

Jelly frog pond green & blue jelly made with gelatin & food colouring, as blue jelly doesn't seam to exist!

This was a very popular station!

Dinosaur small world in an Argos paddling pool.

With play dough to make footprints. This was similar to our Dinoland we made a while back.

Coloured rice sensory box (apologies for the poor picture!)

Daniel (3) enjoying the rice with his friends.

In our other pool we had our button & cotton real threading. With all the other activities on offer this was more popular than I was expecting!

All the children enjoyed the hour, especially my boys, so over the summer holidays I have decided to hold more sessions for the public wish me luck!

x Jo x

D is for Dinosaur...

 D is for Dinosaur & Daniel, we started off our letter of the week with our Dinoland small world play, which both boys loved & it was played with on & off all week. 

The boys made these Double Daffodil cards to give Nanny & Grandma on mothers day (UK). We then had a go at some dropper art, at a local toddler group.

 For our worksheets this we again visited Confessions Of A Homescholer & we also downloaded the dinosaur pack from Over The Bog Moon. This week for our do-a-dot sheets I decided to have a go at making some pom pom magnets like these. I used a hot glue gun to stick some round magnets that we already had on to the back of some pom poms, when i ran out of magnets I cut up some free magnets (advertising etc) to use. Some of these were a little thin so to make them stronger i used the glue to double it up before sticking on the pom pom.

 Both boys have loved the pom poms as they have been able to use the sheet over & over, we have also had a couple of free hand creations on the fridge. I was really excited when I saw this pin on pintrest Joseph (4) has always struggled holding a pen/pencil, so next time he was colouring I grabbed an old, sock & cut 2 holes, MAGIC! It really works & he loves it. Joseph calls it his pinching parrot like from the recent series, I Can Cook (UK TV show). I might even add eyes & a beak for him!

 We also had a go at the pre-writing practise from the dinosaur pack, Daniel (2.5) loved the fact that he was helping the mummy dinosaur find its egg. I think he liked the sense of purpose rather than just tracing because he was asked!

We have 2 sets of Leapfrog Fridge Phonics, one lower & one uppercase. I bought the 2nd set from a charity, partly because our 1st set was missing a couple of letters & partly so that we would have 2 base units one for each of the boys! As part of our letter of the week i have been putting away all the other letters & just leaving out that weeks letter.

We have had a great week with letter D, but are looking forward to E for Easter & Egg!

x Jo x

Dinoland

After the B for Builder small world play went down so well, I decided to make a D for Dinosaur box for the boys. In the base of our box I used small cardboard squares, which is actually for the base of our pet rat cage, its called Ecobale & is a type of horse bedding!  I made boulders out of scrunched up paper bags & sed some rocks from our beach small world. I added some plastic plants, eggs & 2 palm trees, that the boys made at a toddler group using tinsle & kitchen roll tubes.

 During play my paper bag bolders became dinosaur nests!

We used our Ladybird Dinosaur book to look up the names of our figures & taked about how big they would have been & what they liked to eat.

They got the dinosaur figures from Santa and they hadn't really been played with since, this was a great opportunity to give the boys a starting point to begin play. They both enjoyed this box and like most of our others it has been asked for several times.

x Jo x