Shells - Rock Pool Small World

I decided to swap around our sensory box the week before half term, we decided that a beach theme would be good, but as I'd just cleaned I didn't want anything as messy as our last beach small world! So we got out all of our shells. Most of our shells we have collected during various beach trips. But I bought the big 2 at a car boot sale a few weeks back for 50p! Then we used a blue ice cream tub filled with some water to make a rock pool. We decided that our Playmobil people, that came with the swimming pool that Joseph got from Santa for Christmas, would be perfect as they have their costumes on ready for paddling!

Westward Ho! Storm Damage - Beach Exploring

 

We have just come back from a 1/2 term trip to visit my Mum in North Devon. We arrived on Sunday and it was such a lovely day we had a quick lunch & headed straight out for a walk on the beach. Westward Ho! was always our favourite beach when I was a child, I remember many happy days building sand castles, body boarding & rock pooling . Both my Dad & Gran worked on a holiday camp their as well. We last visited North Devon back in August when Mum & I took the boys rock pooling. I can't believe how much difference 6 months makes to a beach. I know we have had some of the worst storms in years but neither mum or I have ever seen Westward Ho! beach like this!

Seaside Messy Play

I have finally got around to writing up the last of our summer messy play sessions. The theme was the seaside, to cover the beach & the sea - as I couldn't choose! We had lots of fun making our CD fish click here for full details.

On another table I set up all our scissors (straight & curvy etc.) & our punches, along with some old magazines. The kids had great fun cutting out interesting pictures & then sticking them on to some paper to make collages.

I managed to get this great roll of blue & yellow paper from our scrap store & it is just perfect for a beach painting.. I love the concentration Daniel(3) has here, he often sticks his tongue out!

In one of our pools I put a bag of play sand along with lots of sand toys. I'm not a major fan of sand & prefer it when its at the beach (& stays there) so it was a treat for the boys. I even let them keep it in the garden (covered) for a couple of weeks.

The other pool was set up as a rock pool, with lots of green & blue strips (thanks scrap store), some rocks & plastic sea life.

In a sensory box we had some water beads & sea life sand moulds for scooping. It was the first time that the other children & parents had experienced them & they kept going back to explore! 

In the second box we had our collection of boats, sea life figures, our shell collection and water with some blue food colouring. Water play is always popular I've noticed that on the weeks without water play that many kids end up playing in the hand washing bowl.

We also had out some blue play dough & our play-doh octopus & several relevant cutters.

We had so much fun all summer (& lots of hard work), its really great to let the boys explore several creative or sensory stations & move at their own pace. We often do things like this at home but only ever one at a time & we also have other distractions. I cant wait for our Halloween special messy play.

x Jo x

Singing in the rain....

The boys are both Peppa Pig fans, so when we had a rainy afternoon they wanted to go out & jump in puddles! As its not too cold yet it was great to let them out without having to waterproof them from head to toe. Joseph (4.5) opted to wear his croc's but Daniel (3) wanted to wear his George Pig wellies. 

They had great fun finding (&jumping in) all our local puddles. It was really nice to be able to let them get as wet as they liked, as I'm always telling them not to walk through puddles etc. In the end Daniel splashed so much his wellies were full when we got home!

I also managed to get a little video of the boys singing & dancing. 

Hopefully we will get the chance to do this again before the colder weather sets in.

x Jo x

P.S. this is the first time I've added a video to the blog so please let me know if it doesn't work.

Edible Boats

Every summer as part of a local raft race they run an edible boat regatta, with prizes for the best designed boats & also the boats that float the best.  We had a good think about what food items we could use to make our boats & decided to use 1/2 a pineapple for Josephs & 1/2 a melon for Daniels. 

I do confess to giving lots of help making these but i was most impressed by Josephs suggestion of using spaghetti to attach the decorations. I was assuming that wooden skewers & tooth picks would be banned however a winning boat contained them! I also debated weather the melon/pineapple skin would be allowed as not eaten but I'm sure it wouldn't kill you!

For our decoration we used toast cut out using cookie cutters, rice cakes, crackers & writing icing.

The boys were really chuffed with their boats & get a medal just for entering (thank goodness we made 2 boats). The really exciting bit was when everyone put their boats on the lake to see how well they sailed (floated). Ours did very well and lasted at least 10 mins, when I lost sight of them.

It was a great day out & we will be entering again in the future.

x Jo x

this post is an entry in the Centre Parcs August challenge with Tots 100

Ice in the water table

For some cooling sensory fun why not add some ice cubes to your water table this summer. Both boys enjoyed getting to cool down. When the ice started to melt I added some more Daniel (3) was very interested in how the new ice was bigger than the ice that had melted.

How are you keeping cool this summer?

x Jo x

W.S.M Water Adventure Park & Sand Sculptures

Weston Water Adventure Park is on the Knightstone end of Weston sea front. It used to be free, then last summer it was £1 per child in the school holidays. It has now increased to £1.50 per child all summer long. To be honest I don't mind its a nice park & worth paying to get in. It has 2 areas of parks one aimed at smaller children and a castle area designed for older kids. Joseph (4.5) & Daniel (3) enjoy both areas. But they really love the splash park, we usually take the boys wet suits as it is cold & this means they can stay in a little longer! We also find that they engage more & have fun if we take a small bucket or scoop for them to collect & pour water with.

I was really disappointed that we were refused entry with our cool bag, we have always taken a picnic in previous years, it makes a nice family day out & means that we can then afford to buy the boys an ice cream after lunch. So we turned around & had our picnic on the beach, which would have been nice if it was a little less windy that day!. To be honest we were so disappointed that had we not have promised the boys that we were going we would have not bothered going in. 

After lunch we returned the outlawed picnic bag to the car & paid our money & entered the park, only to discover that about 90% of the family's in the park had managed to smuggle there picnic past the picnic police! 

While there I took a look at the councils food provider 'the kiosk' the name just about says it all,other than the usual ice creams & snacks all I could see were sausage rolls, hot dogs & one type of jacket potato & by the look of the place I'm not sure if i could have trusted that they were going to be good quality enough to be worth paying for. I feel if the council are banning picnics then they need to provide a decent cafe serving a large range of healthy foods.

I have made our complaint to Weston Town Council & I will add there response to the bottom of my post. 

After lots of fun at the park we walked along the sea front to the Weston Sand Sculpture Festival. None of us had been before so we didn't know what to expect, but we all had a nice time. At the beginning there are a series of displays showing how they make a sand sculpture, then you move on to the big sculptures made by a lots of talented artists. The sculptures are open daily until the end of September.

The theme for 2013 is Hollywood so there were lots of familiar faces from the movies. The boys favourite was Toy Story! At the end they have a small cafe so Daddy & I enjoyed a hot drink while the boys played in the sand pit. It's worth a visit but will only take an hour so combined with a trip somewhere else in Weston, like the beach, pier or water park makes a nice day out.

As you can see the reason I'm not in many pics is that Daddy isn't very good at taking them!

x Jo x

P.s. Don't forget to enter the competition to win 2 of  my bandana bibs HERE


Weston Town Councils reply:

Dear Jo,

 

Thanks for the information re the Park which I will pass on to our Head Groundsman. I also appreciate your very fair comment about the £1.50 charge, we do think it is good value for money compared to most alternative attractions and helps fund the attendants who look after the Park, pick litter etc. The Water Park was paid for and is subsidised by Weston council tax payers so we do feel users should make some contribution towards the cost of running the Water Park at peak times.

 

Car parks are run by North Somerset Council and charges are set by them.  The Town Council has lobbied North Somerset about the cost of car parking in the town which (unlike the Water park which is subsidised overall) does net North Somerset a significant profit. If you don’t mind a short walk might I suggest the Madiera Road Car Park at the North end of the sea front by Prince Consort Gardens, which is £1.50 for up to 4 hours or £3 all day.

 

As regards the picnic ban, this was brought in by a previous set of Councillors in 2010, before the 2011 elections at which the current Town Council were elected. There were two reasons for this which I will pass on. Firstly because of litter being brought in, including glass bottles which could be a danger to little bare feet. Secondly because the Council was providing a Kiosk, though a concessionaire, which does help towards funding of the Park and the Council needed this to be viable.

 

We have decided not to aggressively enforce the picnic ban but do have a word with anyone obviously bringing in a picnic. I would add as a practical solution that the Park is open all day and having paid for admission, people are free to leave and return throughout the same day without paying again. So you do have the option of leaving, sitting on the beach or sea front for your picnic, and then returning. Having said that I admit the picnic ban has been controversial. I understand that having to purchase lunch does add to the costs of a visit and remember when my Children were young we almost always packed sandwiches for a family trip. I cannot promise what they would decide but it is possible that the current Council could be persuaded to take a different view. There is a meeting of the Community Services Committee on 1^st July which might, if it had been asked to by a member of the public, review the ban. Would you like me to let councillors know about your complaint?

 

Regards,

 

Malcolm

 

Malcolm L Nicholson LLB DMS AILCM

Legoland

 

We took the boys to Legoland a couple of weeks ago, as they have been asking all winter & we promised we would take them when the weather was nicer (plus they close for winter). So we saved up our Tesco vouchers & swapped them for some Legoland tickets, this made it affordable for us otherwise it wouldn't have been. Its about a 2 hour drive away for us,if it was closer an annual pass would be great!  

They were so excited to see so many Lego creations  & it was great to be able to touch & even sit on some! As a family our favourite ride was Atlantis where you get to go in a submarine & see real fish, the boys really enjoyed the discovery centre on the way out especially getting to hold a sea urchin

We were also really lucky that the Duplo Valley splash park had just been opened, the boys really loved it however were ready to come out after 5 minutes as it was so cold that day! They did however love the Duplo playground which had super squashy astro-turf (would love it in our garden) my only complaint was that a couple of the play structures didn't have a very easy way for smaller kids to get down & could have done with a slide or steps.

The Boys had the best day ever, we were very glad we took the pushchair though as there is a lot of walking & quite a bit up hill! As we went on a cloudy term time Wednesday it was quite quite which meant little or no queue's , so got to go on all of the rides we wanted except for one which was closed as it wasn't busy enough to open it! We stuck to the rides with a 90cm (or less) height restriction. We will definitely be going back but maybe next year now as there will be lots of other rides Daniel can go on when he reaches 100cm tall.

x Jo x

Frog Pond - We love Weekends Blog Hop

After our finding tadpoles on our picnic last weekend we decided to make a small world frog pond. Firstly the table needed a good clean after being stood up for the winter. After tipping out the water & wiping away the worst of the algae with kitchen roll & anti-bac spray, I re-filled it & let the boys help me finish cleaning it with some old cloths. Another empty & refill & we were good to go.

Ewww yucky water table!

We then gathered our collection of plastic frogs (yes its growing) & I cut some lilly pads out of craft foam. The frogs had lots of fun in our 'pond' they even had a float on the lilly pads. They were then joined by some rocks to play on & some boats (came with water table from Argos). The boys had lots of fun & got very wet even with their aprons on. Joseph (4.5) is getting so tall that he now has to kneel to play. The water table was one of Daniels (now 3) Birthday presents last year.

We Love Weekends Blog Hop

A fellow UK blog What To Do With The Children is launching a weekly blog hop & to celebrate has asked several other blog's including Le Baby Bakery to join in. This will be the first blog hop or linky (as they are also known) we have co-hosted so let me know what you think & if you would like to see more. Why not check out the other blogs who are co-hosting:
Peakle Pie
Diapers-n-Heels
Lalymom

<div align="center"><a href="http://whattodowiththechildren.com/category/we-love-weekends/" title="What to do with the children"><img src="http://whattodowiththechildren.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/we-love-weekends-button-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="What to do with the children" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Its a place for other bloggers to link up with ideas of all kinds and information they think you might find useful or just for a good read. Anything goes on We love weekends, so if you are a blogger please feel free to link up a post & grab the above button if you'd like. And if your a follower, crafter, or reader please take a look at all the wonderful ideas being linked up. Bloggers love comments so if you like a post a comment is always appreciated. If your not a blogger but would like to share your fun ideas or what you are up to this weekend, please leave a comment on this post.

Shape Bath

After our other fun baths & especially when the boys managed to make a robot during our Christmas bath, I decided to use up all the offcuts of craft foam, so that the boys could make their own pictures/creations. We used the offcuts from other baths, our Easter bonnets & from a couple of foam  baskets the boys made at an Easter craft event.

The boys ended up making a row of houses with grass, but also enjoyed collecting & pouring the shapes from jugs.

They also used the shapes for some body art!

We will save these for another bath or 2 then might use for some cut & stick!

We are now back form our holiday & my baby is now 3. So keep a look out for some posts on his party & our holiday.

x Jo x

 

p.s. Don't forget that our competition is still open for any of our US readers to win an Usborne Book(s).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Small World Aquarium

Firstly apologies for my lack of posts recently We have been quite busy recently including prepping for Daniels birthday party which I will be posting about in a couple of weeks.

We have started working on the letter F, however fitting in activity's has been as hard as posting about them! An aquarium small world box (from my small potato's) was one of the first I found on pintrest & have been collecting clear box's (without holes) since, however once i saw it all set up it occurred to me that take away or sandwich boxes would have worked just as well!

 So we started out with our 6 plastic 'tanks' all the fish we could find (includes Duplo, Lego & bath toys) Some plastic pond weed, rocks, & 2 types of aquarium gravel. I let the boys decide what fish would live in each tank & what gravel etc they would like.

We then used a small watering can to add water to each tank. 

I still find it really hard to let them do things by themselves, even if they are making a mess, but trying to take photos helps keep my hands busy!

We then decided that some people (Duplo, Happyland, & Little People) would like to come & visit our aquarium. And the fish needed more food, so lettuce leaves it was...

They then needed a net to catch the fish & check they were well.

 This was one of our most successful small world boxes to date, they played for over an hour & didn't even leave it when the door bell went. 

We kept it out for the next day & it evolved in to transferring the stones between the tanks & i even think they were creating food & selling it to each other at one point. Most of the water stayed in the main box & other than the odd bit of gravel on the kitchen floor was mess free :-)

x Jo x