Easter Messy Play & Crafting

We have been having a great Easter holidays so far, its been so nice having the nice dry weather. We have held 2 group messy play sessions, been catching up with friends and attended a Gromit model making session. The boys had great fun learning to make a Gromit, with George from Ardman animations. I was hoping that Joseph (5) would be able to make his own but he did need lots of help, so I ended up making most of both!

On Monday we held an Easter themed group messy play session, where we made bunny grass cups, and Easter bonnets/hats. To make the hats cut a strip of card to fit your child's head then cut out and staple on some bunny ears on top.

I didn't get chance to share the Easter bonnets I made the boys last year, I was inspired to make Joseph's angry bird hat by this chick hat I found on pintrest.

Back to the messy play session.... We had an easter sensory box with rainbow rice in the base, & in the other box I used cooked seed pearl tapioca. I was hoping the tapioca would be like water beads but its more sticky, but still lots of fun.

In one of our pools we had cornflakes and fake flowers. In the other pool we had lots of pom poms and we painted and labeled egg boxes so the children could match the colours, they also had the option to use child's chopsticks for some fine motor practice.

We also had a table set out with Easter colouring sheets (lots on my easter pintrest board) and play dough and laminated play dough mats.The kids had lots of my funky crayon miss-shapes to colour with...

On the floor we had a large sheet of paper for painting, using brushes & stamps. We also used a potato masher as i'd seen on pinteset it maks a great egg shape! The other tip I found on pintrest is to use a sponge in the bowl it applies an even coat of paint to the stamp to make it easier to get a good print.

It was a very busy and fun session, so much so I didn't get chance to take many pictures!

If your looking for more Easter fun take a look at these posts from last year...

E is for Easter... Last years Easter round up!

Easter Chick Farm Sensory Box

Paper Plate Lamb/Sheep (pic is right at the bottom of the post)

The second messy play session we held was Lego Movie themed & I promise to share all the details soon. We are going away for the second week of the holidays, down in Dorset, fossil hunting. So I will apologise now if I go AWOL until after The Easter weekend & hope you all have a lovely Easter whatever your up to. 

x Jo x

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Valentines Crafting

One of the great things about blogging is being able to look back at things you did in previous years. Last year we made a Valentines display using the boys artwork cut in to heart shapes. I didn't file these away with the other art work but kept it with my seasonal decorations so I could find them easily. I thought they would look great on the heart shaped photo holder I bought from a car boot a couple of weeks ago for just £2! I had no idea where I was going to put it, but for that price decided to find somewhere! So for now I've put it up on the kids art wall with their hearts from last year and a few old photos that had come out of frames ages ago. Daddy's not sure about it possibly because its pictures of him!

Our Art Wall.....

We have also been doing lots of valentines crafting in the last week..... The boys had lots of fun making some valentines cards for their 'girlfriends' this did include Nanny, Grandma & Daniels pre-school teacher, but its still a lot of cards for 2 boys so young to be giving! To decorate the cards we used some foam stamps & some heart shaped play dough cutters, with paint soaked sponges. This was the first time we had tried the sponge technique & it really helped limit the amount of paint on the stamps.

We also decided to make some Valentines trees, or Valentines Christmas Trees as Daniel (3) kept calling them. We painted some cardboard cones from our junk box, one had already been painted in the past so came out a darker shade. Apparently they needed glitter so to save on the mess we added some glitter to the red & pink paint. Later that day, once dry, the boys decorated the trees with various bits from our craft cupboard, Using PVA to stick them on.

For more valentines fun take a look at these posts from last year:
Bubble Wrap Heart Printing
Valentines Butterflies

x Jo x

P.s. Don't forget there is still time to enter our chrome letter competition!

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Pinecone Crafts

Just outside the leisure centre where we go swimming they have several pine trees & there are always pine cones on the ground, So we end up gaining a few each week, as well as any others that are collected on walks etc. So as we have a huge collection now we decided to use some for our crafts.

We made these cute pine cone owls at Joseph's (Halloween) party, I think all his friends made at least 1 owl each. I cut ovals for the wings out of craft foam, felt & fleece & used craft foam triangles for the beaks. They are super simple just stick on the wings, beak & add some googly eyes. If you anted to hang these up tie some string or wool around the top o the pine cone, yo can then add these cute owls to your Christmas tree.

Whilst Joseph (5) was at school, Daniel (3.5) wanted to do some painting so I got out our remaining collection of pine cones & asked him to paint them to look like it had snowed. We used a mixture of white poster paint & silver glitter paint. 

 Daniel had great fun painting the pine cones (& his fingers) once done we laid them out on an old plastic bag to dry. In the past we have left them on newspaper & it has all stuck & ruined our work, using the plastic means that they just peel off. 

They looked really effective, but once dry the paint went a little grey, so next time I would use acrylic or even emulsion (if I was doing it myself). They look really great in a clear vase & I think I will hang some of them on our tree this year.

x Jo x

P.s  If you are looking for other Christmas ideas take a look at my 20+ Pre-School Christmas Crafts post or my Christmas & Winter Pintrest board.

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

Hungry Caterpillar Week @ Messy Play

Oops... just realised that I haven't finished posting about the group messy play sessions I ran in the summer. The next theme I chose was The Very Hungry Caterpillar so that we could cover food, leaves, caterpillars & butterfly's. In the sensory box I popped lots of popcorn, we do have a popcorn maker which made this quite easy, I think I ended up using approx 300g of corn. I then raided our toy kitchen to find all the plastic food that is mentioned in the book & added some scoops & spoons. 

This box was very popular with all the kids, we kept it made up at home the popcorn kept well & still smelt delicious 2  weeks later (though I wouldn't recommend eating any that old, it was OK to play with). 

This week instead painting on the floor I moved it up on to a table so that they could create individual paintings. I was aiming for symmetry butterfly's & sponge circles to make caterpillars. Well the kids had their own ideas and were happy to paint freely, the glitter went down well :-) Joseph (4.5) wanted to make a butterfly so I drew out the shape on half the paper to help him (bottom left pic).

For some floor art I taped some black paper down for chalking. I did have more paper to hand in case they filled it up, but the chalk rubbed away by hand so their was no need. I must remember to do this in the kitchen for the boys on a rainy day!

Using left over coloured pasta from the previous week we made some caterpillars, with pipe cleaners & eyes. This is great for little ones that struggle to thread on to string.

 For the other areas we had:

• Ball pool
• Leaf pool - Selection of leaves and pine cones. I used lots of different leaves including bay & mint to add some scent.
• Button & cotton real threading - which created some nice caterpillars

As usual we had a baby / quiet area, which included the book & a butterfly toy.

At the end of the session I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

x Jo x

For your convenience I have included some Amazon (affiliate) links below

Silent Sunday

By Joseph Age 4 1/2

 

x Jo x

Arctic Week @ Messy Play

 So as well as our Penguin Craft we had lots more fun with an arctic theme at last weeks group messy play session. It was also a lot busier than the previous week (animal theme) due to a poor forecast & a bit of word of mouth.

Homemade bubble wrap stampers (Idea from Crafts For Boys)

Double water tray - Marshmallows in water & Ice in Blue water

This was very popular!

Bubble wrap (taped down) with fabric underneath to make an arctic small world

Glittery snow-like playdough, recipe here

Shreded paper snow!

Shaving foam snow! Joseph was covered in this at one point I so wish I took a pic:-(

Arctic colouring lots of printable on pintrest

Daniel enjoying the clean up area.

 Really looking forward to next week now ..... DINOSAURS!

x Jo x