Beach Fun, Driftwood & A Dinosaur Small World.

While Nanny was up staying with us we decided to check out another small local beach. I really love that on a small quite beach like this Joseph(5) and Daniel (3.5) are now old enough to explore a bit on their own.  We had lots of fun finding sea glass, interesting rocks and driftwood. There was still quite a bit of water draining off the land so there were a few streams under the rocks. Daniel found one that went between some larger rocks that he was using to sail some driftwood.

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!

Quick Polar Small World Box

I realised that I hadn't made the boys a small world box since our Halloween one! We have been so wrapped up in Christmas since then that the time has flown by. So I decided to put something together quickly after school for the boys to play with. As I had a new pot of white play dough to hand we decided on a snowy polar theme. I do often make play dough but Joseph (5) was given a really big set a couple of years ago & I keep finding new pots at the back of the cupboard! If I'd had chance I would have added some silver glitter to make it even more snowy like the play dough i made for our Arctic Week, Group Messy Play.

So at the bottom of one of our sensory boxes I taped a piece of silver rip stop fabric I had, (but silver foil would also work well) to represent the frozen water. Put the snowy play dough on one side & some white decorative stones on the other side. I also have a piece of foam packaging that looks like an iceberg.

 

We grabbed a few of our polar animals (polar bears & penguins) so they could have a play in our showy world. The play dough was perfect for they animals to make footprints in. And if any of the animals needed rescuing Joseph made sure that Spiderman was on hand!

It didn't hold their attention as long as some of our more messy boxes as but it was quick & mess free. Just before tea was ready I put the play dough back in its pot so we can easily get this box out again soon & add some more of our animals.

(Please only use age appropriate materials for your child, as small items could be a choking hazard)

x Jo x

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Zoo Small World - In a Cardboard Box

 

A couple of weeks ago our oven decided to break & keep tripping our electric. We ended up having McDonald's for tea that night & I started to panic about how i was going to cook the cakes & food for Joseph's party!

After a quote of at least £100 to fix it & with it being about 6-7 years old we opted to replace it. I can recommend AO.com for a very quick service ordering on the Saturday & having it delivered on the Sunday for only £9.99 extra! 

Anyway getting to the point... the oven came packed with a box top & bottom. One of which was got ripped when we opened it, but the other one was perfect. So I asked Daddy to keep it, que rolling of eyes & 'what do you wan that for'. He is of the opinion that my box & other junk collecting is getting out of hand! So  knew that I needed to use this one ASAP!

Daniel (3.5) & I decided that it would make a good Zoo, as we haven't had our animals out for a while now. Daniel decided that the water animals needed a pond in the middle & then we discussed what other animals would like to live together. I quickly drew the layout with a black permanent marker & used a green & blue to quickly colour it in. We then decided that it needed a entrance door so that people can visit. 

I've discovered that using a pumpkin carving knife like a saw works really well on cardboard & as ours isn't sharp I don't need to worry so much about doing it while the boys are around. It does however make more of a mess than scissors but is so much easier. 

Both boys have had lots of fun playing with this, though after being on the floor for a while its starting to get a bit battered. So it may well be in the recycle box this week, much to my husbands delight!

x Jo x

Animal Week At Messy Play

Well last week saw my 1st proper messy play session, with real paying customers who weren't friends or anything! I'm running sessions at my local hall for 5 weeks in the summer holidays initially. 

I was going to have a farm week & a zoo week but being limited to 5 themes, & having so many ideas I decided to combine them in to 1 week. 

Farm small world using porridge oats

Small world zoo with dry pasta, & sweet tin lid as sea.

Blue gloop frog pond, with craft foam lily pads.

Daniel (3) & his friends helping out on in the farm!

Joseph (4.5) really enjoyed the play dough with our animal cutters.

He also made this creation with the rollers!

Vegetable printing & hands & feet!

A bit of body art!

The finished master piece.

 Well the most popular animal around here at the moment is Gromit. So animal week wouldn't be complete without him & Shaun the sheep at the craft table.

My Gromit 'Patch'

My Shaun the sheep.

Joseph & Daniels Gromits

Joseph & Daniels Sheep

I'm looking forward to next weeks theme Artic!

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

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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.

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

Easter Chick Farm

Continuing our letter E week, we made a Easter chick farm (named by Joseph (4)).  The boys helped me gather & make this box so it was hard to get a pic before they started playing.

      We used: 

• Wood shavings for the base
• Brown plastic mushroom container for the hill
• Lots of yellow chicks
• Chickens from our Fisher Price Farm
• Fencing from our small farm
• Plastic eggs - from kinder eggs
• Bouncy eggs (they were dinosaur eggs last week)
• Egg boxes
• Shredded yellow paper
• A couple of ladybirds that wanted in on the action!

They totally loved this sensory small world box, they loved playing with the wood shavings! I'm really not keen on the wood shavings as they made such a mess!

My kitchen floor afterwards!

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