Crayon hunt

A fun game the girls like to play at the park is crayon hunting. If we have the park relatively to ourselves I hide crayons behind trees, around play equipment, in our pram etc.. and the girls search for them. If it gets tricky I give them clues to let them know if they are getting closer or further away. When we have them all we spread out a groundsheet and get colouring! We have played this game before and had other kids at the park join in, which is even more fun :-)

Pumpkin soup

My girls favourite pumpkin soup recipe, taken directly from taste.com.au:

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 leek, white part only, finely sliced
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1kg peeled pumpkin, diced
• 1 large potato, peeled, diced
• 1L chicken or vegetable stock
• 1/2 cup (125ml) thin cream

Method

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over low heat, add onion and leek and cook for 2-3 minutes, until softened but not coloured. Add garlic and spices and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add pumpkin, potato and stock and bring to the boil. Turn heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then blend in batches.

2. Return soup to pan, stir through cream and reheat gently. Season and add a little more nutmeg if desired.

Bone sandwiches

My girls are both very different when it comes to eating - Squeak will very enthusiastically eat anything and everything and often eats more than I do at every meal, whereas Bubble is very fussy and hard to get much food into at all. To encourage her to eat more lunch the other day we used cookie cutters to make her sandwiches into shapes. She is going through a dog-loving phase at the moment so we chose a bone shaped cutter and she very happily ate three big 'bones' for her lunch. Squeak very helpfully ate all of her bones as well as all of the offcuts! :-D

Banana bread

Banana bread is a morning tea favourite in our house, Bubble likes to help make it and both girls love to devour it hehe. I must admit, I partake in both of these things quite enthusiastically also!

I use a recipe my Mum gave me that always turns out perfect:

1 and 3/4 cup SR flour
1 tsp bi carb soda
125 g butter
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 ripe bananas
1 egg
2 tsp milk

* Sift flour and bicarb soda together in a mixing bowl,
combine and create a 'well' in the centre.
* Melt butter and sugar together in a saucepan,
and then add the remaining ingredients. Combine.
* Add to flour mix and combine well.
* Cook for 40 minutes (not sure what temperature sorry,
I didnt write that down! I usually bake at about 150'c I think).

Matching household words

We played a word recognition game today, for no other reason than Bubble really loves letters and words so I thought she'd enjoy it. I cut some peices of scrap paper to around A6 size and used a black marker to write words of household objects on them, making two labels for each. I backed them with a bit of blutack and then stuck one of each word onto the household object it corrosponded with (ie: the word 'oven' on the oven, the word 'fridge' on the fridge... you get the idea :-D). I gave Bubble the second set of words and she set off matcing them to the ones already spread around the house. As she placed them in their corrct places we sounded out the letters on each and said the name of the object (f-r-i-d-g-e, this is the fridge etc...).

P.S: please excuse the state of the oven door, it's very shiny and gets inspected by many small hands on a daily basis :-D

Farm play

We played outside with the wooden farm set today, and incorporated the girls set of plastic cars and tractors as well. I filled a casserole dish with sand from the sand table and that became our 'paddock', where we planted crops and used the diggers and tractors to find treasures and rescue stuck animals.

Setting up the farm :-)

Our 'paddock' being graded and dug out.

Bubble doing some work of her own in the paddock hehe :-D

The digger looking for treasure.

Planting some crops and rescuing a horse that kept getting stuck under the sand :-)

Whew, all safe!

Block bridges and garages

The Duplo got a workout at our house today; we built garages, bridges, houses and roads using blocks, and the best part is that they are baby friendly so Bubble and Squeak could enjoy them together. The favourite project was bridge building, Bubble loved driving her cars back and forth, under and over them. We stood a few of them all in a row and made a tunnel, which was an even bigger hit especially when we used our torches to shine light down it as 'headlights'.