Trains and peg boards

We are home today with a sick and sniffly Squeak. We've crafted, playdoughed and coloured in till we can craft, playdough and colour no more. Two toys that my kids never seem to get tired of at the moment are the train tracks (Bubble mainly, Squeak gets annoyed that she cant keep the trains on the track :-D) and the pegboard.

Dress up dolls

We have been using a toileting chart for Bubble where she gets a star sticker every time she uses the potty, then when the chart is full she can choose a toy from the toy shop or something from a special box of things I have in the cupboard. I bought a dress up dolls kit from The Toy Bug this week to add to the stash box, and yesterday when she completed her chart she picked it out right away. It has been an instant hit and we've spent hours already choosing outfits and playing with the dolls all over the house (they even went digging for treasure in the sand table :-D).

Toys from the recycling box

Toys don't have to be expensive, or even cost anything at all. My girls favourite thing to play with at the moment is an empty tissue box and a collection of clean lids from the recycling box. Squeak sits for ages emptying the lids from the box and slotting them back in one by one, peering in after each one is dropped to see where it went. She also likes to shake the box and hear the rattle of the lids inside. Bubble plays all sorts of games with them, the favourite being that the lids are coins and the tissue box is her bank or purse. We have been playing a game where I make a little shop with some random objects from around the house and each one has a price tag (2 coins, 6 coins etc..) and Bubble loves counting out her coins to 'buy' things. I just need to save another tissue box now so they will stop fighting over this one :-)

Wet Chalk Drawing

Both of my girls love chalk, and when it is wet the colours are even more vibrant. This activity is simple and creates minimal mess, but is a bit more fun than just drawing with pencils or crayons. Bubble used the sponge to wet the ends of her chalk and off she went, creating masterpiece after masterpiece. Apologies for the terrible photos, as usual I was using my mobile to take them :-)

WE USED:
* paper or card, the thicker the better
* small dish
* dampened sponge or face washer to fit inside dish (could also use paper towel layers or cotton wool etc...)
* chalk

Other ideas: try drawing on different coloured papers, chalk drawings on black card stand out even more. Wet chalk drawing is an activity you can do anywhere since it just washes off most surfaces (please note that chalk can often stain fabrics and porous surfaces though). You could even have a go at making your own sidewalk chalk by searching for recipes on the net. This one is simple and easy to follow:

3 tablespoons plaster of paris
2 tablespoons paint powder
1/4 cup water

Combine well and pour into a greased mould to set (you could use old film canisters, egg cups, chocolate moulds, the possibilities are endless). Allow chalk around 40 minutes-an hour to set.

Cooking and colouring playdough

Every three/four months or so we cook a new batch of playdough, although lately the girls have both been so into it we might have to renew our stocks a bit more often! Bubble and I cooked some earlier this week while Squeak had her nap time, and instead of colouring it during the cooking process we just made a big lot of plain white and coloured it afterwards.
We used wooden skewers which we dipped in food colouring and then pushed into the dough, then kneaded it through until we had the colours we wanted. It was lots more fun than adding the colour when making the dough and great exercise for Bubble's little hands :-)

WE USED:
* plain white playdough (we just cook ours following the recipe on the side of the cream of tartar pack)
* food colouring liquid or powder
* wooden skewers or small droppers

Playdough recipe as it appears on the side of the Cream Of Tartar pack:

2 cups plain flour
4 tbs Cream of Tartar
2 tbs cooking oil
1 cup salt
2 cups water

food colouring

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan, stir over medium heat for 3 - 5 minutes or until mixture congeals.

Upper and lower case matching

Bubble loves letters and likes to lie on her bed looking at the alphabet canvas I made for her a while ago. Today we used lower case letter magnets and matched them to the upper case letters on the canvas. A few of the trickier ones like the 'g' and 'y' which look a bit different to their upper case version had her stumped for a moment, but she eventually found the right place for all of them.
This could easily be done by writing upper case or lower case letters on paper, or using a whiteboard marker to write them onto the fridge and then putting the magnets over the top.

Apple tree

Trying to find decently priced trees to go with playsets was proving a mission so I decided to give making some from felt a go. I drew a tree on paper, then cut two of them from felt, one for the front and back. I sewed on the apples (just little heart shapes of red felt) and then sewed the top together. For the trunk part I cut two triangles of felt to run down the sides, so once it was all sewn up it had a box like shape which could give it the stability to stand up. I filled the top and half the trunk with stuffing and the bottom half of the trunk I filled with aquarium gravel so it was weighed down.

Hint: Wash the gravel really well and then bake in the oven spread on a tray in order to really dry it out well before adding to the tree trunk. Use a funnel to make filling the tree with stones easier.