Coloured Sand Ice Cream Shop - Pretend Play

We often incorporate food colouring in the sandpit or at the beach (see our coloured sandcastle post here) but today we used coloured sand for some pretend play.
This activity was so easy to create and the girls enjoyed hours of fun with it!

WE USED:

* sand pit
* food colouring
* bowls and spoons
* water

The coloured sand was made by putting scoops of sandpit sand in a bowl, adding food colouring and then mixing in water until we had the consistency we were after.

The girls chose their own ice cream 'flavours' for their shop.

We made a sign to go on the front of the sandpit. I adore the names the girls came up with for their ice creams (Love Hearty Mint needs to be trademarked I think ;D).

Yum, one blueberry sand cone.

Not only was this fun but the girls ended up getting very creative with their concoctions and imaginary play scenes, using conker nuts and leaves as money and using other moulds from the sandpit to make cakes and 'desserts'.
There was a lot of great fine motor practice in there for Squeak as well with all that scooping!

Inside Out Party Hats

We have a lot of cardboard party hats at our house. The girls have a pile of them in their dress up cupboard which get hauled out every second day for an 'un-birthday party' or some kind of picnic.
Some of them were looking a bit worse for wear so we spent yesterday afternoon personalising them and giving them a new look. 

WE USED:

* party hats

(we buy them from discount shops for around $1 for 10)
* textas, stickers, glitter etc... for decorating

* sticky tape

First we unfolded our party hats by folding and slipping the tabs out

I then rolled them a bit to get them flat so the girls could decorate them.

The girls got busy with stickers, stamps and textas.

Once they were finished we reassembled the hats inside out so their designs were now on the outside and secured them with the tabs and a bit of tape.

Ready to party :)

Mothers Day Badges

We're a bit late with our Mothers Day cards this year, poor little Bubble and Squeak have both had consecutive bouts of a stomach virus, so haven't been in much of a crafting mood.
We managed to make these cute and easy little Mothers Day badges to send interstate to their Grandmas this year, inside the Pom Pom Flower Cards we made earlier in the week.

WE USED:
* scrap cardboard (thin)
* markers/textas

* A4 laminator and pouches

* safety pin

* good quality sticky tape

* cookie cutters

* scissors

We started by tracing some shapes onto our card using a pen and cookie cutters.

The girls then drew whatever picture they liked inside the shapes. 

Bubble knew they were for her Grandmothers so drew pictures of them with herself ad Squeak. Squeak is a bit little to grasp the idea of Mothers Day but really liked drawing with every colour texta she could find :D 

Once their little masterpieces were finished we cut them out and then laminated them using a standard laminator and pouch and cut them out again.

We attached a safety pin to the back of each one by first threading a length of good quality tape through the pin and sticking it down. Then we put two more lengths of tape horizontally at each end of the first piece of tape (to form a capital 'I' shape).
This is really effective for holding the pin to the back of the badge, we made some of these for the girls birthdays recently and even when I accidentally put them through the wash they didn't come unstuck.

Adorable little Mothers Day badges for a proud Mum (or Grandma, Aunty, cousin...) to wear.

We attached our badges to the inside of our Mothers Day cards (see how we made them HERE) using looped tape (double sided tape would also work.
Sorry about the bit at the bottom, that's just where I've blurred Bubble's real name ;)

Here is a free 6x4 print for the inside of a Mothers Day Badge card.
I've reworded it slightly from our version since everyone has a different name for the special women they celebrate on Mothers Day.

Mothers Day Cards - Pompom and Straw Painted Flowers

These Mothers Day cards were very easy and a lot of fun to make. The girls really enjoyed both the straw and pom pom painting and both activities were a great fine motor work out.

WE USED:

* thick drinking straws
* green paint mixed with a little water
* small jar

* coloured paint in a tray
* pompoms
* paper

 

First we mixed our green paint with a little water to thin it slightly.

I cut our straws in half to make handling them a bit easier for Squeak, but you don't need to.

 

We poured blobs of paint onto the paper and the girls blew it around using their straws to create the leaves of our flowers.

I actually thought they would blow straight lines (for stems) but love the look of the blobby green shapes we ended up with even better. 

 

Once they'd had enough of the green paint we got out some trays and they chose their flower colours.

We then used different sized pompoms dipped in paint to create our flowers.
They girls really loved this part, Bubble told me it felt 'squishy and squashy' and Squeak ended up making an absolute mountain of pompom paint pictures.

 

 

I love the end result, so pretty and abstract.

 

 Once they were dry we glued our pompom and straw painted flowers to the front of some scrap cardboard to make our Mothers Day cards.

Check out the extra special something we added in this post HERE.

Water Bead Goop

A lot of our play activities revolve around sensory exploration, particularly those involving touch and sound, because these are key areas for our girls. 

Both have tactile sensitivities and Bubble is very sensitive to sound so we try and expose them to these elements in small doses every day.
The crushed water beads we used in our Dinosaur Landscapes the other day went over very well so I thought we'd try it again on a larger scale. 

This activity was a lot of fun and the outcome was quite intriguing!

WE USED:

* water beads
(read more about them HERE and HERE)
* a blender
* plastic tub 

 We started with a bowl of water beads we've been playing with over the last week. Usually once our water beads are too broken up and mushy to play with anymore we mix them through our pot plants (they act as water saving beads and break down in the soil), but today we got out our old blender to see what would happen if we mixed them.

Scooping the beads into the jug using large spoons was great fine motor practice. 

Be prepared for lots of errant beads all over the floor, this part was best done on a hard easy to clean surface or outside.

I just had to include this photo of the girls in their dress ups scooping away :D

Once the jug was full we put the lid on and the girls took turns at turning it on and off. We talked about what was happening and opened the jug regularly to see what the beads looked like.
Obviously when using something like a blender take precautions with kids around - turn it off and unplug it from the wall before taking the lid off and supervise them at all times.

We actually had to add a lot of water as we went as the beads blended into a very thick goop.

The girls were delighted to find that some beads remained perfectly intact while the rest transformed into a multicolored goop.

We poured the goop into a tub so the girls could explore and play with it.

The texture was amazing, Bubble and Squeak enjoyed squishing and running their hands through it and finding the intact beads.

We kept a tub of water and an old towel nearby so they could clean off their hands when the sensation became a bit much, then go back to it when they were ready.

It wasn't long before the dinosaurs were involved :)
The goop washed easily off the girls hands and clothes and we just emptied the water to the lawn since the beads are non toxic. 

We have left the goop in the tub outside to see what will happen to it over time as it dries out. We'll keep you posted!

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Dinosaur Landscapes

 

Both Bubble and Squeak are very interested in dinosaurs and one of their favourite books at the moment is 'The Triceratops Twins', an ABC For Kids Read & Listen book based on an episode from Play School.

Inside the front cover of the book they detail how they made their dinosaur landscape for the story, so while the girls were at preschool yesterday (Squeak's first day!) I had a go at making some small portable versions as a surprise.

I have a stash of these cheap 5L containers from our local $2 shop which were the perfect size and height for the girls to access. I like that they have lids so we can pack them away when not in use.
A deep tray or play tub would work well too, or even building the landscape right in the sandpit if you have one.

First I attached some small bowls to the base with Blutac (sticky tack) to act as a lake. You could use anything for this - small foil pie trays, clean jar lids, the base from a juice bottle or build up sides using plasticine stuck to the base of your box.

Next came sand from the sandpit.

Then some cuttings from our big conifer trees in the backyard.
In the book they create their own trees for the landscape using toilet roll tubes and tissue paper which looks fantastic, that was a project I wanted to do when the girls were home though.

Then I added some river stones (found in the decorating isle of most dollar shops if you're not lucky enough to have access to them locally).

In the book they use blue cellophane as water, we didn't have any of that handy though so I used crushed water beads instead. They added a great extra sensory feature to the landscapes and the dinosaurs could actually swim in it.
We had water beads on hand but there are heaps of things you could use instead - real water, blue rice, streamers, polystyrene beads, or nothing at all!
(For more information on water beads check these posts HERE and HERE)

Don't be fooled by the fork in the photos by the way, I had intended to mash the beads but discovered this was next to impossible and ended up squishing them with my fingers instead.

Our finished landscapes. 

The girls have since added a lot of things to their boxes themselves; branches, upside down gumnuts (used as volcanos) and plastacine birds in the trees.