water beads!

I had to buy some of these!!! everyone has been talking about them on the blogs I have been reading and they are awesome!!! they feel really soft and cold and Joshua played with them for ages! they also bounce!! I picked up a jar from the pound shop. They seem fine so far although Joshua has broken a few of them!

Highly recommend them for sensory Play!!

lots of love
Ellie x

A crafty Xmas

Me and Joshy spent today making chrsitmas decorations before having dinner with family. We made a chrsitmas tree out of a cardboard box. Joshua had a lot of fun sponging the paint onto the box and then mummy cut it out in to the shape of a tree :

we stuck a star on the top. We then spent the rest of the time making baubles. There was glitter everywhere! Joshua particularly liked shaking the glitter and as you can see there is a lot of it about! I will cut these out at a later date and stick velcro or blutac to the back so he can stick them to his tree!! We had a lot of fun doing this! definitely an activity I will repeat...although I know I will still be finding glitter in the summer!!!

after we had finished the baubles Joshua didnt want to stop so I let him carry on on another piece of card! I will think about what to do with these later (maybe frame them? ) anyway here he is getting 'stuck' in!

Cant wait to move on to the next thing!!!
Lots of love
Ellie xxxxx

sensory bottles

These bottles are fantastic fun for little ones!!
First find several empty water bottles (these are best as they are clear). Fill them with one of the following:


from left to right:
1. Water, oil and coloured sand (effects similar to a lava lamp)
2. Density stack - from top to bottom Honey, golden syrup, water, baby oil, vodka (you cant really see it here but the layers are very obvious
3. Water with beads, glitter, coloured marbles, a feather, bits of pipe cleaner etc
4. Marbles and shampoo (this one is very cool!!)

Be sure to glue the tops on the bottles to avoid the obvious mess!! (I found hot glue gun glue the best but PVA worked ok)

Joshua had a lot of fun with these and I have since made another one containing sand and small objects for him to find!!

lots of love
Ellie xxx

Autumn

As the leaves are just starting to fall off the trees I thought that this week would be a good place to start with the topic Autumn! Yesterday morning we went for a nature walk in our local woods to see what we could find to add to the 'Autumn tray' (a tray bought from Ikea that gets used for all sorts of things in our house, mostly as a sand pit!). Off we went armed with Daddy and a bucket. At first Joshua didn't quite get the idea of collecting things as he found it more fun to empty the bucket every time it had something in it, so we got Daddy to carry it and Joshua to help put things in it!
We managed to collect quite a few different bits and pieces and to stop it looking so bare I added some macaroni and some pumkin and sunflower seeds.

Here is our Autumn tray:

This activity needed a lot of supervision but Joshua loved picking up all the different things and shaking them, and throwing them! He learnt two new words. 'Conker' and 'Acorn' and he had fun trying to tip the tray upside down! I'm sure he got something out of it though!
I used some scavenger hunt pictures that I got off pinterest but I cant show them here as i cant remember which blog I got them from but you can find similar at: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2011/07/nature-scavenger-hunt.html
Obviously because Joshua is quite young the things we had on our hunt were slightly different. We had:
1. Conker
2. Acorn
3. Squirell
4. Bird
5. Butterfly
6. Feather
7. Tree
8. Leaf
and anything else we collected was a bonus!
I intend to make my own cards for this and laminate them so when I have done so I will post them on here.
We came home and looked through a book called 'In the Park, Baby's First Words'. It's by Parragon Books but I think its out of print as I couldn't find it on www.amazon.co.uk .
We also counted how many conkers we had and how many Acorns.

That's it for now, happy scavenging!!

Lots of love
Ellie x

Sensory Ice cubes

These were a lot of fun! I filled the bottom of an ice cube tray with lots off different things like glitter, coloured sand, pipe cleaner bits, pom poms, food colouring etc then added water on top and put them in the freezer! the result was hours of play for joshua watching them defrost and feeling how cold they were and the delights they released!

Much fun had by all!!

lots of love
Ellie x

My first muffin tin lunch!!!

 

I made my first muffin tin lunch today for my 21 month old Joshua. I have to say it went down extremelly well, so thank you to all the bloggers who I have been reading about. especially www.anotherlunch.com and http://michellesjournalcorner.blogspot.com for the inspiration!!!

here is my muffin tin lunch:

1. Raisins inside a star shaped cookie cutter
2. Cucumber cut into star shapes
3. Ham on a cocktail stick
4. Fromage frais with white chocoalate stars on top
5. Hummous on toast cut into star shapes
6. Bear shaped crisps (couldn't find any star shaped ones!!)
For a first attmept Im quite proud and I was really surprised but the shapes really did make Joshua try everything (even if some of it was spat out after!)
Im gonna do this every week!!!!!!!!

lots of love

Ellie xxxxx