Chinese New Year

We had a little celebration of the Chinese New Year yesterday.

We started with a visual re-telling of the story of how the Jade Emperor decided on the animals of the Chinese calendar. I told the story, read from a powerpoint presentation off my laptop, and acted out the story with toys and a little scene made with tin foil, a couple of chiffons, some pebbles, bits of wood and some plastic stone and tree ornaments.  The boys were engaged, but I learnt it would have been better not to have the powerpoint presentation, for some reason they were more drawn to looking at the pictures on the screen than the story I was acting out for them.

After I told the story a couple of times (again on their request)  they had a go at playing around with the toys on the river, and tried acting the story out too. 

Later we made some Chinese lanterns.  I had to give quite a lot of help with some parts of the lamp making but they were pleased with the results. 

(My example)

Biscuits effort; he mostly did the cutting and I did the rest.

Boris' effort; he had a real go at making the lantern himself, though got frustrated at times when things weren't going exactly his way. 

And for dinner, well a Chinese stir fry of course. 

I hope you all enjoyed a happy Chinese New Year!

Home pre-school - Foot prints in the sand painting

Our theme for the summer is The Seaside, we have had some lovely sunny days this year so I decided it would be fun to do some outdoors painting.  In my mind I was thinking about footprints in the sand and making a way of capturing the footprints that are so fleeting on the beach. 

I got a couple of baking trays and poured some different colours of poster paint into them.  My boys stood in the paint (with help - it was slippy) the walked and ran along the paper, creating a crazy mess of painty footprints.

The paper was some packing paper than came with an Amazon order. 

Gotta love those little feet. 

And those even littler ones. 

It was a fun, quick activity, I have stuck the strip of paper up the stairs in our house and when we change theme I will probably cut a few bits out to keep.

COMING MONDAY - LION KING GIVEAWAY!!!

Tune in on Monday evening for my first giveaway on this blog!!

I will be giving away this fabulous kit containing everything you need for a fun Lion King themed activity week.

The kit includes:

Jungle shaped playdough cutters,

Silicone bug cake/ice/jelly mould,

Six plastic bug toys, 

Six plastic jungle/safari animal toys,

One dropper pipette,

Instructions for making jungle play dough

Cotton bag to keep everything in.

This kit is worth £18.00 and I will be taking orders from anyone who wants to buy one after the giveaway is finished.

Details of how to enter will be shared on Monday.

Home Preschool - Sand hand print

Quite often when I come up with an activity for the boys I get caught up in the moment and forget to take photos of the process, sometimes it's only after that I think "Oh I had better take some photos for the blog!"  so please forgive the serious lack of development photos, I will try to describe it as best as I can so you get get the picture. 

Following on with our Seaside theme, and thinking about hand and foot prints in the sand I thought it would be interesting for Boris to help make a permanent memento of his little hands in plaster of Paris, but with a beachy, sandy effect to make you think of holidays on the beach. 

To to do this activity I began with a small plastic bowl that I pressed some sand in to.  I then got Boris to press his hand into the sand and I neatened it up after he took his hand away, I had to press it quite firmly in and press in each finger.  

Next in a separate bowl I mixed up some plaster of Paris by pouring in some water then adding the powder until I got a creamy texture, I got Boris to help me scoop the powder and pour it into the bowl and give it  stir with a wooden spoon.   

Next Boris helped me pour it onto the sand and I gave the bowl a little nudge to get any air bubbles out.  

I left it about 15 minutes to set then carefully tapped it out.  I have it a little brush with a dustpan brush to get the lose sand off, and there you have it!  A lovely sandy hand print. 

Don't forget to stay tuned for my brilliant GIVEAWAY coming soon.

Home Preschool themes - Seaside 1

I have been struggling for a while with coming up with ideas for themes that my children would find fun and interesting, but then the sun really started shining, the shorts were on, the flip flops donned, the sun cream slathered. So The Seaside seemed like an obvious choice, why didn't I think of it sooner. 

I got the water table out (this was a really great buy because it's so versatile): 

and filled it with a scintillating variety of sensory stimulating materials including sand, shaving foam, water beads and hair gel!

The hair gel was just 16p from ASDA!  I used 1 1/2 tubs, the shaving foam was £1 also from ASDA, I got the waterbeads and little animals on line and the sand from our sandpit! It probably cost about £5.15 in total, but of course I can re-use the animals and water table.

I really enjoyed setting it up a little bit secretly then bringing the boys out for the big reveal.  They were very curious and tentative at first, not sure about touching the more slimy materials, but soon getting stuck in and eventually very purposefully smooshing it all though their hair!

I really enjoyed watching them play and mostly left them too it, but could have asked them some open questions to get them thinking such as what does the shaving foam/hair gel/water beads feel like? What are the animals doing/thinking? What creatures do you find at the seaside?  What sort of things do you like to do at the seaside? etc.

Boris even did a bit of imaginative play with the little sea creatures which really thrilled me because has just been getting into it and it's so sweet.  This activity was great for stimulating the senses and relaxing, it was also good for fine motor skills with the boys practising the pincer movement by picking up the animals and water beads, they also had to work on co-operation whilst playing together at the table and taking turns. 

Towards the end it had turned into a bit of a swamp!  But it was fairly easy to clean up.  I scooped out and rinsed the water beads in a colander to use again then just hosed out the table. Good clean fun. 

Check back in a few days time for more seaside related activities for toddlers/preschoolers. And if you have got this far, I will be doing a GIVEAWAY in a few days time so be sure to check back.  You can sign up by email on the right side bar, or you can stay up to date by liking my facebook page.

Home Preschool Themes - Dinosaurs part 2

Continuing on from Monday, we have done some more Dinosaur related activities.  It's worth pointing out that I am not, at the point in my children's education, too worried about what they are actually learning from all this, I don't expect them to learn any of the Dinosaurs names, or what periods came before or after the Jurassic, or how to spell Piatnitzkysaurus!  For me the most important thing they do is play, and my hope is that I will be providing them with opportunities to play whilst also having fun and exploring new things.

So here are some more activities we have done this week with our Dinosaur theme:

Salt Dough Dinosaur Bones:

Boris and I had a go at making some salt dough dinosaur bones,
1 cup of plain flour,
1 cup of salt,
1/2 a cup of water.

Obviously I made most of these bones, but Boris had a good time rolling the dough into little worms which was good for his fine motor skill development and creativity.
I made a lot of vague bone shapes and used a picture of some dinosaur bones from a book as a guide but I wasn't trying to make it anatomically correct or anything.

We laid them out on a tray to bake in the over for 3 hours at about 170 degrees. 

I over baked the bones so they came out golden brown like biscuits so like some crazy mother I painted them white with poster paint at about 1.00am in the morning!!

Then we had a good time laying out the bones to make them look like some kind of prehistoric monster. We can also bury the bones to search for in the sand pit.  

Plaster of Paris Dino Eggs:

So I decided to use our plastic Easter eggs as part of a little archaeological excavation activity. I filled each egg with plaster of paris and squidged a little plastic dinosaur in each one to chisel out.  I think this would have been a really great idea if I had coated the inside of the eggs with vaseline, or lined them with cling film or something because I had a nightmare getting the blinking things out. Anyway I got them out eventually and we had a ball smashing them with wooden hammers.  (Probably would have been a good idea to wear goggles)

I decided to take the activity outside onto the patio after Biscuit dropped one of the eggs onto my breakfast tea plate and smashed it.

Woo hoo!! A Dinosaur!!  (I think Boris wasn't convinced there was actually anything in there till he saw a bit poking out)

The little dinos left lovely imprints in the plaster of paris.  I might do a bit of dry brush painting on these to really bring out the shape and textured. This activity was definately one for the gross motor skills.

Finally - Dinosaurs in Jelly!:

Because, why the hell not?!  You can never go wrong with three year olds and jelly. 

Another mad moment; me mixing poster paint and black food colouring into some jelly at stupid o'clock in the morning.  Now that's commitment!

How raaaaawesome does this dinosaur look coming out of the jelly?!

Obviously the jelly didn't stay in the water table and I had to warn visitors who went into the garden to watch out for the prehistoric slime on the patio. 

Grey jelly mmmmmm.

Beautiful Easter Weekend

Really been loving the weather these last few days, haven't you? I was in need of some serious light therapy and it is doing no harm at all.  We lapped up the sun on Monday after a very chilly Easter Saturday hunting Easter eggs at Clandon House in Surrey and nondescript Easter Sunday. 

We spent the afternoon walking through the woods and lounging on the lawns of The Vyne, a National Trust property in Henley-Upon-Thames.  We are frequent visitors, but the light was especially beautiful this last Monday, it was so bright and made everything look really vivid, the green of all the new shoots coming up contrasting against a brilliant blue sky was stunning. 

These smelled absolutely amazing, it really pays to take the time to bend down and smell flowers.  Heavenly. 

A bit on impromptu breastfeeding, I don't often carry Biscuit on the front because I find it a bit of a strain on my back, but for the sake of some mobile breastfeeding I am willing to give it a go.

New blades of grass shooting through the layer of beech leaves,

It's really important to us that the boys get out into nature as much as possible, they learn so much and benefit from it is so many different ways. We love letting them get their hands (and knees and bums) dirty on a regular basis, and they seem to love it too. There was so much to explore in the woods, here they are examining a tree stump, Boris takes a particular interest in fungus. 

Hope you all had a gorgeous Easter weekend.