Fun Things to do With Toddlers - Snow Theme Activities

My husband and I have decided that we will most probably be home educating Boris and Biscuit in the future.  Of course home education doesn't start when a child turns three, or four or the term after their fifth birthday or whenever the local authority says it should,  Home education happens all the time and we are already doing it every day of the week. 

Sometimes, however, I get a bit overwhelmed and worried about the responsibility.  I don't want to let my boys down; neither of them go to nursery at the moment so their education is already solely in my hands, and I get all panicky that I am not doing enough and I don't know where to start, so I have joined a ton of Facebook groups for support and encouragement and to ask questions (What would I do without my beloved Facebook?).  One group I recently joined is called "Weekly book and activity challenge for HE".  Every few weeks they have a new book/theme to follow and members share photos of what they have been up to. I liked this idea because it gave me something to focus on with the boys, I was getting myself into a bit of a muddle. 

The first theme was The Snow Queen/Frozen.  So I borrowed a copy of the Snow Queen from the library, we watched Frozen and we did some snow themed activities.  Here are some of the activities we did.  This theme is totally still relevant, I was so hoping it would snow, but it wasn't to be, but it would be awesome to do some of them if it was also snowing outside. 

1. First we made little plasticine snowmen from plasticine that Boris got for Christmas, I did most of the building here, but Boris told me what colours he wanted for what and what clothes he wanted his snow people to wear.  I love that he made me make babies for them.

2.  The old corn flour and oil snow activity which we have done before only this time I used baby oil instead of rapeseed oil so our snow was white rather than the slightly peculiar looking yellow snow we had last year!

The mixture of the two ingredients (1 cup of each I think) results in a snow that is crunchy and mould-able, just like real snow, you could even put it in the fridge to make it chilly for the full sensory experience. 

I am not going to lie, this activity ended up with shouting and hoovering.

3.  Plastic snow confetti.  I bought this from the supermarket a while ago, not really knowing what to do with it, but thinking it might be fun for something, so just put it in a bowl and let the boys have a dig around, it did make a bit of a mess and had to go away when Biscuit started eating it. 

4. Snowmen skittles, what fun!!  Boris helped me to draw on some of the faces (cue Tim Burton style snowmen) and he stuck the noses on.  We stacked them up then sent them flying with a plastic "snowball".  A fun game for a while, but Boris found it more fun to break the polystyrene cups into bits when I was out of the room. 

5.  This was a pretty awesome activity, Boris and I dipped cotton wool balls in equal parts flour and water then baked in the oven for 45 mins.  He then hammered them to crack them open and broke the the coating with his fingers.  The sensory experience of opening the crunchy hard coating and revealing the soft fluffy centre is out of the world.  I am tingling just thinking about it, and even took some to my Bible study group, so they could share in the sensory wonderment.  I was hoping they would look more like snowballs when they came out, but they were a little browned.  (Again, called time on this activity because of eating)

6. Puffy Snowman painting - I made a mixture of shaving foam and a dollop of PVA glue and mixed it together to form the base of the "paint".  Boris scooped the mixture onto the black paper into some circle outlines I made and then we added the embellishments on together, buttons, bow, beads, boggly eyes etc.  The snowman looked great when it was finished, really fluffy like meringue.  Fascinatingly the next day the snowman had continued to puff up under the dried outer layer so began to look like he had gained a few pounds and even had some stretch marks!! Boris asked why and I replied "science".   When I was out of the room, Boris used the foam that was leftover to sty his hair.  

Four days later and much poking from Boris and it looks more like a sorry burns victim,and a little bit creepy.  We are still waiting to see if it goes crusty. 

So there you have it, four fab snow themed activities.  This week our theme is Space. 

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 

So our week of activities has come to an end and I really hope you have enjoyed it and found some of the ideas useful and inspiring.

Today we have our sofa slide which we have visited and re-visited many times this summer, or as Boris likes to call it, his "slippy-slide!"
Apologies for the quality of this photo and that lack of quantity, this activity was actually a while ago and I didn't think to photograph it properly because I just wanted to put it on Facebook.  (So sorry if you are a Facebook friend and you have seen this before!)

So basically what you are looking at is a slide made from sofa cushions with two big pieces of cardboard on top.  We used one piece of cardboard as a sort of sledge to slide of the the second piece. Literally hours of fun, or at least it would be if I had the energy!  Boris still needed supporting down the slide or else he slipped off the side! It was great fun, fab for gross motor skills and raising the heart rate.

So that's it folks, back to normal tomorrow, though I have really loved writing every day and hopefully with be a bit more frequent with my posting from here on in. 

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 

The week is nearly up but I still have another great activity to share with you and best of all it's easy peasy!
All you need is some chalk, some toy cars and a toddler with oodles of imagination.

I lined the cars up and said "ready, steady, GO!" and showed him how the cars could drive between the lines.  Then he was off!

After a while the cars adopted their own personalities, one was Mummy, one was Daddy and one was Biscuit and they had little conversations.  The cars soon left the confines of the race track and began driving round the rest of the garden!

A super easy activity which encourages imaginative play and develops fine motor skills, perfect for when you are stuck for something to do and need an activity at short notice. 

One more post in this series to come, stay tuned.  If you have any toddler activities, feel free to share them in the comments. 

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 


Bubbles seem to never lose their fun, no matter what age, (unless you suffer from trypophobia which is a fear of bubbles!) So this summer I bought a little bubble machine so fill the garden with bubbles and to avoid me going dizzy from all the puffing!

Boris had a great time catching the bubbles with his hands, pretending to eat them and stamping on them when they landed on the patio.

I gave him a water squirter to pop the bubbles with which not only added a greater sense of fun to the activity but also helped him to improve his hand-eye co-ordination. 

We regularly get the bubble machine out both in the house and outside. It's great, crazy fun!

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 

There is nothing like a walk in the woods, there is so much to look at smell and touch.  We often walk in woods but on this occasion I was more purposeful with out intention.  We would collect some woodland stuff and make it into a woodland/nature art piece. 

Boris got very excited about picking up different sticks and pine cones and putting them in the bag.

He looked more carefully at things and showed me things more than he normally would because he knew he would be keeping it for something special later.

We explored the beautiful light that seems to always be present in the woods and talked about how tall the trees were.  We noticed the way the texture of the ground changed and we off the beaten path to explore under, in and around the trees and bushes. 

When we got home I did have a go at encouraging Boris at join me in making some sort of hanging art piece but he wasn't interested so I just laid out the pieces we had collected, for him to explore. 

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 

I did this same activity with Boris when he was about the same age as Biscuit so I was keen to do it again with them both to compare how Biscuit would react and how Boris would react a year on.

Playing with spaghetti is such a simple but fun sensory play experience, it is cheap and cheerful and fun to look at.

I coloured the spaghetti with food colouring after it was cooked.

It was a great activity, Biscuit essentially just sat and ate it, but I was ok with that, it was great to provide an activity which they could both take part it. 

Boris enjoyed picking up the spaghetti and throwing it around.  He broke it into pieces and mixed all the colours up. 

The activity was useful for improving fine motor skills, particularly the pincer movement for Biscuit, and was great for exploring texture, Boris also used his imaginative powers by pretending the spaghetti was worms! (By the way, the colour on the spaghetti does make a bit of a mess, be sure to use suitable protective equipment bot on the floor and your toddler!)
This is a really easy activity, doesn't take long to set up and is cheap.  Have you used spaghetti in any other ways as a sensory play tool?
Feel free to link your fun toddler activities in the comments below.

Fun Things to do With Toddlers - A Week of Activities!

We've been busy!  it's been a fun and activity filled summer, here are some of the things we have been doing in a bumper week of fun toddler activities. 

I had been planning this activity for months, saw it on Pinterest and started browsing the internet for water tables. I thought it was probably the best idea ever and was going to be so much fun and so stimulating and Boris would probably play with it for hours!  Turns out (for me) this was THE most stressful (and expensive) activity I have EVER done with Boris, and that is saying something because I have done some pretty stressful activities with him.

I still think it is a great activity but I would warn you not to try it is you have a small baby who is on the move near by, he WILL want to eat the water beads no matter how much you try to distract him with tin foil!

So if you want to try this activity what you need is:

Water table (I bought this one, its expensive but a good size and has two separate sections so I think I will be versatile for future activities)
Blue water beads (I bought these)
Glass nuggets (these)
Tin foil,
Glitter (optional:

WARNING: This activity must be closely supervised, I know my toddler isn't going to put these in his mouth, but I don't know your toddler so to avoid any risks I wouldn't recommend it for children under 36 months.

I lined the water table with the tin foil which, under the water created a beautiful sparkly shiny effect. the I filled it with pre-soaked water beads and a pack of the glass nuggets.

Boris was intrigued by the water beads, he has played with them before so was quite excited about them.  

The contrast between the soft beads and the hard glass nuggets added another sensory element.

Boris kept dropping the beads and nuggets on the floor which of course Biscuit wanted to immediately eat!  So I tried to distract him with floating balls of tin foil!

I added blue glitter, but it looked a bit like bits of floating dirt, I think silver would have worked much better. 

It's a really beautiful activity and would definitely have been more enjoyable if it had just been me and Boris, but with Biscuit there is well it was a nightmare. I don't mean to sound negative but it really did get me in a sweat!  

What have you tried with water beads?  Please link below, link party fun!