DIY Lightbox

As the nights draw in, this is a fun activity to do in the dark! I've been meaning to make Eden a lightbox for a while now, I just couldn't figure out how I'd do it. Lightboxes can be really expensive to buy, and I've seen them for sale at £80-£100. The lightbox I've made for Eden cost just £3.50 - bargain fun! Today we experimented with various objects I found in Eden's bedroom, but I've got lots of plans for explorative play with it, particularly over these forthcoming dark winter months where more time is spent indoors.

Setting up the lightbox: plastic shoebox and battery-powered LED light

Testing out various objects

"I wonder if I glow too?"

Plastic milk bottle tops

Check out more play ideas here:

Our Autumn Sensory Box

The weather this week is just amazing! So warm and sunny and such a great excuse to get outside and make the most of what's probably the last of the 'Indian Summer' weather that we're having.

At the bottom of our road there's 4 or 5 large conker trees (I know they have a proper name, I just had to google it and they are in fact horse chestnut trees - I should know that really - I blame my pregnancy brain).

Yesterday Eden and I took a stroll down to fill a lidded box with lots of leaves, seeds, twigs and conkers for an autumn-themed sensory box. We took it home and had a good explore of all the textures and colours. I have a few autumn crafts planned that we'll be using some of the things in the box for, but will be saving those for a rainy day, in the meantime let's enjoy the sunshine!

10 Tips for craft and painting with a baby/young toddler

15 months, experimenting with a paintbrush!

I love doing artwork with Eden! She may only be 19 months (yesterday) but we have a lot of fun together, she learns from the process, and we create loads of special memories and masterpieces that go in her memory box.

I thought I'd write down a few tips that I've learnt from doing painting and crafts with a very little one:

1. First and foremost remember little ones have very short attention spans so don't go into it expecting more than 5 - 10 minutes before they want to change activity
2. Plan and prepare beforehand - get everything, and I mean everything ready before you sit your little one down
3. If inside, put a shower curtain down to protect the floor - cheap ones can be bought for 99p in supermarkets, and they make the session a lot less stressful if you're not worrying about spillages
4. Have a bath ready-run before you start your session, so that your little one can be put straight in when finished. Eden loves baths and this is a fun way to end our painting session 
5. A bit of an obvious one - make sure both of you are wearing old clothes you don't mind getting stains on. I often just put Eden in a nappy if it's going to be particularly messy - this also makes putting her in the bath a lot easier afterwards too as you don't have to fiddle with taking off messy clothes
6. Remember less is more where toddlers are concerned - there's no need to overwhelm them with 20 different colours of paint, they'll be just as happy with a choice of 2 or 3 when they're little
7. As hard as you may find it, let the child lead - if you have a plan to do a beautifully designed painting it's probably best to leave it until your little one is a little older. If you force them to 'paint' when they just want to mix you'll end up with tears and frustration on your hands. But...
8. Toddlers learn through copying so be prepared to quickly demonstrate beforehand and chances are your toddler will try and copy you too
9. Give warning before you finish, don't just snatch the paints away
10. Keep it fun, and make sure you're comfortable with doing the painting session, you won't have fun if you're stressed, and neither will your toddler. If you're calm and happy your toddler is much more likely to be too.  

Freecycle Bargains

I love Freecycle! I think it's great in promoting the 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' message, and I'm all for doing my 'bit' for the environment. I didn't fully discover it until I was pregnant, and realised just how much stuff babies need for so little time. We actually bought very little new - we had clothes handed down from older cousins, we bought Eden's Moses basket and stand for 99p off somebody local on ebay and we got some brilliant stuff off freecycle:

• Eden's cot
• Sheets, blankets and baby sleeping bags
• Baby play gym and toys
• A full set of brand new and 95% unopened reusuable nappies with all the accessories included - the extra small set had been tested out before deciding reusable nappies weren't for them. 

We've been really blessed by the kindness of people giving items away, and have returned the favour ourselves, donating our working fridge and freezer when we upgraded, as well as some other large items, and recently responding to an advert asking for some bluebells - our garden was over-run with them at the time!

This week, I was keen to get some plastic milk bottle tops, for counting and colour games with Eden. A kind lady donated 100 of them to us and we've been having fun with them: 

Sorting them into colours:

Enjoying the sound that mixing them makes:

Rolling them down little tubes:

Hiding them in big tubes:

Story cubes

I'm a big fan of Red Ted Art's blog, which has so many great ideas of crafts to do with children. Inspired by Red Ted Art, I made these story cubes back in January for Eden, she happened to be really ill at the time and sleeping a lot so they didn't take long to make. The aim is to roll the cubes, and tell a story with the pictures. Although too young to tell a story with them herself just at the moment, Eden has a little bag that she keeps them in, and she loves examining the cubes one by one, and building towers with them. I'm sure we'll enjoy them for many years to come.