Our Gruffalo Day! A Gruffalo Collage and Homemade Gruffalo Crumble

I love having themed days with the kids. They don't have to take too much planning (I only decided on our gruffalo day yesterday), but I find them a lot of fun and I'm sure the kids get a lot out of them. I mentioned before bedtime last night that today we'd have a gruffalo day, and it was lovely hearing the first thing Asher say on waking up this morning 'is it our gruffalo day?!' 

We started with reading the story over breakfast, and stayed at the table to do a quick pen-control worksheet from Twinkl. It was only Asher's second-ever attempt at something other than scribble, it was just last week that he got our wipe-clean alphabloks cards out of the cupboard to write on. Today I was really proud of his writing, just goes to show his fine motor control is there developing through other activities that he's interested in. Then it was time to get the scissors and paints out and start our collage. I love the kids' copying of the wood scene from the book. 

Asher's writing:

We played abit with our gruffalo toys and magnet book and sat down to watch the short film with a snack. Eden did a gruffalo doodle on my ipad. 

After a snack, Asher helped me make gruffalo crumble. It's nice to spend a bit of 1:1 time with him, explaining what we're doing a bit more slowly, he really understood what the ingredients that we were adding represented and said making the crumble was his favourite part of the day. We used carrots for orange eyes, kidney beans for purple prickles, spring onion for claws, potato for terrible teeth and peas for poisonous warts. It turned out to be really tasty! 

This afternoon we finished off our collage and stuck it up in pride of place to enjoy on our piano. 

This year we're Frogs at Just So Festival! (Our Frog Craft day)

Only 3 more sleeps until the return of Just So Festival in Cheshire. Last year we had such an amazing time; taking in the carnival atmosphere, joining in with the vast array of activities on offer and dancing the nights away with the kids while listening to brilliant bands. There is such creativity on offer everywhere you look. 

This year for the tribal tournament we have decided to join the Frogs. Today we've been busy making accessories for our outfits. Eden couldn't wait to get started and ate her breakfast so quickly! 

It was Eden's idea to use a paper plate as part the craft session. So we started with painting and while that was drying made some legs (involved me thinking back to my childhood days of how to do this). 

Next up was badge making - these turned out a little bigger than we'd originally imagined, but at least they'll be clearly visible! 

Finally we brought the laminator out and have made some bunting to proudly put up on our tent.

Once everything was dry we assembled our frog paper plates - the tongue idea I found on Pinterest and Eden genuinely shrieked with delight when I demonstrated it to her - she thought it was hilarious! 

I'm finishing off our frog craft day by doing some frog-themed crochet as part of my dress up outfit for the weekend... 

Toddler Sand and Glue Artwork, making sensory birthday cards

It's my grandad's 94th birthday tomorrow, he's partially sighted and today we made him some sensory birthday cards. Over the last few years his sight has deteriated significantly, due to age-related macular degeneration. He delights in Eden and Asher, his great-grandchildren. Every week we see him on a Saturday, he laughs as they dance around the room to YouTube videos, and Asher brings him endless cups of tea from the pretend tea set. I'm always trying to think of creative ways to involve him in the kids drawings and artwork, even more so when it's his birthday or Christmas. 

Today while Eden was at preschool, Asher and I made him a tactile handprint birthday card using glue and sand from the sandpit. I'd imagine this would look even better with coloured sand, but I had none to hand ('scuse the pun).

Asher loved putting the gloomy pva glue on his hand, and totally 'got' the concept of doing a handprint - very carefully placing it on the card. He then followed the instructions to cover it in sand, and was delighted when we shook the sand off and were left with his handprint! 

When we were done, I left the materials outside to re-do with Eden later when she was back from preschool. However, she beat me to it! While I was tying up a few loose ends with jobs inside she found everything outside and with no explanation made her own card, dealing with the glue bottle herself and looking at Asher's dried artwork to copy what to do. She made the top card in the picture, with the swirly glue patterns. I'm so proud of her using her initiative in this way :) 

I hope Grandad likes his sensory birthday cards tomorrow. 

Our Very Hungry Caterpillar Day!

Last week to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the book, we held our own very hungry caterpillar themed day. Eden woke up excited (I'd told her the night before) and absolutely loved it, Asher (just turned 2) definitely understood the association going on through the day and enjoyed the activities. Balloons were a must! 

I made this play mat for Asher before he was born, we haven't had it out since he was a baby, so it was lovely to have it out again as part of a party today. 

Asher loved the caterpillar that I made from an old Pringles tube. I cut a hole in the lid for a mouth, stuck a face on and some green paper for the body, and printed out some VHC food (that we coloured in ourself as an activity in itself) which we then posted to 'feed' our caterpillar. Like I said, Asher really loved this activity and it kept him busy for ages. All week he's returned to this activity too. 

While he was playing, Eden and I filled in a multiple choice quiz answering questions about the VHC story. 

I found a sequencing printable on Pinterest where we put the parts of the story in order, and practised our counting

We did lots of painting, making butterflies with tissue paper, and caterpillars out of egg boxes. I love how these mini-canvas fingerprints came out - a nice keepsake of the day! 

The day's inspired me to do something similar again soon. Eden just found it a lot of fun, especially as she loves art and creating things. And for Asher it was really noticeable to see the connections being made through the day, the development of his speech and consolidating associations through spending a whole day on something. 

Re-purposed drinking straw card craft

I hate waste, so in our craft scraps box we have an abundance of plastic drinking straws that I cannot bring myself to throw away. Of course I'd much prefer to be using reusable drinking straws, but unfortunately we found that they don't wash well after milky drinks. I'm always on the lookout for craft activities that we can use our drinking straws for, and have a few crafts lined up for closer to Christmas. Today however, we had a spontaneous cutting, glueing and sticking moment and I love the results that Eden came up with - all her own idea and work! 

First she made a line of glue and told me it was a flower

She snipped off segments of drinking straw to stick onto the glue

And here's her finished flower! It looks great, and I'm so proud that it was entirely her own creation with no direction. I reckon with a little input we could make some beautiful designs together - perfect for developing creativity and using up all those old drinking straws! 

Junk model spider

This morning we did some junk modelling to create a spider - originally we'd planned to make an autumny owl - but with the materials we used it soon became apparent that our 'owl' was going to look much more like a spider. Eden made it all herself, apart from me cutting the sticky tape for the legs. The paper plate was leftover from a painting session over the summer - the colours are so vibrant on it that I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. We used jam jar lids, milk bottle tops, googley eyes, and used but cleaned drinking straws. 

We've done lots of counting today - spider legs, number line, new (to us) building blocks and stickle bricks from ebay. Asher (20 months) is really picking up on this, and joins us in counting with his own version of counting to 10, which is very cute to hear! Eden's really interested in numbers at the moment - she's asking me to use a clock so that she knows when 10 minutes is up (in baking today), asks me to time her by counting while she goes upstairs, uses numbers to link with people's ages, and points out numbers on road signs. 

Back to the spider.. Here's our finished result :) 

Squash Painting

We have a glut of winter squash which sadly didn't ripen on our allotment this year. I'm not quite sure why, maybe we got them in the ground too late, or we didn't have a long enough period of warm weather. They're all white, when the should have turned green, and on tasting they're very bitter sadly. On the plus side, their colour lends itself very well to being painted! Yesterday we sat down with the kids and had a fun squash painting session. Even Asher, who normally is too occupied with climbing or his cars to sit still to paint, wanted a go! He picked his own squash from those freshly washed, brought it over to his chair, and used the pointy end of a paintbrush to make his own squash masterpiece. I'm a very proud mummy that he showed such an interest! Here's the results! The colours are so vibrant!

This one's mine!

Microwaved Salt Dough Stars

We had fun making some salt dough stars today. I had some leftover salt dough sitting in the fridge, so while the kiddies were finishing breakfast I quickly made some stars in the microwave - I love how speedy this method is! 

After breakfast we painted the stars, I loved that Asher joined in too, albeit only briefly before he wanted to get out of the high chair and run around! 

Eden decorated her painted salt dough stars with lots of PVA glue to make it shine, and extra sparkly stars. I left Asher's plain, just adding a layer of glue for a nice finish all over. 

Once dry, we hung them up in the bedrooms, I think they make a lovely addition to the rooms. 

Autumn Owls

I couldn't let autumn pass without a craft activity involving pumpkin seeds. Today we had a spare half hour so I quickly drew a rough owl shape for Eden to add pumpkin seed feathers to. Eden has always loved glueing and today I just left her to it while seeing to the baby. I especially like the buttons she added for eyes - all her own doing!

Footprints on Canvas

Our little man, Asher is 4 weeks old today! I marked the occasion by printing his footprints, as well as Eden's, onto canvas.

Once we'd finished the canvas, Eden did some 'footprints' herself:

And here's a photo of Asher today, on his 4-week birthday

The last 4 weeks we've been settling down as a family of 4. Eden has done brilliantly adjusting to have Asher here; she's so kind and gentle with him, and so inclusive of him in activities and when we go out. An unexpected surprise is what an easy baby Asher is - he settles by himself well and is a very peaceful and contented little baby. I don't think we particularly had a hard time with Eden, but she was colicky and on reflection a more demanding baby. As we didn't know any different we were expecting Asher to be the same. 

Looking forward to the months ahead! 

Toddler Craft: Exploring Textures

We did a quick craft this morning - I wanted to explore textures, Eden wanted to make a flower - this was the result! 

I keep a big box full of all sorts of materials and boxes for craft activities, so the first thing we did was have a rummage through to pick out different textures to use in our collage. Eden picked out some blue card, and I drew a big flower shape on. She then stuck on the scraps of different textures and I introduced some new words to her to describe them.

 The finished 'masterpiece'!

Toddler Valentines Craft

As it's Valentines Day tomorrow I was keen to do a heart craft activity with Eden, and was inspired by this blog post to make some sparkly hearts! Like with many 2 year olds, I only have to mention glueing and sticking to Eden and her eyes light up and she turns into an incredibly helpful toddler clearing a space for our craft! Today while I was preparing the activity in the kitchen, she was chattering away at her craft table saying 'I like sticking Mummy, it's my favourite and my best'.

Preparation:
I cut out 3 heart shapes using cardboard from an old cereal box and covered the front of them with tin foil, taping them down at the back.
I tore a selection of pink, purple and yellow tissue paper into thin strips and small shapes.

Glueing:
Eden and I then used some gloopy PVA glue to stick the tissue paper down onto the tin foil hearts.

Add some sparkle

While the glue was still wet, Eden shook some confetti glitter over the top of the hearts, and stuck some sparkly gems on to finish off. I love our glitter shaker and gem stickers - they're both from the pound shop and every time I'm in there I always look to see if they're in stock to buy some more - sadly I haven't seen the sticky gems in there since I bought them a few months ago, so I ration them at home now :)  

Stuck up on our wall

Bitten by the sewing bug

Regular readers may remember the Advent Calendar Bunting that I made for my daughter back in September (which by the way was a BIG hit with her this December, but that's another story). It was made using a basic mini sewing machine that I picked up for £4 at a car boot in August, I was impressed with the results even though the project was a complete pain and took three times as long (at least) thanks to the sewing machine not coping well with the material. With this in mind, I've been on the hunt for a decent 'proper' sewing machine for the last few months.

Just before Christmas, I bought a Silver Crest one that was on offer from Lidl. I did my research beforehand and checked reviews, all of which were very positive. From the set-up to the sewing, I've found it easy and enjoyable - and this is coming from a COMPLETE sewing novice, I am well and truly a beginner, and like to learn by getting stuck in and doing. The Silver Crest sewing machine has 33 different stitches, and comes with various different 'feet' - so far I've used the basic foot and the zipper foot - it's easy to interchange them. 

I purchased just in time to make a few Christmas presents for family. Due to my lack of skills and knowledge in using a sewing machine, I was surprised at the results, which I felt were good enough to actually give as presents without being embarrassed about wobbly edging and the like showing me up! So here's a few piccies of my recent makes:

Cath Kidston-style knitting needle case

The zip using my new sewing machine

Owl doorstops and paperweight

And this is a Very Hungry Caterpillar baby playmat that I made for our new arrival in March - can't wait to use it!

VHC play mat