Outdoor kitchen

Our temporary outdoor kitchen has been great fun.  I have been inspired by the sheer number of mud kitchens on pintrest  but haven't quite got round to doing the full on mud session yet.

We created a leafy, red dyed rice concoction that Chops loved stirring, spooning and generally dolloping everywhere.  The exciting thing was the next day it was full of snails who seemed to be feasting on the mixture, much to the delight of Chops.

I also put out a muffin tin, lots of smaller bowls and a sieve just to make it feel a bit more like a kitchen.

Going to work on a full on mud pie kitchen next - got to convince hubby its a brilliant idea though!!! (He mainly does bath time so he is on clean up duty after the mess).

Chalk fun

 SOOOOO loving being outside (although there have been a few rain showers but enjoying throwing on the wellies and jumping in the puddles in between the showers).  It is so rare in the UK to get such a prolonged spell of warmth!
We have spent so much time outdoors and chalk and pots of water with brushes have been filling lots of time. We have a permanent outdoor chalk board and we have also had the easel up and of course the patio is popular.  We used lots of different sizes and shapes of brushes and sponges and also some normal sized chalk and giant chalks.
I found this from the imagination tree inspiring too, which was all about putting chalk on the board first and letting the kids paint out the chalk with water which has also been a great activity that doesn't create too much mess!!!

Shaving foam sensory fun

I had been wanting to do this for ages and with all this hot weather we had the perfect opportunity - shaving foam play!  As we had the paddling pool up Chops could wash everything off in the pool as she played so we got quite covered and added sand and glitter too.  Great fun and such a different play material - next we want to try shaving foam painting.

Giant toddler friendly fuzzy felt!

This is something I made a while ago but it is just starting to be used a bit more.  The nice thing was that Chops actually asked for it today.

I had bought a pack of felt letters from Sainsbury a while ago and didn't know what to do with them, so I covered a canvas with green felt and cut up some more large shapes out of felt so Chops could create giant fuzzy felt pictures.

Today Chops and her friend had a great time with it and concentrated on paring up shapes and letters.  A great fun activity and really cheap to make. You can also just throw them around!!!!!

Fun with dough

The nice thing now is that the girls ask for things they would like to do from the activities that are kept in cupboards (items that are not regular toys and that I keep out of the way for play that needs a watchful eye - Chops is still putting things in her mouth on a daily basis - ARRRGGGHHH!).

Today stones were demanded, so we pulled out the dough, stones and lolly sticks to make some creative shapes.

I love home made dough I find it much softer and I am not so precious about it too (I feel myself twitching if they start shoving things into bought play dough - whats that about???)

There is a recipe here on The Imagination Tree but this is the one I use below and I always like to add a bit of glitter!

Glitter dough – infinitely better than normal dough, basically add a small pot of glitter when mixing the flour and salt together!  

2 cups of plain flour


4 tablespoons of 'cream of tartar'


Glitter

2 tablespoons of cooking oil


1 cup of salt


2 cups of boiling water with the 
food colouring added to it

Might not come together but gather and knead for a bit and its great.  Allow it to cool in a bag as I find this better and it keeps for ages.

Sand play

Well I have finally given in and bought a sand tray - I was reluctant as I didn't want a sandy house but sand is such a hit when we head down to the sandpit at the park that I just had to and £20 from Argos seemed cheap enough for lots of fun.

Its already a big hit, Chops has played with it loads and 5 of them were having great fun today - just got to crack the concept of keeping the sand on the decking!

I got my trusty tough tray out too so they could dig and make castles as well.  Adding in other objects such as shells and lolly sticks to make it more interesting (and not all about plastic).  Lots of birthday cakes were made!

Modern Art with a Toddler

 Who Knew that viewing modern art with a toddler could be so much fun.  We 'accidently' went to Tate modern on Easter Sunday and had such a lovely time.  We just went around the public bits as we didn't have loads of time to get around but Chops loved it.  We spent a good 30 mins just charging around the turbine hall, rolling on the floor and generally enjoying space! It really is the most amazing gallery.






The Dan Flavin rooms were the best bits as far as Chops was concerned as they made rainbows on the walls and Chops just danced around with Nanny making different shapes and patterns.

We then went around the Energy and Process rooms where Tree of 12 metres was where squirrels and the Gruffalo lived, Terracotta Circle is where our cat Bean would sleep and Remade 2008 needed 'tidying up' as there were a lot of dust bunnies around it!!!

It was hilarious and actually made much more sense than some of the descriptions that were in the galleries! We will be going again very soon.