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.

Busy times and golf tees

Well 2 months went by quickly! Had lots on including a birthday and a holiday. Chops is now 2! So where to begin.

We have been doing lots of activities so I will try to get an idea up as often as possibly starting with an idea I got from Pre School Patti. I had been wanting to try it for some time and finally got some golf tees off the father-in-law.

It is super simple and they really enjoyed it and using the mini hand held hoover to collect up all the pesky small balls of styro foam!  We used some simple plastic hammers and golf tees pushed into styro foam.

Lots of fun they played for quite a long period of time returning to it again later.

100 things to do with a paper plate challenge

I love paper plates and we use them a lot - even just in my "keep Chops happy when out kit" that I have full of stickers and colouring books as we can decorate a plate with crayons and stickers when out and about.  So I have challenged myself to find 100 things to do with a paper plate and I have set up a pinterest board for it!  Lets see if I can complete the challenge in a month!!!!

Water Fun

It was glorious sunshine today and we spent most of the afternoon in the garden and the biggest hit was 5 little ducks!
This is a pic of Chops doing this a while ago but we had 5 small people getting in on the action today.  A tub of water can be explored in so many ways.  I added blue dye, washing up liquid, 5 ducks (one an odd colour), a few metal spoons (one with holes) and straws, for the added bonus of blowing bubbles too and a few extra tubs for pouring and transferring water.
Ducks were scooped up into other buckets, water was collected and taken to the sand pit, spoons were used, hands were used and general wet fun was had by all.  Great if you don't want to get the paddling pool out yet and brilliant for lots of different ways to explore water.

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!