Easter Crafts and a Rhyming Egg Hunt

…Better late than never!!

Easter happened during our break from blogging – but rather than leave it out, I’ve decided to share the things we did so that we have a record for ourselves, and ready to share ideas next year!

Easter wouldn’t be Easter without an egg hunt – I also think that less chocolate, more fun  is a better balance.  Not that I’m opposed to chocolate but at Christmas and Easter the levels can get ridiculous if unchecked!  So our poor deprived children shared a bag of mini eggs which they found hidden around the house, by following clues.

L had been writing poetry that week, using a rhyming words bank, and so L’s clues involved finding the rhyming word.  N’s clues were simpler, and involved a very basic riddle.

Just for fun, here are our treasure hunt clues:

Once upon a time, there was an Easter bunny

Who thought hiding his eggs was funny!

On Easter morning, while we were out,

He left L** and N****’s eggs hidden all about!

 

 

 

And then he wrote a little rhyme

So they could find their eggs in time –

“I’ve hidden your eggs around in twos

To find them you must read the clues,

First L**’s turn, and N****’s then,

Then back to the beginning – L**’s again!

So off we go, let’s have some fun,

Your treasure hunt has just begun!”

 

 

The first clue is for L** to read,

I know he is a good reader indeed.

This clue is tricky, that’s for certain

Look behind the living room *******.

 

 

 

Aha – you found them!  Now N****’s turn

To look in the place where a fire might burn.

 

  

For L**’s clue, get down on your knee

To find out where those eggs might be.

Get down on the floor, if you are able,

And look under the kitchen ******.

 

 

N****, look inside your bed

–         You’ll find your eggs where you rest your head.

 

Quickly L**, zoom, zoom, zoom,

The next one’s still in your bedroom.

You’re doing well at this hunting race

–         Go and look in your book ****.

 

 

Hello N****!

Splish, splash, splosh!

You’ll find the eggs where you have a wash!

You’re so close, Leo, they’re near the floor,

Just look behind the bathroom ****.

 

 

Think hard, N****, and have a peep

In the place where a baby girl might sleep.

 

Look around, L**, look up and down,

You’ll find eggs in Mummy’s dressing ****.

 

 

N****, this is your last clue

They’re near the front door, where you keep your shoe!

 

You’ve found most of your eggs by now

Just one more clue to tell you how

You’ll need to look where your clothes get clean

The eggs are inside the washing *******!!

 

Well done, little girl and boy!

I hope these eggs have brought you joy.

They’re made of chocolate, delicious and sweet,

And now it’s time for you to eat –

Don’t let them melt

(They’ll go all runny)

 – With lots of love from the Easter Bunny!!

L and N arrived home from church to find that Daddy had got into the spirit of things – a rabbit greeted them on the doorstep, along with two baskets, and the eggs had been hidden around the house.

The great thing about the egg hunt was that it required co-operation.  L needed to help N read the clues, and also practise the skill of restraining himself from giving the answer on her “turn” (and he really does need to practise this!).  It also required sharing, and a little bit of maths as they divided the eggs between them after each clue.

At the end of the hunt, the children discovered for the first time the joy of Kinder Eggs – I’m sure there must be fine motor skills benefits to opening them and playing with the tiny toy!

The other great thing about the Easter Egg Hunt – a morning’s fun for the grand total of £3 between the two children – an egg hunt kit from poundland, plus the mini eggs!

Also at the end of the hunt, each child found a home made game.  That sounds slightly more impressive than it actually was, but they loved it anyway and we have used them quite a bit since.  They consisted of cut out Easter egg shapes, then cut in half, with a little bit of fun learning.

N’s game was designed to teach her to recognise capital letters, and it’s actually worked brilliantly – she can recognise them all after playing the game a handful of times.  We played this one as a game of “pairs”, matching upper and lower case letters.  Snap would work equally well.

The game was also good for L in that it allowed him to practise turn-taking, sharing, concentration, observation and again that valuable skill of not correcting N and being kind to a younger child who is still learning what he already knows.

L’s game involved number bonds to ten:

 Unfortunately, I haven’t got a good picture, but it involved egg halves which needed to be matched to make a total of ten – 0 and 10, 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc, etc.

It was a good game, but one that needed to be played with L alone.  When N interrupted and became frustrated by not being able to understand it, L declared it “too boring” and wandered off, but when I brought it out again as a special quiet time activity, he loved it.

We ended Easter Sunday by decorating foam Easter Eggs in the bath!  These were made quickly and easily using craft foam.  L and N did some of the cutting, and we have also used them to explore repeating patterns and geometric shapes.

L and N also used the shapes in unexpected and creative ways – a lilypad for a duck, and to make aliens!

 

 

 

 

We also did (guess what) a lot of crafts over the Easter holidays (any excuse!).  Grandma and Nana were kind enough to send craft supplies instead of chocolate, and the children’s big cousin wrote a lovely letter full of craft ideas!  So we got busy…

The fun we had was as good as the finished products.  We were in our element, surrounded by goodies such as feathers in all colours, polystyrene eggs, different kinds of paints, googly eyes, papier mache eggshells, and more besides, plus some books of craft ideas!  Even F wasn’t left out – she loved making handprint chicks, finger painted easter eggs, and learning to make marks with felt tips, crayons, pencils… Meanwhile, LI and N practised cutting out, selecting materials, glueing, shape and space, and fine motor skills, all whilst having fun making Easter crafts.

We also made some very simple but effective cards for friends and family, using insulating tape to make a cross on the front of the card, which all three children could then paint over, and the tape was removed to leave a cross once the paint had dried.

L and N then wrote in  their cards, bringing in some sneaky writing practice for the boy who only wants to email, and giving N practice at forming letters, and writing her name independently.

We also went wild in the kitchen, making our Easter cake, topped with a chocolate coated weetabix nest!

L and N had great fun with the leftover fondant and some cutters, and were thrilled to be given access to my proper grown-up shaping tools!

I usually find that when they are trusted, and they know it’s important, they live up to the responsibility.  The novelty of playing with something normally out of bounds made this really exciting, and they both felt very grown-up doing “proper” sugarcraft.  It is full of benefits in strengthening hand muscles needed for writing, fine motor skills (again) and developing creativity.  They also copied some of the animals I had made, so developing skills of observation.  Even F enjoyed playing with some pieces of fondant (and I didn’t have to worry too much if she ate some!)

 

And last but not least, this was the year I decided to introduce the story of the Crucifixion.  As a Christian family, we have thought long and hard about this.  How to introduce something that is really beyond our own understanding?  How to convey the meaning of Easter without traumatising the children?  Until this year, we settled on “Easter is when God showed us how much he loves us”.

There could be no introducing it to L without N.  The chances of him not sharing this new information with her were slim to none – so together we watched a children’s DVD explaining the Easter Story, read passages from the Bible, drew pictures, arranged pictures from the story in  sequence, and encouraged any questions from the children.  There were many, and some we couldn’t answer.  But I needn’t have worried about L, who ended up telling me the story, having read it himself in the children’s Bible!  This made me all the more glad we had decided to explore the story together, to allow him to ask any questions he had.

L and N were also lucky enough to make these fantastic Gethsemene gardens at the village church, which I can take no credit for whatsoever, but am sharing because I think it is a brilliant idea.  Here is a blog about something similar.

Next year, we also plan to try resurrection cookies as a way of exploring the Easter story.

There we have our Easter, we hope you had as much fun as we did!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Rainbow Birthday

After what seems like a long break from blogging while we settled into our new home, we are back, with the news that little baby F is one!  And what better way to start than sharing her birthday celebrations.

The theme was decided by L and N.  We have been learning about the weather, and they have been captivated by rainbows.  We have made our own tiny rainbows with a glass of water and a torch like this, and by lucky coincidence seen this brilliant rainbow in the sky.

L and N requested a rainbow tea party, and so F’s birthday theme was decided.  L and N painted their own rainbow t-shirts to wear on the day, using fabric markers:

And Mummy had fun making a special one for F!

 

 

It worked brilliantly – bright, bold colours were perfect for a one year old, and it was such a fun theme to carry out.  This is what our playroom looked like:

The decorations were:

• A crepe paper curtain – literally just strips of rainbow coloured paper sellotaped to the door frame.
• A rainbow banner – the letters of F’s name cut out of craft foam and threaded along a string.
• Paper bunting – easy peasy triangles of coloured paper fixed to a stripy ribbon using double sided tape
• A rainbow mobile – made of craft foam, PVA glue, and threaded onto yarn using a needle, and attached to two bamboo skewers tied together in a cross shape.

The “party” itself was quite low key – just ourselves and Nana, who was visiting.  I wanted to be able to focus on F, and give her attention rather than entertaining people – also, we thought she would probably be overwhelmed by lots of people.

So we had a trip to the farm, and a tea party with lots of colourful and sensory things to explore.

The toy tray was very easy, and brilliant in that it gave a new lease of life to toys that haven’t been played with for ages.  L, N and I sorted toys that were safe for F to explore, into the colours of the rainbow, and arranged them in an empty drawer.

I tried to give her a range of textures, noisy toys and shapes to investigate.  Some of the things we included were:

duplo blocks

large wooden numbers

pieces of fabric

an unused toothbrush

Rattles

toy cars

a bottle of coloured water

coloured paper

a hair scrunchie

wooden blocks

We also put together some rainbow discovery bottles.  The beauty of this was allowing F to investigate some of the forbidden objects that fascinate her, in a safe way – hairbands, pipecleaners, pens, paperclips, beads, coloured rice… At first I found it hard to decide whether to group things by type (ie. a bottle of rainbow rice, a bottle of multicoloured pipecleaners etc) or to group them by colour.  I decided on the latter when a friend pointed out that we could then use them for single colour learning.  Another friend suggested a final bottle with an object of each colour, which I plan to do once we’ve emptied another plastic bottle!

I was concerned that including a variety of objects in each bottle would be overwhelming and prevent F from focusing and investigating them fully, so I limited the number of things in each one, and tried to make the bottles different in terms of the sounds they made and the kinds of objects they contained.  There really are infinite ways of doing this and all of them good!

We ended up with:

• Red pipecleaners cut to different lengths
• Orange dyed pasta shapes
• Yellow pom poms and pieces of drinking straw
• Green bay leaves and dyed rice
• Blue tissue paper and microbeads
• Indigo pens, pencils, crayons and shiny fake gems
• Violet beads and hairbands, plus a purple necklace of mine.

F has had great fun rolling these along the floor, shaking them, banging them…I wondered if shie might be frustrated by not being able to empty the bottles but so far she hasn’t tried (the lids are stuck down with strong glue).

We also had rainbow handprinting (I picked up the rainbow handprint sponge from The Works).

 

…and F received some fantastic rainbow presents, including Melissa and Doug Rainbow Sound Blocks, a large colourful activity cube, and musical instruments including a rainbow xylophone.

Our present to F was a sand and water table, which will never be limited to sand and water – for the birthday, we filled it with strips of coloured paper, rainbow dyed rice krispies (an alternative to rainbow rice that’s safe if eaten), and shaving foam which we later added food colouring to for marble painting.

We finished up with a rainbow layer cake.  This was actually easy if time consuming, although no more so than other birthday cakes we’ve had.  It just involved making a huge quantity of sponge mix, dividing it into separate bowls, and dyeing each a different colour using gel food colouring.  The gel gives a beautiful vivid colour with only a few drops, whereas liquid would be likely to ruin the cake batter as you’d need so much colouring.  The layers are then sandwiched together with buttercream.  We covered ours in fondant too, as no matter how much buttercream you make, it will never be enough for this cake!

The bonus of using gel colour is that  the gel can be used to dye fondant really smoothly.  Here is our take on the rainbow layer cake:

We served the cake with a rainbow fruit platter (easier and more toddler-friendly than skewers):

And here is the birthday girl, enjoying her day:

Favourite Christmas Crafts

Sometimes oldies are goodies – and popular crafts are popular for a reason, because they are (almost) universally enjoyed and benefit children in all kinds of ways.  They are also about passing on traditions.  There is something magical about making Christmas decorations in the same way that children have for centuries, and realising how much children love this stuff even in this electronic age.

The past few weeks we have had fun with some traditional crafts:

1. Salt Dough Ornaments

We made our salt dough using the basic ratio of half:half:whole water:salt:flour.  L and N loved mixing it and kneading it (L developed a really good technique).  There are so many merits in this – motor skills, maths (measuring, ratios, quantities) science (the properties of the material, how it dries and hardens), and it is fantastic sensory play.  We didn’t colour our salt dough because we planned to paint it, but there are so many variations – adding cocoa, coffee grounds, food colouring, sand, cornflour, spices etc etc to make this a multisensory activity and create different effects.

I gave L and N a rolling pin and some Christmas cutters, and let them get on with cutting out their shapes.  They couldn’t wait to show me.  N was really surprised when we put them in the oven and they hardened, and was quite excited about the idea that we could keep them and not squish them away like play dough.

They were very busy and had a great time.  L was really proficient at making perfect shapes, N found it difficult to pick them up without squashing them so this was a lovely way for her to practise.

We also made the three children’s initials out of salt dough, using alphabet play dough mats from Twinkl resources.

I gave them glittery paint and let them paint the ornaments any way they wanted – sometimes less is not more, and they were very, very glittery since L and N wanted to add even more glitter on top of the sparkly paint – but why not?  They really enjoy the freedom of being able to decorate in any way they like, enjoying the process rather than the finished product.  And as it happens the finished products were great:

2. Painted pine cones

Easy peasy – we spray painted ours with gold and silver paint – for some reason N is still talking about this oh-so-simple activity from last year and so we have done it again.  We have hung them on the Christmas tree, made garlands by stringing them onto thread (I did this with a sharp needle), used them to make a table centrepiece with a candle in the middle, and strewn them around the fireplace.

It is also fun to paint them with paintbrushes and poster paint – great sensory play and motor skill development as well as experimenting with different materials to paint onto – we have done this before and plan to do it again this week.  In a few Christmases time I think the house will be very full of pine cones!

3. Toilet Roll crackers

Very easy, again.  We wrapped a toilet roll in a sheet of coloured felt (an A4 sheet seems to be exactly the right size) and tied with pipecleaners to form a cracker shape.  I then let L and N go bonkers with glitter and sequins to make some very sparkly crackers, some of which are on our tree and the rest decorating their bedrooms.

To make real crackers (which we haven’t done yet because L hates the noise they make), I believe you would need a paper perforating tool (available from craft shops) to perforate halfway along the toilet roll to allow the cracker to split in two when pulled.  You would also need cracker snaps to put inside (as I write this I am having an idea that we could make silent crackers by omitting the snaps) – you would also need to use a decent quality wrapping paper instead of felt to cover the cracker.  And obviously something to put inside it!

Here we are decorating our Christmas tree with crackers and painted pine cones.  I am quite proud of the fact that everything on our tree is home made (OK, except the lights!).

4. Paper snowflakes

Again, no prizes for originality, but plenty of traditional Christmas fun and learning.  I was impressed that both L and N could make these independently, as long as L cut the paper into a square shape for N, and after a few trial and error attempts where they cut all the edges away so that nothing held the snowflake together.  Quite a lot of mathematical thought, understanding of shape and symmetry and co-ordination as well as sequencing, goes into the folding of the paper diagonally again and again to make a small triangle, and cutting skills were perfected in cutting the shapes out.  And they were so impressed with their own work when they unfolded the snowflake and saw what they had made.  And F enjoyed playing with the pieces of paper that had been discarded.  L and N decorated their snowflakes with glitter and sequins, just because they love them!

They made loads of these, with minimal prompts and reminders about the technique.  the great thing about this craft is that pretty much whatever they do looks great!

5. Felt Hearts

These hang on the Christmas tree, and are a particular favourite of mine.  We cut out two heart shaped pieces of felt and let L and N decorate with fabric pens and glitter glue.  I then stuffed them with upholstery wadding and sewed them together.

It would be easy to punch holes around the edge and let the children sew their own.  For older children, cross stitch designs could be incorporated.

All of these crafts are things that L and N remember from last year, which is a long time in their little lives, and have asked to do again this Christmas – I think they will be repeated year after year, some can be given away as presents, but I think our house will still be very full of these things.  This is only really the second year of Christmas crafting for us, and it is already lovely to see the difference in the way they approach these crafts, and to look at last year’s nostalgically – imagine how lovely it will be to have a decade of paper chains and felt offerings sewn by little fingers!

Making Fake Snow (or superabsorbent polymers!)

L, aged five, believes that Christmas has to have snow.  So our Christmas playtimes had to have some snow.  There are so many ways of doing this – rice, salt, sugar, cotton wool, flour – all make great sensory snow-themed play materials, but today I believe we found the very best fake snow.

My plan originally was to buy some Insta-Snow powder and have a full on snowy play session, probably outside.  We will still do this outside, with hats and scarves and all of what L expects from snow – but I couldn’t wait to order some, and whilst googling to  find out what it contained and how it works (anticipating L’s inevitable barrage of questions), I discovered the hidden science lesson about superabsorbent polymers.  Snow powder is also known as sodium polyacrylate, I discovered, and one of its most common uses is in babies nappies – to act as the absorbent part.  So we already have plenty of sodium polyacrylate in our house without even knowing it!  How excited was I to make this discovery, and couldn’t wait to dissect a nappy (yes, I really am that excitable!).

As it happens, we had a pack of cheap supermarket nappies that we are no longer using, basically because we may as well not bother putting a nappy on F.  Perfect for dissection!  So we cut open a couple of nappies and pulled out the absorbent fluff.

I gave the absorbent part of one nappy each to L and N in a bowl, let them feel it, describe it, and think ab out what might happen when water was added.  They both thought it would go soggy, like cotton wool or kitchen paper might.  L described it as “fluffy”, N as “crunchy” and “crispy”.  Here they are, investigating:

Once they had played with it, pulled it apart, squished it and generally had a good time, we added some water.  For L, I asked him to measure the water in a jug and find out how much liquid the nappy would hold (we will one day compare different nappy brands).  He was good at this and found that the one nappy held 1,800ml of water before it stopped soaking up the liquid (and still not absorbent enough for F – how much does my baby wee??!).  N wanted to measure hers, so although I hadn’t intended to do this with her she measured it in cupfuls of water, and counted five.

This is the good bit.  Adding the water produced the nearest thing to snow that I could manage without actually taking them to Lapland.  And more of it than I would ever have thought – we ended up with two large bowlfuls just from the two disposable nappies.  I can’t wait to do this on a bigger scale (we have a whole pack of these nappies just waiting for this day!).  The material it produces is crystalline, it is cold, it is mouldable, and slightly crunchy.  It doesn;t compact quite as much as real snow but it is pretty darn good.  And I (I mean, the children) loved playing with it.

Our “snow”

the children quickly discovered they could mould it, and had fun making handprints, thumbprints, ice cream cones, snowballs – and we even made a snowman!

He had a pasta nose, bead eyes and the lid of a spray paint canister for a hat.  L made him two large feet!  Snowmen went on for quite a while, and it was great fun.  We kept our crystals to find out what happens to them overnight.  I genuinely don’t know, so it will be as much of a surprise for me as the children!

 

 

 

 

Multi-Sensory Christmas Cloud Dough

Getting us in the mood to begin our Christmas crafting (even though to me it feels early to be starting, I know that the time from here to Christmas will fly) – I decided to spice up our cloud dough with a Christmas theme.

This is the second time we have played with cloud dough (you can read about the first here) and this cloud dough had kept beautifully for several weeks, in a sealed tupperware container.  The basic cloud dough recipe is 8 parts flour to one part oil – we used baby oil.  It looks like sand but the texture is silky, lovely and a bit addictive!

We added some Christmassy spices – cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves, to scent the cloud dough – it smelt amazing! We also added red and green glitter, and some little Christmas ornaments.

We threw in some Christmas baking moulds and cookie cutters, plus spoons for digging and scooping.  L and N couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

 

They filled the moulds and N decorated her Christmas tree with tiny ornaments.

They both enjoyed exploring and feeling the texture of the cloud dough, crumbling it and squidging it, discovering how it moulds.

Then decided to hunt for buried treasure, digging for the little ornaments.

Baby F did have a feel of the cloud dough, but I soon retired her to a box of christmas ornaments on the floor so that I could get on with dinner (one of the best things about L and N no longer being toddlers is that they don’t need that constant and direct supervision).  F enjoyed watching them play and exploring some shiny baubles (she seemed surprised when they rolled away!), along with a felt Christmas stocking, and our winter themed discovery bottle.

This kept F entertained for quite a while (I suspect my life will get a bit more difficult when she is no longer happy not to join in L and N’s activity).

L asked if he could have some baubles to play with.  I was just about to say “no, you’ve got plenty there”, when I corrected myself and said “yes, of course” – and was glad I did because he used them in a really inventive way, to make imprints in the cloud dough that acted as “moon craters”.  A lesson for me – say yes unless there is a good reason not to, you might thwart their creativity without knowing it!

I also used this opportunity to remind them to practise co-operation, with the promise of a leaf on our kind hands tree for playing nicely together.  I reminded them of the phrases they have practised using –

• “Please can I have it after you?”
• “Please could you help me?”
• “Have you finished with that?”
• “I was using that”
• “Please don’t do that”

Having been reminded of this before starting, and emphasising how special the activity is seems to work, I tried hard to notice and praise them every time I heard them co-operating and using their phrases.  This is one of the reasons I am pleased with the location of the craft area right outside the kitchen, which was more by accident than design, being improvised in the lobby of our little house.

They did play reasonably happily with a couple of reminders!

 

 

 

 

Our Advent Calendar

So…doing the rounds of the blogosphere are wonderful ideas for celebrating Advent / preparing for Christmas.  As a teenager I babysat for a family who had the most wonderful home-made Advent calendar, fabric with pockets containing little gifts for each day of advent.  Last year I decided to do something similar for L and N (F was just a little bump and a wiggle back then) – I love the idea of having a special family calendar that comes out every year, that the children will really remember.

But what to put in the pockets?  Brilliant ideas I have come across include:

* A part of the nativity story

* A verse from the bible to discuss together

* A traditional Christmas story

* A piece of a Christmas jigsaw, so you build the jigsaw togetherthroughout Advent and finish it on Christmas Eve.

(Apologies that I don’t know where these ideas came from so I can’t link back; they are just ideas I gathered when deciding what to make).

Here is what I decided on for our family:

The background is a red tablecloth.  the tree and pockets, along with the numbers are felt, firsdt stuck with wonderweb and then sewn around using blanket stitch for decoration.

Inside each pocket is a miniature bauble to hang on the tree, so we decorate the tree throughout Advent.

This year, I plan to put a sentence describing part of the Nativity in each pocket, so that L and N can draw a picture to go with it – so as Advent progresses we end up with a telling of the Nativity in picture around our living room.  We will post pictures when it happens!

Co-operative Artwork

This was another activity aimed to help L and N practise co-operation.  It was also designed to get them to play constructively together as a change from the boisterous play that can get on my nerves need to be defused sometimes.

I set this up as an “Invitation to Play”, inspired again by The Imagination Tree – here is my take on “invitation to co-operate”:

Invitation to co-operate (and create firework art)

This took approximately two minutes to set up, with odds and ends from the craft stash, the important feature being that there is one of everything – one pair of scissors, one glue stick, one try of materials – including such coveted items as one glitter shaker, one pot of PVA glue, one paintbrush, one pot of sequins.

Obviously, this was a gamble that could have gone horribly wrong, since this could easily double as “invitation to come to blows” – but it didn’t.  Seeing as carefully laying out two of everything doesn’t seem to prevent arguments, and my two are definitely capable of fighting over one of two identical items, it seems that the only solution is more activities like this.  I’m inspired by its success!

I told L and N that this was a really special activity, which they were going to work together on, and work out how to share the materials, and ask each other for help rather than me.  And they actually did!

I promise this is not a set-up!  Maybe it was the novelty, but with the occasional prompt, they asked each other “please can I have it after you?”, they passed each other things they have previously been prepared to fight to the death over, L helped N to cut things out when she asked him to.

My favourite thing was that they talked to each other directly instead of using me as a go-between, and solved their own problems together.  this is teaching them resourcefulness, co-operation, self-reliance, negotiation skills – and I like it very  much.  Now to devise some more exercises like this, figure out why it worked so well, and incorporate it into everyday play!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonfire Night Sensory Bath

It’s been a while since our first sensory bath, but the children do often ask for colour in the bath, and for an extra special treat, bath paints.  A bonus side effect is that both L and N know colour mixing really well!

F has graduated to the big girl’s bath seat, in which she has been able to join in more fully, and she enjoyed her first proper sensory bath (a red + yellow = orange Autumn Leaf theme) very much.  This is a brilliant way of letting her have water play without the mess, and solves the problem of her not being able to reach into a deep enough container to water play in the kitchen)

L and N have enjoyed experimenting with pipettes, and once they had mastered using them properly they found a whole new way to play with them, experimenting with the vaccuum they could create – the effects were quite disturbing!

– But I still think it is brilliant watching the unexpected ways they use these toys, and the things they can discover for themselves.

Back to today’s bath, in which we did something slightly different…

For Bonfire Night, we added glow sticks to our bath and turned out the lights!  It was great fun.  The children still wanted coloured water even though we couldn’t see it, so we went for orange bonfire coloured water (in the pictures with the flash, it looks green, I promise it was orange!).

Nobody was scared, everybody loved it, even tiny little F, who happily waved a glowstick around and watched her brother and sister’s antics.

L and N first played sparklers, watching the way the light moved when they waved their glowsticks slowly, then quickly – “it looks like there’s two, mummy!”

They then made rainbows:

and lanterns of various colours, involving some colour sorting and counting

They then played a number game for ages, sharing different numbers of glow sticks equally between two, then between three.  But aside from this obvious learning, they were very happy just watching the glowsticks in the water.  Again, it struck me how little children need to play and learn – I’d worried that this bath needed more elements to it, but it didn’t – a few pound shop glow sticks in the dark was all the fun they needed, and all they needed to spark their own imaginations.

Once F was getting dry (picture included due to extreme cuteness)…

… L and N got more technical, and made fireworks with Daddy, which dangled and spun.  F really enjoyed playing with these in the dark bedroom too!

We kept our glow sticks in the freezer to test something I read about them keeping longer that way.  We will let you know (as we might well repeat this bath again tomorrow!)

Firework Science

1. Firework Art in a Cup of Milk  (or indeed a plate of milk)

This is how L and I used our special time together this morning.  He is fascinated by magic tricks at the moment and I thought it would be fun to investigate some of the sciencey “magic” out there, since it would appeal to him on all levels.  This was the first one I came across that I didn’t think I’d need to practise on my own beforehand, and I also thought it would tie in nicely with bonfire night coming up.

To make our firework art, we poured milk on a plate and added drops of food colouring around the edges.

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We used the three primary colours as I wanted to reinforce our colour mixing activities for L, although we didn’t actually talk about it, I just let him observe what happened.

First, we touched a clean toothpick to the centre of the dish, to prove nothing happened.  We then used the “magic potion” (we both knew the secret we were not going to tell Daddy and N – the potion was washing up liquid).   The magic began immediately as the colours started to move and mix…

And our magic fireworks appeared in the milk!

This was actually really cool – the soap separates the fat from the water in the milk (to get technical, one end of the soap molecule attaches to the water molecules whilst repelling the fat), causing the whole thing to ripple and the colours to merge.  It really did look like exploding fireworks.  There was no need to touch it once the process had started, but having watched the effect, L had fun “drawing” with the soap-coated toothpick and experimenting to get different effects.

We did this twice, and found that gel colouring worked better than liquid food colouring.  And L’s art work left a beautiful residue on the plate.  A lovely idea would be to take an imprint of this with blotting paper to make a firework picture that can be kept.

2.Fireworks in a Jar

Our next experiment wassimilar to the BFG Dream Jars we made for Roald Dahl Day in September – with a slight difference in that this time we called them fireworks in a jar, and that we kept it simpler (didn’t add salt, and only made one jar to observe in detail) focused more on the scientific explanation.

Two Eager Scientists (and a jar of water)

This time we just made one jar of fireworks.  We filled a large jar with water, about 3/4 full.  We then added some drops of food colouring in several different colours to some cooking oil.  We took turns to mix it up (the taking turns part was very important to our scientists):

 

We added the oil and colouring mixture to the water, and watched…

We saw that the oil and colouring sat on top of the water

Followed by a “firework display” in the jar, as globules of colour began to sink out of the oil and through the water.

Both L and N could predict what would happen (I was pleased that the dream jars had stuck in their minds, even N’s three year old mind) but were still delighted with the fireworks!

3. Defying Gravity

This has precisely nothing to do with Bonfire Night, but is linked to our science magic.  L and I defied gravity by turning a glass of water upside down without spilling it:

There is huge debate on the internet as to how this trick works – google if you’re interested! – but my understanding is that the atmospheric pressure is equal to the downward pressure of the water on the piece of card.

We discovered that breaking the seal (letting air in) caused the card and the water to fall, but we didn’t experiment any further.  When he is a bit bigger and less scared we might play with different sizes of glass, different strengths of card, different levels of water.  For now, I’m still impressed, and I still think this is magic!

 

 

First Day at School

..Well, not really, seeing as L has been in the Nursery class at school for a year already.  But starting reception year still feels like a milestone, and everyone else seems to think this is his first day at school, so I wondered how we could make it special.

It occurred to me to make a special breakfast, but seeing as it takes us all our time to get everyone ready and out of the door in time for school, I decided we would celebrate when he came home.

N and I made a dinosaur cake, loosely related to our zoo activities in that leo has been dinosaur crazy since he saw the dinosaur exhibition at the zoo.  here it is:

Not professional looking at all, but we had fun making it, N enjoyed mixing and rolling out fondant, and adding the spots.  F played with a bit of squishy fondant icing and looked on from her bouncy chair.

A quick google search of “Back to School Traditions” the previous week had introduced me to the German Schultute, which caught my imagination as a memorable idea – traditionally filled with sweets and school supplies, we filled ours with toy dinosaurs, an audio book, a Roald Dahl magic set plus some pens and notebooks for Big Boys’ writing.  He was thrilled, and here it is:

I toyed with the idea of making N a “geschwistertute” – a smaller cone for siblings, but decided against it since this was L’s day and I wanted to accentuate the positives of going to school all day, and N will be getting a lot of my time and attention during the day.  I am also trying to introduce the concept that everyone gets treats but they aren’t necessarily identical.  I think it will do their self esteem good to understand that gifts are tailored to them as a person, and for the older two children to be treated and valued as individuals and not as a unit (I hope!).  There wasn’t much Schultute-envy and being involved in the process was all N needed to get excited about giving her brother his present – she could hardly wait for him to get home from school!