Glittery Spiders

When we got up this morning it looked more like November than September with all the fog and fallen leaves. 

Fortunately it's not that cold yet. 

But there are spiders webs everywhere and the overnight dampness has shown them all up with glittery dew. They look magical! 

We made some this morning using big card circles punched with holes and then threaded colourful wool through. 

Brilliant skills for little fingers! 

To finish, we added some cheeky spiders and a flourish of glitter. Well, it's getting to that time of year and we all love a bit of glitter!

Valentine's Cards

Happy New Year!  I can't believe
it's almost February already, where did the last few months go?



Today I'm sharing some simple Valentine's cards we made yesterday.  'We' includes my 3 year old and 14 month old who also had great fun with this simple activity.


I bought these cards a while ago in one of these bargain stores for about 60p a pack....fabulous buy as they are so versatile and because they're so cheap you don't have to be precious about them!




I simply cut a large heart out of the front of each card and then peeled and stuck some sticky plastic paper - being a teacher I've had this in the cupboard for years, but I'm sure you can still buy it - onto the inside of the card so the sticky side is on the front.





Then I just cut up some little bits of tissue paper and let them go for it.  I was surprised at how my littlest one really went for it and totally enjoyed it.

Number one was keen to throw on some sequins too.  Fabulous!  And great when the light shines through from behind too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ice Cream Shop

Back in the warmer days of summer we turned our little play house into an ice cream shop and had some imaginative fun.

Twist some paper into cone shapes and tape together, then scrunch up some colourful tissue paper for the ice cream, add some coins and a menu and the shop's open!

Not only is this activity great for role play, it's also perfect for early counting skills.

Sweet Baby Bunting

I don't normally take orders to sew for people as I really don't have time - and there's always the worry that something goes wrong or they don't like the finished product.

However, now and again it can be fun, especially when it means making bunting as cute as this for tiny newborns.

It does take a little extra time than usual to personalise but it definitely makes it more special.

Sunshine Sparkle Playdough

Hello!  It's months since I wrote anything at all.  Life is certainly busy with two little ones.  I've been looking back at posts and really enjoying/remembering things I made or things we've done so I want to keep trying to post.

Today I'm posting some sun-shiny playdough that we made on a really dull, wet day back in the summer to cheer us up.

Add yellow food colouring to a basic playdough recipe and then lots of sparkly gold bits and pieces. 

It certainly cheered our day!

Natural Treasure Basket for Baby

Time for baby girl to start exploring a bit more. I can't believe it's around two years to the day since I posted a picture of a similar treasure basket. 

Treasure baskets are a wonderful way for babies to explore everyday objects that you have around your home. Sometimes they have a theme - the theme of this basket is natural materials. 
'The Little Book Of Treasure Baskets' has lots more ideas and tips for putting together baskets of your own.  

Remember - safety first!  Never leave your baby alone while playing with a treasure basket and only give them objects you feel are safe for them to explore.

More Numbers!

I wonder if you remember the numbers I made a while back for my little boy's room?  

Here they are....lovely colourful numbers from 0-10.  

They hang in his room but can be taken down if he wants to play with them.  

Here's the original post here and some learning ideas for what you can do with them.

This time I was making them for my little girl's room and although I was trying not to go all pink and girly, it's difficult not to!

I still made numbers from 0-10 in co-ordinating fabrics but changed the colours on the back to pale pink or cerise pink for odd and even numbers.  

Just a little extra and self checking activity for when she's at that stage.  Ok, I know that's many years off yet!

Water Bottle Fun

I came across a couple of water bottles I bought in the winter today which were perfect for spraying onto the spider's webs we found in the garden to show them up a bit more.  Water droplets (and frost) on a web look truly beautiful wouldn't you agree?

Some of the webs we found were the biggest I've ever seen. One measured the full size of one of the playhouse windows - spectacular!
Can you see it in the picture? 

My photography skills can't seem to get a better shot.

We went off on a spider web hunt, which led to a spider hunt and then on to a full blown minibeast hunt.

And to top it off we just ended up running around the garden having a water spray chase.  Love summer!

Dinosaur Play in the Garden

The sun has come out at last and I should think so too in June!

So we've been out in the garden today and made this little dinosaur world. 

We had some trees cut recently and I asked for the offcuts for playing with - they have so many uses!

Here they've been used as platforms for the dinosaurs to climb on and jump from.  

I added a piece of shimmery blue fabric I have as a river/lake and some green mesh for grass.

Set against a leafy background it makes for lots of dino fun...

...Roar!!!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Felt Story

Well, this has been a very long time in the making - about a whole year - which is crazy as it wasn't difficult or particularly time consuming to do.

However, throw in a pregnancy that left me absolutely exhausted, then a delicious new baby girl to go with my now three year old and it might help to explain.
  
She is now 7 months old and while I may be getting a little more sleep I still don't seem to manage any more free time to do much so it's a wonder I got this finished at all!

The all time classic story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is one of my favourites - who doesn't love it?  It's such a short and simple, but genius story with so many learning concepts thrown in.  

The illustrations are also a delight and if you're looking for some art lesson inspiration in the Eric Carle style I can recommend Deep Space Sparkle for some fabulous and colourful ideas.

Yes, as a teacher (and mummy) the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar is certainly irresistible! 

So, to the felt story pieces.  

I started this project with the caterpillar which has the most detail and took the longest time to make out of everything.  

I often cut things freehand from felt but for this I knew I had to draw a paper pattern first as there was so much 'movement' in him.  

The sections had to fit together in a way that made him look like he was actually wiggling along.  I managed this by drawing and cutting sections at lots of different angles and cut them in varying tones of green.  

If you do similar, I would recommend numbering the pieces before cutting them out as it made it much easier to piece them all back together again in the correct order and ensured a variety of tones when cutting the felt. 

He took a while to come together but sewing all the pieces onto one large piece of felt (and then cutting out when complete) definitely made the job much easier and also strengthened the back a bit.

The legs were added once the caterpillar had been cut from the backing felt. 

I took all the cut out bits on holiday last year and it was the perfect thing to do in the evenings (for as long as I could stay awake - remember I was pregnant!).  If I got a bit fed up of sewing green bits of caterpillar, I moved on to cutting out fruit.  



The fruit was easy and was done quite quickly.  I made paper patterns for all these bits too so they were roughly the same size, but I added leaves or stalks on some to make them look more individual. 

The food took a little longer and some of it I kept putting off.  I couldn't seem to get motivated to make the sausage but the lollipop and cheese was fun to do.  

Funny the little mind games you play with yourself!

The butterfly could be doing with a little more detail to bring him up to the same standard as the caterpillar so maybe I will go back and add some.  Have you spotted that he's upside down? It was too late by the time I realised so he's very individual!

a handy bag to store everything

To keep all the pieces together - there are 15 pieces of fruit, 10 pieces of food, the caterpillar and the butterfly so that's a lot to lose - I made a very simple little bag that does the job perfectly.  

all the pieces on a felt board

We've just used an existing felt board (a piece of board that I covered in felt) to play with the pieces and retell the story. 

colour matching

Apart from retelling the story, you can try some maths concepts such as counting the fruit, matching groups of fruit to numerals, sorting for colour, discuss before/after/next, first/second/third (ordinals) and talk about the days of the week.  

counting

There is also the opportunity to talk about healthy/favourite foods and even try simple recipes.  

You can see why us teachers enjoy using this story as a focus!


I've got some other classroom resources that I made and I'm happy to share once I can get my hands on them - they are in my classroom at the moment but I'm still on maternity leave.  They include counting cards and days of the week order cards.

Floral Cushion for Baby Room

I just finished this sweet cushion with pom pom trim and coordinating spotty fabric on the back for my baby girl's new room.





It goes well with a cosy blanket I made a couple of years ago which has been well used and much loved.


It's made mostly with Cath Kidston fabrics and backed in pale blue fleece which is super soft and cosy.  It's ideal as a play mat and washes and dries easily.
It also makes a lovely cuddle blanket on chilly days.

 The storage buckets can be made in a flash in all different sizes and are perfect for storing nappies, wipes, cotton wool or even toys.  If you want to make them I would advise using heavier weight cotton or if you choose lightweight then you'd be best to iron on or sew in some fabric stiffener so they stand up and aren't too floppy.
These have be super useful!

Little Speckled Frogs

My little one was given these fun plastic frogs with a goody bag at Easter so we just had to make a little pond for them to swim and jump in.

Water play is great fun and there are so many things you can add to it make it even more fun!

For this little scene we used our clear plastic tub and added some pebbles - a favourite of ours for play, some logs (we recently had some trees trimmed and asked for some logs), lilly pads cut from green foam with fabric daisies sitting on top, some water tinted blue with food colouring and of course the little frogs.

We sang the speckled frogs song but will need to get some more frogs to sing about 5 speckled frogs!

Here is the song if you don't know it....(this is the one we sing, there are many,
many versions)

5 little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs
Yum yum!
1 jumped into the pool
Where it was nice and cool
Then there were 4 speckled frogs
Glub glub!

Felt Circles Lampshade

I'm not the most adventurous when it comes to buying key items for my home.  I tend to stick to plain colours and that often means white.  Some may think that's a bit boring but it means it's always easy to change a few bits and pieces and update a look quite easily.

I was looking for a new lampshade and couldn't find much that I liked that didn't cost a fortune so opted for this large white one - yep, creature of habit!  Nothing wrong with it though....I like the shape and size and it does the job perfectly well.

But just to add a little bit of something to it I thought I would add some colourful felt circles.....random sizes and colours all stitched together in one big chain and then draped around the light shade. 
 

It's now hanging in our playroom and ties in well with the spotty pictures and colourful stripy rug. And the great thing is that if I get fed up with this, it's easy to change it again to something else.

Simple!

Cheep Cheep! Little Spring Chicks Shoe Box Farm

Shoe boxes are fabulous for turning into all sorts of things.  You might remember a while back I made this doll's house from a couple of shoe boxes?

Well this time we made a little farmyard scene with spring chicks and a little pond for them to swim in.  

Fabulous for imaginative play!

There's not a lot to it but we've had lots of fun.  You can easily make it in minutes by simply painting a mixture of PVA glue and water over the box, and layer on tissue paper.  

When it's dry just complete the scene with some chicks, fences and flowers.  

Simple, easy fun.