Sensory ice cubes!!

These were a lot of fun! I filled the bottom of an ice cube tray with lots off different things like glitter, coloured sand, pipe cleaner bits, pom poms, food colouring etc then added water on top and put them in the freezer! the result was hours of play for joshua watching them defrost and feeling how cold they were and the delights they released!

Much fun had by all!!

lots of love
Ellie x

Joshua's leaving do

Cant believe we only have 7 days left here until we move! We have been very busy indeed and have had several leaving do's. Saying goodbye is so hard!!!!
anyway thought I would share some of the fun we have had!
Last friday I held an Eric Carle's  'very hungry caterpillar' party, here are some of the pics! :

 I had all the fruits and laminated cards labelling each day!

On saturday he ate through one slice of salami, and one piece of swiss cheese

 On saturday he ate one piece of chocolate cake and one cupcake!
On sunday he ate one nice big green leaf!

 I was quite proud of my little caterpillar!!! eyes made from cheese and spinach!!

 the guests all left with a little leaf and caterpillar dusplaying our new address!

 On thursday he ate through 4 strawberries, On friday he ate through 5 oranges!

 On monday he ate through one apple, on tuesday he ate through two pears and on wednesday he ate through 3 plums!

On saturday he ate one piece of watermelon!

I had a lot of fun doing this and hope all the guests enjoyed it as much as I did!!!

Lots of love
Ellie x

Water Beads!

I had to buy some of these!!! everyone has been talking about them on the blogs I have been reading and they are awesome!!! they feel really soft and cold and Joshua played with them for ages! they also bounce!! I picked up a jar from the pound shop. They seem fine so far although Joshua has broken a few of them!

Highly recommend them for sensory Play!!

lots of love
Ellie x

Autumn

As the leaves are just starting to fall off the trees I thought that this week would be a good place to start with the topic Autumn! Yesterday morning we went for a nature walk in our local woods to see what we could find to add to the 'Autumn tray' (a tray bought from Ikea that gets used for all sorts of things in our house, mostly as a sand pit!). Off we went armed with Daddy and a bucket. At first Joshua didn't quite get the idea of collecting things as he found it more fun to empty the bucket every time it had something in it, so we got Daddy to carry it and Joshua to help put things in it!
We managed to collect quite a few different bits and pieces and to stop it looking so bare I added some macaroni and some pumkin and sunflower seeds.

Here is our Autumn tray:

This activity needed a lot of supervision but Joshua loved picking up all the different things and shaking them, and throwing them! He learnt two new words. 'Conker' and 'Acorn' and he had fun trying to tip the tray upside down! I'm sure he got something out of it though!
I used some scavenger hunt pictures that I got off pinterest but I cant show them here as i cant remember which blog I got them from but you can find similar at: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2011/07/nature-scavenger-hunt.html
Obviously because Joshua is quite young the things we had on our hunt were slightly different. We had:
1. Conker
2. Acorn
3. Squirell
4. Bird
5. Butterfly
6. Feather
7. Tree
8. Leaf
and anything else we collected was a bonus!
I intend to make my own cards for this and laminate them so when I have done so I will post them on here.
We came home and looked through a book called 'In the Park, Baby's First Words'. It's by Parragon Books but I think its out of print as I couldn't find it on www.amazon.co.uk .
We also counted how many conkers we had and how many Acorns.

That's it for now, happy scavenging!!

Lots of love
Ellie x

sensory bottles

Phew it was hot today!!! it was so hot I had to stay inside during all of Joshua's nap, so I decided to make him some sensory bottles. I bought a few bottles of water today - I needed them! and emptied and washed them and then added a variety of things from my craft stash and my kitchen. I was quite pleased with the result as here they are : (not a great photo!!)

from left to right:
1. Water, oil and coloured sand (effects similar to a lava lamp)
2. density stack - from top to bottom Honey, golden syrup, washing up liquid, water, baby oil, vodka (you cant really see it here but the layers are very obvious
3. water with beads, glitter, coloured marbles, a feather, bits of pipe cleaner etc
4. Marbles and shampoo (this one is very cool!!)

Joshua had a lot of fun shaking them and turning them upside down!! I was very pleased that I made them!!! I know this has nothing to do with Autumn but we had fun anyway!!!

lots of love
Ellie x