Hand and Foot Painting

We tried out our Tuff Spot outdoors for some hand and foot painting the other day. Once again Poppet needed some encouragement to get messy! I gave her paper plates with paint on, toilet roll tubes and cones for printing with, and white sheets of paper weighted down with stones.

She isn't very smiley doing this kind of thing, takes it very seriously. She had a go at it but wasn't overly enthusiastic!

The highlight was, I think, getting to clean up afterwards! Although she did manage to put her slippers back on and cuddle Little before I brought the basin of water out.

Poppet doing what she loves best, washing.

Spaghetti Messy Play

This was our first ever messy play activity in our Tuff Spot. I first read about Tuff spots over on Edspire and was inspired to get one as part of the messy play legacy of Matilda Mae, a beautiful 9 month old little girl who was taken from her family too soon. Hopefully it will encourage us to engage in more messy play and make lovely messy memories.

They are great for messy play activities indoors and outdoors, making cleaning up a lot easier!  I cooked up a batch of cheap spaghetti, dyed it green and put it on the tray along with a selection of things - a yoghurt bucket, tongs, dustpan, knife, doctor's scissors things, a car, horse and mini wok.

Now I should probably mention that Poppet is not the biggest fan of getting messy! Even as a baby she didn't like her feet in grass or sand, and hates having 'dirty' hands. She was quite cautious when faced with the pile of spaghetti but was definitely curious..... Anyway I left the room for a second and when I came back Little had a pile of spaghetti on her head that I am pretty sure she didn't put there by herself so Poppet must have overcome her fear.

Little displays none of her older sister's mess aversion and got stuck in. Everything goes into her mouth at the moment. Poppet was really concerned about this, shouting "don't eat it it's dirty!" at her.

Poppet preferred using the utensils to pick the spaghetti up, and fill the bucket with. She really hated it if any spaghetti got stuck to her feet and wanted it taken off immediately. We talked about what it felt like and decided it was 'cold' and 'very sticky' and 'not nice'. Fair enough!

She finished up by making dishes and plates of spaghetti pizza and spaghetti pie and spaghetti cake.

Poppet: 2yrs 4mos

Little 7 mos

Playdough Spiders

Poppet has a thing for spiders just now. She is constantly pointing out "inchy spiders!" to me which gives me a little panic until I discover it is actually a fly she can see. Then there was the incident with the massive spider we discovered in the bathroom that I bravely captured. I set it down in a plastic tub at the top of the stairs, ready to set free outside once we were dressed. I was busy dressing Little, then came out of my bedroom to be greeted by an empty tub and a gleeful Poppet, proudly informing me that "Inchy Spider" was in her bedroom now. He never was found. So with her love of spiders in mind I set out an invitation to play with playdough spiders. There was playdough, goggly eyes and pipe cleaners, plus one spider that I made earlier.

She started off by getting the spider to crawl all over her little sister.

Of course all this had to be done while 'Inchy Winchy Spider' was playing in the background on a loop. That wasn't annoying at all.

She starting trying to make a spider of her own. Apparently this was mummy spider. We talked about how many legs spiders have. She still counts "1,2,3,4,9"! We also then had to make a daddy spider.

We made a water spout from some toilet tubes secured with playdough. The spiders each had a turn dutifully climbing up then being washed out in time with the song. She had a great time.

Poppet: 2yrs 4 mos
Little: 7 mos

Water Bottle Skittles

We got caught in a hail shower on our way home from toddler group yesterday, but after lunch the sun made an appearance and it was a lovely day again so Poppet and I played some garden games while Little slept.

We brought out a basket full of all the balls that we own and a collection of plastic bottles from the recycling to play skittles with. Our garden has a long sloping path down it and Poppet has always like throwing balls down it.

We filled the bottles up with water from the outside tap and using the watering can and funnel. This in itself was a game for her!

We then put them at the bottom of the path and Poppet starting flinging balls at them. It was too easy with the footballs, every throw was on target. But she found it harder with the smaller lighter balls. So she preferred to stick to the footballs! Every hit was met with an excited scream and shouting for mummy to "pick up the bottle!".

This was repeated many times. Bottles refilled. Repeated many times again. Felt slightly guilty about the waste of water but this was quickly outweighed by toddler laughter. Also this is Scotland we have no shortage!

We rolled the balls down the slide as well.

When we were all skittled out I told her to use the leftover water to water her garden, so she gave her sweetcorn plants a wee water.

Then the heavens opened up again and we made a dash to the greenhouse for shelter. The hailstones sounded pretty loud in there. This is her amazed face!

Toddler's Greenhouse Area

I love my greenhouse, I potter around in it nearly every day and Poppet loves to join me and help. Today their daddy made a wee area that she could claim as her own - this is what he came up with, I absolutely love it!

At the end of the greenhouse he put up a lower level bench and secured it, and then I collected all her gardening bits and bobs to lay out. I gave her a modular seed tray, her trowel and fork, her gardening gloves, pea and pumpkin seed packets, watering cans, plant pots, toilet rolls, egg and yoghurt cartons, and some sweetcorn and fuchsia plants. I also put a bucket of compost on the floor next to her bench.

Her Papa took her down to see it when she woke up from her nap, and I think she adores this area almost as much as I do! I envisage many hours are going to be spent here this summer and I'm so happy she can share a hobby with me. This afternoon she planted up some pea and pumpkin seeds in her little tray with some help from Papa, and watered them about 5 times. She was very happy!

In the Night Garden Melon Boat

I really would not recommend that you get carried away with yourself and decide to lovingly create an In the Night Garden themed boat out of a melon to present your toddler's yoghurt in. And especially do not, together with your other half, sing the theme tune to 'In the Night Garden' as you place the plate in front of the awestruck toddler. It only results in a lot of tears as aforementioned toddler refuses to actually eat any of the yoghurt as they are too mesmerised by the whole spectacle. Lesson learnt. Back to the good old bowl from now on.

Who said that second borns are treated any differently?

Foot Spa Water Play

In this house, any kind of water play is always going to be a winner. I decided to use this to my advantage to squeeze in a sneaky foot soak this afternoon. All this sandal wearing weather recently has highlighted the sad state of my feet and I have a lovely pot of peppermint, tea tree and rosemary Epsom foot soak that has been calling out to me. We're all a bit under the weather with colds so could do with a bit of pampering!

We already had lots of towels down as Little has a nappy rash so is getting lots of no nappy time. I gave the two of them their own bowl of warm water and a few foot spa type things to play with - toe separators, a nail brush and nail shiner (brand new ones!).

This was the first time Little had experienced water play, but being as she is such a big fan of the bath I knew she would love it. She would have crawled into it if she could.

 

Poppet started off using the toe separators as a comb for Little, proudly exclaiming how pretty she looked afterwards! 

She also wanted to copy mama and brought her little chair over so she could sit with her feet in the water. She then decided the toe separators were cleaning implements and set about washing her chair legs.....

And finally dolly got in on the act and had a foot soak too

While all this distracting water play was going on I had a chance to sit with my feet in a nice hot tub of lovely smelling water. All the wet towels and children were worth it!