Holiday Collage

Whenever we go for a walk, we help Poppet pick up 'special' things to take home; things like leaves and shells and flowers (and we ditch the 'treasures' that she hands us that aren't so special, mainly a lot of twigs).

Our local library is running a competition over the summer, asking children to create a collage on the theme of 'A Year Of Natural Scotland'. We had been collecting bits and pieces from our travels and holidays this year, so for Poppet's entry she created a collage from them.

The wild flowers were picked by Poppet and her Grandma on the last evening of our holiday at their island home. The weather was not great for our week's holiday there but on that last evening the sun came out and we had a lovely after dinner walk. My favourites are the orchids and cotton grass. Grandma pressed them for us and brought them to our house on her next visit. Poppet was also given the flower press so hopefully we can have a go at some flower pressing some time soon!

Our other collage bits included postcards from each of our Scottish holiday destinations, Poppet's ferry boarding card, some leaves, shells and wheat ears. We used the sturdy cardboard back to an old scrapbook as the base for the collage. I gave Poppet a pot of glue and a spreader and she was off!

She loved the gluing and was completely absorbed in the task in hand. She spent ages at this activity, covering the bits with glue and deciding where to put them. Some of the things didn't glue so well (the shells and big leaves) so I got out some glue dots and she loved using them. They gave her fine motor skills a really good workout! 

Once all the 'treasures' were glued on Poppet was still on a glueing roll and wasn't ready to stop, I had to take the collage away from her to cries of "little bit more!" as I didn't think the masterpiece would benefit greatly from the addition of some coloured foam shapes (it is a competition after all!).

She was pacified by the prospect of glueing shapes onto a ladybird picture (it has been given two star-shaped 'eyes').

The finished collage!

*Update* Poppet won her category and received a £10 book voucher as her prize!

A Yellow Day

Sometimes it's easier to think of activities to do if they are loosely based around a theme. I read that toddlers aged 29 months (Poppet's age) may be able to identify red and yellow when shown but will still have problems differentiating blue and green. How strange?! This is definitely true of her. Pink, black and white are the only colours that she definitely knows. Whenever we walk down the street she is forever trying to name the colours of the cars we pass but it is hit or miss! So I decided to focus on colour play for a little while. While at the library we picked up a few colour books that were displayed on the windowsill, how convenient!

We got the white, yellow and green books and are reading them to her every day until we take them back on Monday. This morning after we got back from the shops I thought I would expand on the yellow theme so got my washing basket out and encouraged Poppet to help me find lots of yellow things to take outside. I started off the first few things then she started gathering things too. I went into each room in the house, through all the kitchen drawers, in her wardrobe, asking her each time 'Is there anything yellow in here?' Interestingly sometimes she disqualified a lemon yellow item from the basket - to her 'yellow' is only bright, vibrant yellow.

Once we had amassed quite a collection I laid out our big (conveniently) yellow blanket and put all the things we had found on it - various yellow toys, a dress, a table runner, cups, a lemon squeezer, a stork tub, a scarf, a striped yellow rug, a chair, a cushion, a yellow straw, rubber gloves and other bits. Poppet was going a bit 'yellow' crazy by this point, excitedly shouting 'yellow' at anything she saw - 'yellow slide!'.

Lady in yellow

Poppet immediately wanted to put on the yellow dress and used the table runner as a shawl. A vision in yellow. Little just loved exploring all of the objects in their new setting.

Lunchtime came and if I had been clever and organised I might have produced a yellow themed picnic but I am neither of these things. I searched my kitchen but a brown banana and two yellow tomatoes do not a yellow picnic make. 

The banana became a milkshake,  and the cheese on crackers was kind of yellow.............

Poppet found the yellow cup and yellow straw to drink her banana milkshake with

Little enjoying her lunch

Poppet even went exploring in the garden to find a yellow flower and brought it to me.

We made towers out of all our yellow objects until it was naptime. Then while Poppet was sleeping I found lots of yellow crafty bits - foam shapes, feathers, tissue paper, card, felt, and pens and crayons. I glued a piece of yellow card and a wallpaper sample (my favourite wallpaper ever incidentally, Saplings by Miss Print) to an A2 sheet of paper as a background. Then put it all on her desk along with some glue as an invitation to play.

She COVERED it in glue as is her style and had fun creating a beautiful yellow collage.

When she declared it was "all done" I added an extra piece of paper with 'yellow' written on it, hopefully with this up on our wall it will help to cement her 'yellow' recognition and she'll remember our fun, yellow day!