Dinovember

"What's going on?"

For the last week and a bit something strange has been going on at night.

"What's that?!"

We wake in the morning to find our dinosaurs have been up to mischief!

We were a bit late to the party with dinovember but as soon as I heard about it I knew we wanted to join in with the fun!

"It's a happy birthday!"

For those that are in the dark, dinovember was started by a mum and dad who wanted to encourage a sense of wonder and mystery in their children. You can read more about it here. I hope it creates some fun memories for the girls and sparks their imaginations a bit!

"Uh-oh. Dinosaurs made a mess mum"

The first couple of days Poppet was just mildly amused by the dinosaur's antics. But soon she started looking forward to seeing what they had got up to in the night, and gently cautioning them before she went to bed - "don't be naughty".

Me: Is that those naughty dinosaurs again?
Poppet: No, them nice mama

I think her favourite one was when the dinosaurs made fairy cakes! Dada was still telling them off for making a mess with the flour, but Poppet admonished him 'No dada you have to say thank you". And we had fairy cakes for breakfast, which she loved!

Dino Doctors!

Little's reaction was the same every day, she would just growl at them. 

"It's a fruit-stealing dinosaur convoy!" (not Poppet's actual words)

A detail shot

"Look, dinosaurs tidy up!"

"'They dettin married!"

"Mum come see!"

On Friday morning we got up and the dinosaurs were nowhere to be found! Poppet thought maybe they had gone to sleep. But as the sun came up she happened to be looking out the window at the building work and spotted some dinosaurs making an escape attempt!

"What dinosaurs doin?"

I loved how the girls would often elaborate on the dinosaur scene they found each morning and use it as a basis for their play; we had a day of wedding play 'I detting married mum", a day playing with the train set, a day playing with all their toy vehicles (and eating satsumas!), a teaparty that lasted an entire day.... it was lovely to see. Poppet was very keen to help me clean the bathroom after the dinosaurs had messed it up. She even started to try and do it by herself, and seemed almost disappointed in the dinosaurs' behaviour!

The dinosaurs in general have been getting lots of attention since we started; Poppet has been playing with them lots, even feeding them - they have really become her favourite toys of the minute! Which is good timing for us as we got her a beautiful dinosaur dress for Christmas from the amazing Sewing Circus. She will love it even more now!

So now Dinovember has come to an end, and I am a little bit glad because as fun as it was I was running out of dinosaur scenes! I don't know about Poppet's but my creativity and imagination was certainly exercised a bit these last couple of weeks!

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 2mos

Playing Cars

Poppet requested that we "make a car", so using some odds and ends from the garden and from our box of recycling, we managed it. When she first asked, I was thinking out loud to myself "How am I going to make a car?" and she heard and replied with "Don't worry mum!". Nice to know she has such faith in me!

I found an old key (at least I think it's old, I have no idea what it is for) and gave it to her. She loved this key, loved finding little holes to stick it into, carrying it about everywhere, losing it then frantically asking "where's my car keys?!" (I think she must have learnt that from her daddy!).

Lunch was a drive-through that day, she did not want to leave her car. I was told to come in quite a lot, first of all squeezed into the passenger seat, later on I was relagated to the back seat after monkey took my place.

The car had to be quickly dismantled during a sudden rainy spell, but the bare bones of it were left out and continued to be used as a car for a few days. Poppet took Little to the shops a few times, even opening the car door for her, entreating her to "get out", and then telling her she had to "hold hands, busy road".

They are really beginning to play together now!

Poppet:2yrs 7mos

Little: 10mos

Cafe Role Play!

 Poppet had spontaneously been imagining her kitchen as a Cafe for a few days, fruitlessly trying to order 'pizza' from Little, so I decided to set the area up as a mini Cafe. This role play scene has been providing some brilliant opportunities for learning through play in areas like language development and emergent writing skills, but more importantly it has been teaching her manners! When I visit her cafe I get ushered to a seat and then my seat pushed in for me! And there is a lot of "please", "thankyous", "there you go's, "bit hot" and "is that nice?" being scattered about in her speech.

Poppet helped me create some menu's for her little cafe (or tafee as she calls it). I have been trying to provide different opportunities for her emergent writing to flourish, for her to see writing has a purpose and that it conveys a message. I am starting to put together a writing set for her with things like old cheque books that I will blog about soon. So in any role play set ups that we do I will try and incorporate writing in some form. There are lots more ideas for encouraging children to write during play here. I asked her what foods we should include in our menu and her answers of 'pizza', 'milkshake' and 'cheese toasties' make her diet sound a lot worse than it is! She made her own little menu as well, making sure she wrote on each side of the piece of paper. I also made a 'Cafe' sign for the kitchen (Poppet wanted to make one too but Little got a hold of it).

Together we set up her desk like a table, dressing it with a tablecloth, a jam jar of flowers, a little basket of condiments, sugar bowl and milk jug and our menus.

Inside her kitchen playhouse corner I made a little 'till' area, using milk bottle tops with numbers written on them as our currency and her little laptop (a christmas gift I very much regret buying her now, it was a bad choice) as a till. High on my list of toys that I would like for the girls is a proper toy till, it would get so much use. 

The finished scene looked very inviting and I couldn't wait to get playing with it myself!

Poppet started off being the customer, so she watched me curiously as I sat her down at the table and pushed her seat in and gave her a menu. She made sure 'Bobo' also had a seat and a menu to peruse.

After that though her favourite thing was to be waitress, going back and forth from the table to the little kitchen, bringing you things you hadn't ordered, 'tidying up' (she's not a fan of mess) and doing the dishes. Bobo is a regular customer at the cafe and she is always very attentive. This is Bobo and I being treated to an egg dinner. In the background Poppet is putting the toast on.

At some point Poppet came to the conclusion that she needed to be wearing her apron for her cafe duties; this is her doing the dishes and restocking her ingredients cupboard.

It is lovely to be able to play with her in this way as it's the first time we have set up a role play scene. She is desperate for Little to be able to join in but unfortunately Little is more interested in trying to pull the tablecloth off the table and playing with the 'money'. Poppet tries so hard to involve her, asking her to 'make milkshake' and trying to get her to sit in the seat, it will be nice for her when Little is more of a playmate but I don't want to wish their lives away! One thing that didn't get much usage, from Poppet at least, was the money side of the cafe. I think she is too used to real money so the milk bottle lids didn't capture her imagination.

Poppet: 2 yrs 6mos

Little: 9 mos