The Potting Shed Playdough

My gardening bug has extended into playdough play. Behold, the worst playdough I have ever made. It was supposed to be 'soil' playdough, but I couldn't for the life of me make brown. I ended up with a khaki green colour and because of all the food colouring I added to try and make brown it was too watery so I had to add extra flour but then it was too crumbly. Not that the girls complained!

To the 'soil' playdough play I added some clean plant pots, lollipop sticks, glass beads, pea seeds and a pen. Poppet set about filling up the pots and putting the 'seeds' in and even labelling the sticks - she was giving me the finished pots and telling me who they were for - one was for daddy, one for her little sister and the others were for little friends she has made at playgroup. 

They've been playing with it for a few weeks now. It's dried out a bit and has quite a lot of peas and pen ink in it. Little was a bit too fond of putting the glass beads into her mouth so these have been taken away now to remove the temptation.

For a change I gave her the playdough with magnetic numbers and she really enjoyed pressing all of the numbers into the playdough and then carefully removing them all again and putting them back into the tub. Very methodical. When she was done she went into the cupboard to retrieve the much-loved glass beads and a cocktail umbrella and stuck them in too. She was concentrating so hard with her tongue poking out! Unfortunately after a while the glass beads went into the mouth again and had to be removed from the play. I'm amazed at how much use this terrible coloured and textured playdough has gotten! Hopefully the next batch will be a lot nicer.

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 20 mos

Vanilla Sponge Cake Playdough

Play dough ingredients

We have a proper kitchen again! It has been quite a while let me tell you. But all the upheaval has made us appreciate all the more our lovely fully-functioning kitchen and our lives have gotten about 100 times easier these past couple of weeks as our house turns back from building site to a home. The girls have especially delighted in their regained freedom and have been tearing the place up. Little had been growing so very frustrated at not being allowed to explore all those dangerous and interesting looking tools that were lying around and wanted to be wherever the action was. She has been like a different little girl since being allowed to explore her surroundings again. And Poppet was a case in point as to why too much TV is not good for little ones! The tantrums we had when we switched it off were quite spectacular. It took a couple of days for her to stop asking for us to put a DVD on but now she doesn't even ask and has even napped in the afternoon a few times which she hasn't done in a long time. She's been asking instead to do 'painting' or 'make a cake'- apparently it has been Little's birthday a lot.

So this week we have been in the kitchen baking lots as we (I!) have missed this particular activity. Vanilla sponge cakes are one of our favourites because they are so easy. On Friday Poppet asked for play dough so I thought we would try for some vanilla-scented cake mixture type play dough. To make it I added in some vanilla extract and a touch of yellow food colouring at the kneading stage. It made the most wonderful sweet smelling dough. Play dough is lovely and tactile when played with while still warm and the girls were very keen to get stuck in. Poppet was curious as to the scent "mum what that smell like?" I was looking around for some bits and bobs to add to the play dough play and Poppet was helping me - she went into a drawer and picked out some food picks and I got some candles and cake cases which are always popular with playdough play.  Poppet got some lovely new wooden play dough utensils for her birthday so we used them too.

Little loved sticking the food picks and candles into her playdough and trying to roll it out and stamp shapes into it. She just tries to copy anything she sees her big sister do. Poppet made imprints in hers and rolled them up to make 'sausages' which were then put into cake cases and allocated to family members according to size.

It was 20 whole minutes before the inevitable happened and Little ate a piece. Poppet alerted me to the fact, looking at her sister disdainfully but with a certain amount of admiration. She had swallowed it and everything by the time I got to her but really did not enjoy the taste (salty!) so I hope that she will have learnt her lesson. I was a bit worried about the salt content so gave her a cup of water and she certainly seemed really thirsty!  I have been trying to encourage her to smell playdough not eat it so she now does an exaggerated smelling action whenever she sees it.

Poppet: 3yrs 2mos

Little: 17 mos

Uncle Mike and his Cardboard Box Skills

Poppet, Little and Monkey in the car

Uncle Mike has previously demonstrated his prowess with a cardboard box, having pimped their cardboard box car with some duct tape, and adding a door and a steering wheel. Hours of fun!

His next feat was a cardboard box playhouse. We have lots of cardboard boxes just now as our new kitchen is being fitted (!). I was clearly floundering attempting to make a house out of them so Uncle Mike took a break from his kitchen fitting to do some playhouse building.

The girls were beyond excited with their house (as I think Poppet's facial expression clearly captures). Little spends her time going in, and out, and in again - she loves the door. Poppet asked "Tan you put a toilet in it?" which I laughed at at the time but later realised her request was a serious one when she had a wee accident in the house. Ooops!

Poppet going to sleep in her house

Poppet: 3 yrs

Little: 16 mos