Halloween Playdough

I think this may be the pinnacle of our playdough making! We made a batch of clove scented playdough using our usual recipe from The Imagination Tree, and then divided it into two balls. We coloured one orange (using red and yellow food colouring) and the other black and added some silver glitter as well. As usual I had to use a lot of food colouring. I have since read that some people use a squirt of a washable ready-made paint and that gives more vibrant colours so I think I will give that a try next time.

The smell of cloves was amazing (we just sprinkled ground cloves into the playdough mixture till it smelled right), very autumnal and warming. Perfect for playing with on crisp autumn days!

The resultant playdough, still warm and fresh from the bowl, enticed Poppet to play with it as soon as I put it out. It was really pliable and aromatic and I think she really liked having more than one colour to work with. 

I paired the playdough with a selection of our autumn treasures - acorns, sycamore seeds, pinecones, and leaves - and also put out a little bowl of whole cloves and some playdough utensils.

She used the lumps of playdough to stand up the twigs in to make little trees, so I showed her how to use balls of playdough to make the tree bigger and taller, adding in more branches. She really likes using the 'knife' and happily cut away at the playdough for ages (although insisted on using the knife upside down).

She experimented with making imprints in the playdough with the acorns and cones and seeing the shapes that they left behind. She was calling the acorn's cupules 'hats' and liked standing the acorns up in the playdough and then making sure they had a hat on. 

I thought to give her our recently decorated peg people, so we added them to our play and she had great fun fitting them all with their hats.

Grandad came in from working outside and assisted by showing Poppet that she could use little lumps of playdough to secure the hats to the heads.

Hatted people having a chinwag

The people had to have beds, of course, so Poppet tasked Grandad, Daddy and me with each making a bed for them. We all produced a bed, some more inventive, realistic and well just better than others but I won't name any names. All I will say is Poppet picked mine as the best and it had detachable covers and a pillow.

It was too hard to resist playing with the playdough and I also created a little garden and then a pumpkin which Poppet loved and insisted I made another. All afternoon she treasured those pumpkins along with the bed that I had made her.

They were all placed very carefully in her play kitchen cupboard and she was very insistent that I didn't put them away "Don't tidy this one mum. I love it mum. Don't tidy it up. I love it. Just look. Just leave it here. Don't tidy that up. I love it." She is at a stage just now where she declares her love for quite a lot of things!

Poppet's beloved objects. Please note the bed looked better when I first made it!

I am sorry to say that Grandad and Daddy's interpretations of a bed were placed in her other kitchen cupboard and I was given permission to tidy these up if I so wished.

This has been by far Poppet's favourite playdough and she has asked for it out to play more than any other I have made. I'm looking forward to making some Christmassy flavours in a few weeks!

Poppet: 2 yrs 9 mos

Little: 1yr

Rice Sensory Play (with tubes and cars)

We have to do this type of activity when Little is down for her naps as she has a tendency to eat everything she comes across. For the few days after we put this tray together, Poppet would ask for it as soon as I had taken Little upstairs!

I bought a kilo bag of rice for £1 and poured the whole lot into a tray and added some trucks and cars we bought from a carboot sale for 25p each, along with some cardboard tubes, scoops and a funnel.

Poppet started off running the rice through her fingers and pouring it from hand to hand. Uncooked rice has a lovely sensation and it is very therapeutic to play with. I think Poppet liked it because you can play with it like sand but it doesn't stick to your skin and make a mess like sand. Eventually she tried fitting the cars and trucks into the tubes, figuring out which ones were 'too big' and which rolled down. She liked declaring "it fit mum!".

She made roads through the rice, picked up and deposited mounds of rice with the trucks, used the scoops to fill up the tubes to the top with rice; so many different ways to play with rice! A lovely little sensory play activity. I'll reuse this rice for another playtime but I think I'll dye the rice next time to add an extra element to it.

The next day I got the megablocks and cellotape out and got Poppet to help me try to make some kind of truck-filler-upper. My first attempt wasn't very good and collapsed to which Poppet observed "it not very good mum". Our second attempt worked better although I don't think it would win any architectural prizes.

We turned another tube into a tunnel that Poppet could drop cars down, which got a lot of use. A lot of rice did escape the tray so you do have to have a dustpan & brush handy to clean up after this activity but it's more than worth it!

Poppet: 2yrs 8 mos

Little: 11mos

Parcel Tape Drums

I was going to send a copper lampshade we weren't using to the charity shop but thought it might be able to become quite a good drum instead. I have been eying up toy drums online for a while as whenever the music box comes out at our toddler group the drums are the most popular instrument, but this alternative cost me nothing and has given the littles just as much enjoyment!

We had to experiment a bit with potential drum skins - starting off with a sheet of baking parchment secured with cellotape. This worked and produced a sound like a snare drum but was too fragile and tore after some enthusiastic drumming. 

We then tried some vinyl tablecloth but it was too thick and we tried cling film too but that didn't work at all. Throughout all this Poppet was excitedly declaring "lets make a drum mum!" And had a great time going mad wrapping cellotape around things she found lying around trying to make her own one "I making a drum!"

Making a 'seat-belt' with the tape

I did a bit of googling and came across this youtube video from Child's Play Music which shows you how to make a drum using parcel tape (I also really liked the video they had on water play and music exploration and plan to do this one day). The parcel tape worked really well and produced a great sounding drum. Poppet loved helping. We stuck down strip upon strip of parcel tape, crossing them all over in the centre until every inch was covered in at least two layers. Then we pressed it down all over to make sure all the strips were stuck together.

Finished drum!

We were on a drum roll (gettit?!) so we also made a smaller one using a cake tin with the bottom removed. We learnt that a drum needs air underneath it to allow it to vibrate, so when the drums were flat on the floor they didn't sound as good as when they were raised up. With this in mind we raised them up using crates or books to improve the sound. We used chop sticks for drumsticks and set the drums up along with the other instruments we own (an xylophone and a set of maracas) to create a complete music station!

Mid-song

Both girls loved it and so did I, you could make some really good beats with them (is that even the correct terminology?! I have no idea!). We have played many different games using the drums. Poppet was really good at banging along in time while singing, although if I attempted to join in she would yell at me "no, I sing it!". We also explored tempo and volume by pretending to be dinosaurs (big, loud, slow thumps of the drum) and mice (little, light, quick taps of the drum), rhinos and rabbits, elephants and spiders.

We used them to explore numbers and counting, with me counting out a certain number of beats and then getting Poppet to copy me. We used different utensils for drumsticks to see what sounds they made - whisks, wooden spoons, plastic sticks etc... The drums have been really popular toys, even with Little!

Poppet: 2yrs 7mos

Little: 11 mos

Its Raining, It's Pouring

Take one torrential downpour, and in the words of Forrest Gump, I am talking big old fat rain here;

Bundle one toddler up in their newly-gifted rainsuit and wellies;

Hand toddler a cup to 'catch some rain for mummy',

Usher toddler out of the door and into the downpour.........

The novelty of being outside during such heavy rainfall transfixed Poppet, she mostly stood very still, staring & listening, enjoying the sensation of the rain landing on her.

The sound of her singing drifted up the garden- she sang "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring" and "Inchy winchy spider". Good choices.

Whenever her hood slipped down I was shouted to come and "put hood up!" but other than that she was happy to wander about in her own little world, singing to herself, knocking off any pools of rain she found on the leaves and jumping in puddles.

She dutifully returned with a rather pathetic amount of rain collected in her cup, and was inordinately proud of it. I felt a bit cruel at this point as her little hands were freezing so she got dried off with a warm towel and a mug of hot chocolate for her trouble.

She must have enjoyed it though as a couple of days later the heavens opened again and she responded with a "Rain jacket on?"

Toddler Garden Update

Poppet's garden has really flourished since we first planted it back in April.

She has been harvesting the fruits of her labour as things have come into bloom; it has grown into a lovely little spot for her to explore and play with her fairies in ( I finally got some on sale in ELC).

She loves finding her miniature strawberries but we have to keep telling her to wait till they turn red.....if she finds any especially small ones she takes them to Little.

Her greenhouse seedlings have mostly all died in assorted ways - the only five survivors are three pumpkin plants which are now flowering in the veg plot and two pea plants looking very pathetic in her garden that I doubt will come to much.

Her sunflower tunnel has grown loads. This was a couple of weeks ago and they are even bigger now and nearly flowering. One side is a lot higher than the other and I should probably have thinned the seedlings out a bit but it is getting there. Pretty soon they will be high enough to bend together and create a tunnel (it will probably be more of a crawl-through tunnel rather than a walk-through one).

Rain collects in the centre of the lupins and in little puddles in the folds of the broccoli leaves, and she loves finding these little reservoirs of water, using them as drinks and bathes for Fairy and Mr Rabbit.

The fuchsia flowers are 'princesses' apparently, and she likes picking off big, fat ones and tiny little ones and making little fuchsia flower families. Or pulling off the buds and picking the petals open to find the 'princess' inside. She has yet to discover the satisfying enjoyment that comes from popping the buds!

Her sweetcorn looks great, I think it may be ready to harvest but I am not sure, if anyone could tell me that would be good?! She seems quite curious about it and I'm not sure she entirely believes there is sweetcorn in there. Corn on the cob is one of her favourite foods so she is really going to love it when we can pick it.

The annual flowers we sowed a few weeks ago have shot up although are also a victim of overcrowding. They are now flowering and attracting bees and other insects to Poppet's garden. There are also loads of centipedes that live under them that she likes to look at as they scurry away. No insects have taken on our upturned flower pot as a home though!

Poppet: 2yrs 6mos

Little: 10 mos

When Life Gives You Playdough Lemons

I've been going through a bit of a homemade lemonade phase recently, it's the perfect drink for this scorching hot weather we've been having - ice cold, refreshing, sweet, sour and just a tiny bit salty. I'm addicted. And Poppet has been avidly watching me squeeze lemon after lemon in our lemon squeezer, pleading to have a go. Helping me pour it through the sieve. Picking out stray pips. Mixing in the sugar. She loves the whole process (and the end result even more!). 

To let her have a go at making it herself without running the risk of squirting herself in the eye with lemon juice (been there, done that), I set up an invitation to play using playdough lemons and my lemonade making equipment. We scented the playdough using lemon essence so it releases a lovely lemony smell as you play with it.

We made a batch of 4 minute no-cook playdough together using this recipe, adding yellow food colouring and lemon essence to the boiling water. And adding more food colouring and lemon essence at the kneading stage too as it wasn't quite lemony enough. It would have been good to add some lemon zest to it as well but I didn't think of it at the time.  It was particularly good playdough, really soft and mouldable. If you haven't tried making playdough yet I would urge you to give it a go, it's 100 times better than the shop bought stuff. Although the colours sometimes aren't as vivid, you can play about with scents and textures which makes it more than worth it.

I moulded it into lemon-like shapes and put them into a bowl along with a real lemon so she would get the idea. I also put other lemonade-making paraphernalia on the tray - juicers, a jug, cups, straws, a little sieve and a knife. 

First she tried to cut the real lemon but soon transferred her attention to the playdough ones and got into the swing of it. She loved the lemon squeezer and the playdough was so soft it oozed out in long strands really easily. This was a good activity for strengthening up her hand muscles which helps get them ready for pencil control later on. This is a really great post on all the benefits of playing with playdough.

She loved cutting up all the lemons and then squishing them through the squeezer, collecting the long strands in her jug to make her 'lemonade'.

She also liked pressing the lemon halves into the lemon juicer and seeing the imprints it left behind on the playdough. Afterwards she had some more fun with making imprints using her magnetic letter set, pressing the numbers in and then picking them out again to see the shape they left behind.

Glittery Play Dough Fairy Cakes

One of Poppet's favourite ways to play with play dough and guaranteed to keep her occupied for a wee while so that I can sit and have a cup of tea finally unpack that suitcase that has been sitting there since Monday.

I gave her pink (ish) raspberry scented playdough, a couple of playdough knives, candles, heart shaped silicone fairy cake cases, a bun tray, biscuit cutters, silver glitter, and my rolling pin ( I have tried to use her little one and it is rubbish, you can't roll the dough out very easily with those little ones so I just give her mine, she gets on much better with it).

Obviously the glitter was very quickly poured out and copious amounts sprinkled about. She attempted to fold the dough over and knead the glitter in like she has seen me do before which I thought was clever.

Then it was over to the important task of cutting out the cakes. She is very pleased with herself that she can manage this by herself now (unless it is a particularly thick wedge of playdough in which case I am needed to assist). She knows to wiggle the cutter about to cut right through to the bottom.

Once her cakes were done, she realised her bun tray was too big to fit into her play oven so insisted that I put them in my oven instead. The addition of glitter to the playdough cake play definitely went down well although she does still have glitter on her scalp despite me washing her hair. And our bath is a bit glittery.

Poppet: 2yrs 4mos

Little: 8 mos