Making your own toy for threading

Little Boo loves threading and when I had some empty sellotape reels I decided to make a threading activity with them.  I painted the sellotape reels with acrylic paint and then used my  cropodile big bite to make the holes in the reels.

 I had already brought some shoelaces cheap so these were used to thread with.  Then all that was needed was to show Little Boo what to do with them. 

After a while we started to also add beads into the threading.  She really enjoyed this and it is a great way to up-cycle our sellotape reels.

Game to help shape and colour recognition

Just thought I would share with you a simple few games that we did the other day. Little Boo had her foam shapes out we laid them on the table and I started to ask her questions such as " find me a blue shape?", "find me a triangle?" the questions then got harder such as " find me a blue triangle?" "find me a yellow square?". This went really well and I was impressed at how well she was doing.

Placing the shapes in size order

Spotting different shapes

We then progressed to putting the shapes in order largest to smallest. This is such a versatile game as you could start to ask for the odd ones out as well or creating patterns all these games for a 99p pack of shapes.

Playdough sweet and cake shop

 We have had a fantastic time with home made play dough.  I have just had to share this with you as Little Boo loved this and keeps asking to do it again.  I made up three massive batches of play dough Strawberry, Lemon and Chocolate.  The recipes that I used were from the Nurturestore and the Imagination tree blogs. 

Non-cook recipe

• 1 1/2 cups boiling water 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar

Add your choice of colours and essence for this activity we added strawberry and lemon.

For Chocolate play dough

• 2 cups boiling water 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• drop of glycerine 

Place all the ingredients in a bowl and stir, stir, stir! When it starts to get too difficult to stir place it on the counter and knead.  At this point please be careful as I realised that the play dough is still quite hot (I was too keen)

The chocolate has a brilliant consistency.  I think it is the glycerine so I am going to try and add this to a cooked playdough next time.

I also tried cooked play dough (Strawberry) for the first time and I am loving this! it is so much better in my eyes but this may just be a personal thing.

Cooked play dough 


2 cups of water
2 cups of plain flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons cream of tartar

Place all the ingredients together in a pan and heat over a low heat.  Keep stirring and do not leave the pan unattended this happens quite quickly.  Before the mixture starts to solidify stir in the colour it is easier to do it at this stage than later on.  After a few minutes the mixture solidifies take it out the pan leave to cool then knead and play!

Here is how it went

We had lots of interesting items out for Little Boo to explore with including our bottle tops.  They make great cakes! 

Making a lollipop

This is a Birthday cake with the candles.

Squashing the playdough into a chocolate tray. 

Little cake with cherry on the top

Up-cycle bottle tops to great playdough cakes. 

After all the cakes and sweets were made Little Boo had to start getting ready for bed. Luckily she asked to play with playdough the next day and asked to repeat the activity that is when we made our cake shop.

Little Boo was shop keeper and Daddy came shopping and wanted a lollipop.

Little Boo was then the customer whilst Mommy was shop keeper.

It was great fun making the sweets and cakes and then even more fun seeing how much Little Boo loved the shop idea.  The shop encouraged a lot of conversation as Little Boo responded to Mommy and Daddies cake orders and used great descriptive words for the different cakes.  Number can also be incorporated as we asked for "two cakes" for example and
talked about how much it would be it was very funny as everything was "seventy pence", I do not even know where she has got the number seventy from? It is amazing how children pick things up.  For older children the activity could be extended as they could put the price tags on the items and actually add the prices themselves then select the correct coins to pay.

The playdough itself was a wonderful sensory experience as they are all had different smells, chocolate is my favourite.  It smells amazing. 

Dress up felt man

As mentioned yesterday Little Boo really enjoyed dressing the felt lady but asked "where is the man?" therefore I set to work designing a man.  I hope that you all like this I have put the templates on here to help others as I could not find a suitable one on-line.  It was also fun making it.  

Felt Man Word

Dress up felt lady

Which one is your favourite? Mine is the cherry dress.  This is thanks to Little Boos Auntie who donated some fabric. 

After looking on the internet for some templates for felt I came across this dressing a lady template.  I was so impressed by the images on the website that I had to have a go at making this for Little Boo.  It was so much fun thinking of what materials to use to make the dresses and tops interesting.  Mainly the base was made up of felt or cotton (so it would stick) then detail was added on with PVA glue. I did up-cycle some of Little Boos old clothes (cotton) as well to make some of the dresses.  However, cotton does fray so I just went around the little dresses with a bit of PVA glue it seems to have done the trick for now but I am sure there is something out there more technical that can be used especially for this purpose. 

Just recently I have started to get activities ready for Little Boo on an evening ready for in the morning.  I figured that when I am at work I always have a plan so why not at home? It makes for a much better day as I can get activities ready a lot easier. This is what I did with this felt activity it was really nice to see her face when she saw it in the morning. Well worth the few hours that it took me to make. I did not even consider when making this the aspects of learning that are covered such as learning the names for items of clothes and colours.  Before I realised Little Boo was saying "I want the dress with flowers on" and " where are the ladies trousers?".  We also started to have a conversation about where the lady was going to.  Due to this I may need to make her some books as the library was suggested and later she was going swimming.  Seems like I have my work cut out    to get some more accessories and clothes made.  Little Boo later asked "where is the man?" so stay tuned as I have the templates at the ready and will be posting all about him and putting the free templates on tomorrow. 

We have now been lucky enough to come by a felt board thanks to my Dad his work were going to throw it out. My Dad knew I would have a use for it. 

Up-cycling childrens artwork to make a card

A member of the family had their Wedding Anniversary so we decided to make them a card. This is a great way to up-cycle the paintings that have been done and some old cards that we had in the house.  First of all I took a painting that Little Boo had done previously. I made a view finder out of some card to select a suitable section of the painting.

The viewfinder used to select the pieces of the painting.

The pieces of painting cut up and placed on the card.

Little Boo helped with the sticking!

Little Boo chose some pictures that she liked of the couples wedding no surprise that the cake was one picture!

. The completed card!

Busy tin tried and tested

Thankfully I have been supplied with another metal tin.  This was fantastic as a few weeks ago we all went on a rather rainy camping holiday to Forest of Dean and I was looking for games to take which Little Boo could play.  

The idea for these funny faces came from another post that I have done which is very similar. I was trying to think how to make the idea portable so came up with magnetic funny faces. After a quick Google search for cartoon eyes and cartoon mouths I found ones that I liked put them onto a word document then printed them onto magnetic paper. Luckily the magnetic paper is currently in stock at the local poundland so was £1 for two sheets.  This makes this busy tin a very cheap idea.

This idea is so simple and Little Boo loved playing with them.  Sorry the image is bad we were in the tent!

Hope that this provides you all with some inspiration.  I have also considered using this at work as one of the units I teach is all about emotions the different faces could be made up to display the different emotions.

Rice treasure box

I am always on the look out for new and interesting activities and found this on Pink and green Mama. This is our Rice Eye Spy Box which turned out really well. First of all we dyed the rice using the method that is suggested on the above link (I wish I had done more). When the rice was dry I placed it all in a box mixed it together then looked for some interesting treasure to hide in there.
When we got all the treasure ready we sorted it into colours and took pictures of them. These pictures were then used to match the treasure as Little Boo found them.

Looking for the treasure

Matching up the found items

Our visit to the scrapstore

It was whilst on a rather rainy camping holiday a few weeks ago in Gloucestershire, that the Gloucester Resource centre were promoting their own scrapstore and lead me in the direction of Scrapstore Uk a website where I could search for our local Scrapstore.  I was so excited I knew these places excised but thought that membership was only for large groups not parents.  When searching I realised there was a scrap store in Birmingham not to far away from where we live, fantastic! 

Me and Little Boo embarked upon our first visit to a local Scrapstore yesterday in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter.The word scrap store really does not do this Aladdin's cave of treasures justice!  there was loads of exciting materials a lot of which had been donated by local companies.  What surprised me is that there was also new items there Little Boo fell in love with a little fairy doll which was added to the ever increasing bag of goodies and there were loads of books.  I also picked up a bat and ball set which makes wicked noises when you hit the ball.

I joined today and it was £50 for the whole year.  This is a individual membership and allows one pick per month.  The great fact is that there are different items each time that we go so hopefully more inspiration.

Whilst there I asked to take some photographs for this post. Sorry they are not the best quality but I realised that I was on public transport so really could not carry the big camera.

We had some material for our soon to be made dolls house. 

Look at those frog foam things, gutted I did not have the car. 

Little Boo was very vocal about what she wanted.  The stuff in this box looked like snow was very popular.  We did end up with a bag:)

Small Toys great if you are planning a party! 

Our first bag full of scrap needless to say it did not stay in the pushchair long  I had to do a great balancing act with it! Think that my husband may have to walk back from work next time as we need the car. 

Here is the contents of our first bag.

Here is what I have used some of the contents of the bag to make. I hope that Little Boo enjoys playing with it.  I may add some play dough and water beads to make it more interesting. 

We both had a great time at the scrap store Little Boo when she got home told Daddy that she had " had a great day".  We can not wait for our next visit!

Making bread together

After seeing this post from the Imagination Tree I was inspired to make real bread with Little Boo.  It is really nice though that there is a play dough alternative.  Due to it being Fathers Day yesterday we had a family get together and I knew that fresh bread on the buffet is always a hit with my family.  I got the recipe from the Nurturestore  in the free e-book.  It was a wonderful experience for Little Boo to make something for the whole family to enjoy.

 Making the bread yes we were still in our pyjamas! It was very early.

Kneading the bread.  Little Boo commented on how it "felt nice" and that  it "smelt nice" 

After leaving the dough to rise Little Boo saw that "it is bigger"

We then set to work treating the dough a lot like  play dough .

Little Boo then made "Daddy", Nanny, me Auntie and Grandad.

Some of the finished creations ready for baking. Look at all those smiling faces.

When we finished.  The smiling faces looked really good still and kept their shape a lot better than the shapes we had cut out with cookie cutters.  It was funny as all the family were trying to guess the shape.  The smiling faces were lovely though and would be a good idea for my lunch box at work a definite way to cheer up my day!