Using play-dough to learn to spell names

I wanted to share this with you today as it combines all the things that Little Boo likes at the moment: play dough, stamps and her name.  We have used stamps (Melissa and Doug Alphabet stamps) to make an impression of the letters for her name. Then we used the play dough to make the letters out of the spaghetti that Little Boo made using one of her play dough toys.

 Another way to learn the letters is to write into the play dough with a pen something that Little Boo did yesterday with the microwave salt dough.

Three minute salt dough- I wish I found this earlier!

Just a quick post today as I really wish I had seen this ages ago a recipe to make salt dough that you can cook in 3 minutes! Thank you so much to the Rainy Day Mom Blog which is where I first found this idea. We have made loads of things this afternoon as this method is so much better especially as the end product is ready to paint in minutes. We made letters for Little Boos name as I want to incorporate learning her name into fun activities where possible as well as enjoying making the letters she will love decorating them, especially if the glitter comes out. Anyway go for it and try the three minutes salt dough here is the recipe you need.  It is so easy that Little Boo did it herself so it was good practise with counting.

• Half cup water
• Cup of flour
• Half cup salt

Just mix it all together (one of little boos favourite bits)

and when it starts to go solid get it out the bowl and knead. You then make what is needed. Once complete place in the microwave for 3 minutes if it is not hard pop back in the microwave for 20 seconds each time , Please be careful as they will be really hot. Little Boo had fun just playing with the dough itself and writing in it as well.  Recently she has shown a real interest in letters and is finding the letter s everywhere we go.  It is wonderful to see her interest grow in regards to letters and numbers.

Make your own chalk board Easter egg to decorate again and again

I have always wanted to use chalk paint but have been put off by how expensive that it is.  However, online the other day I found a really simple way to make your own chalk board paint Thanks to A Beautiful Mess for the inspiration! All you need is

• 1 tbsp of unsanded grout
• half cup of Acrylic paint
• a surface to paint (I used mount card)
• something to mix it with
• brush to paint

All that is required is to mix this together then use. I painted this as the grout has very small particles so is not suitable for young children to use, please be careful and use it in a well ventilated area.  I have been really impressed with the results and decided to make Little Boo an Easter Egg chalk board that she can use again and again to decorate.  This has also been great writing practise as we have been decorating the egg with all sorts of line patterns which is great to learn pencil control.

The ABC cafe

I found this wonderful printable called ABC Cafe  it is fantastic Little Boo spent ages playing.  The idea is that the customers make their orders by all having letters which represent the food they want to order.  The printable then has foods which begin with each letter of the alphabet so all you do is match the correct food to the letter of their order or vice versa. Little Boo wrote down their orders, then had fun finding the correct food.

To help her I placed a choice of three foods for her to match as having all the foods was a bit overwhelming. As you can see from the picture we used Little Boo's Dolls to play but the printable does provide customers as well! We had about three tables in the end.  Hope that you find this idea fun.  I love it when I find something for free.

Reduce Food waste and save money

Over the past few months I have been trying to reduce the food wasted in the house.  As well as being a massive waste of money I hate to see food thrown away! Love food hate waste stated that
"We throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year"  It is actually very shocking when you look at the table to see how much money this equals to.

Due to this I have started to write down or at least be more mindful of what we are eating and need to eat each week.

I have also started to freeze home made meals meaning we have our own ready meals ready and waiting.

One recipe that I have been doing for ages is banana bread/muffins this is a great way to use up bananas that are over ripe and that may be thrown away. It is a great recipe to make with Little ones Little Boo loves mashing the bananas!

The best recipe that I have found is this one I just omitted the Walnuts.  I made this into muffins so it took 25 Minutes to cook.  Once they had cooled I was able to freeze some for another day.

Numbers and Letters Box

A few months ago we sorted out all Little Boos toys and placed them into categories. Sad, I know but this has really helped me with our day to day activities. I know if she wants to play at fancy dress that the box is ready and waiting we also have ones for sticker/colouring books, play food and dolly things .  I just wish that all my stuff was this organised! Anyway, I wanted to share with you what we have in the Numbers and Letters box.  This is used to inspire Little Boo with numbers, letters and colours.

In the box we have things that we have collected over time such as free toys from magazines.  These we use as a matching activity or to count.

Buttons can be used for a multitude of things counting, sorting the biggest from the smallest, sorting into colours, making patterns or counting out a set amount. More ideas are on The Activity Mom .

Pebbles these we have used to count and to place around letters. I am also going to paint/collage a few with Little Boo and place letters on them so she can spell out her name.

We have a leap frog fridge magnet alphabet set . Little Boo has had this since she was really Little in the old house we had it on our fridge and she used to play with it loads and often dance to the tune.  Unfortunately this seems out of stock at the moment but leap frog also do a Letter Factory which looks really good and the same sort of concept.

There is a large tub of colour animal counters which I got from the education show last year at a very good price.  These have been great to sort into colours and group or count them.  There is also a tub of play animals that Little Boo likes to match up and place in groups then count them.

There are some animal dominoes in the box which Little Boo is getting really good at playing. This is great to learn matching and also learning to take turns whilst playing games. The musical instruments are included as very often we play a beat then Little Boo tries to copy what I have just done.

The wooden fruits are a fantastic threading set that I brought from the education show a few years ago (again at a much cheaper price) when Little Boo was just learning to thread.  They are lovely to use and are made for younger children to practice threading we also use them to make patterns with now.

The bus is a laminated sheet from twinkle where we count the people onto the bus. I have printed some flash cards with different amounts of pennies on them as well from Twinkle.

The most important thing is to make it all FUN! and keep adding things to it as your child progresses.