A treat for Little Boo and Daddy too- review of CBeebies art magazine

Occasionally I like to treat Little Boo to a magazine. I realise that many are over priced and rubbish therefore made the decision that magazines would not be a regular occurrence.

However, when I saw the CBeebies art magazine (I have not brought this before) it looked really good and had loads of sports inspired activities. Little Boo then looked at me with those eyes and said "mommy we could make these" she looked so excited and I could not say no (as I liked the look of them as well ) I could see the potential of using them as small world play and to be honest I was intrigued to see how they were made so I could "borrow" the idea to do a DIY of it next time.

I really wanted to do some small world play using either the new Lego Olympics figures or the Playmobil then considered the costs! This magazine cost £2.99 which is expensive but less than a whole set of new figures I thought.

The activity was completed by Little Boo and Daddy. Me and Little Boo had been out all day so she wanted to do something with Daddy and presented him with the magazine. My husband is a wonderful Dad but does not usually do much creative work with Little Boo so I was intrigued to see how this would go.

They loved it, it was nice to listen to them enjoying themselves and the best bit seemed to be that all the things were there and ready. This helped a lot to keep Little Boo focused. I must admit that I found it difficult to stay away I felt like I was missing out!

All the things were in the packet including easy instructions. 

They set to work and created some wonderful people. Think I need to point out that the boat man lost his head somewhere whoops! We improvised.

Then it was time to make the boat, audience, podium and jumping pole for the horse.

Stickers were provided to decorate the boat. 

colouring the audience with Daddy as well

 Then it was time to play with them

The audience cheered 

The horse did loads of jumping

and plenty of people won medals

I realise that this magazine was expensive but we have only just done one activity and this we spent most the evening enjoying.  It really encouraged fine motor skills through all the peeling of stickers, communication- as Little Boo talked about what the people did for example the difference between a basket baller and a footballer.   We now have the rest of the magazine which this week features shapes.

The magazine I later found is aimed at 4-7 year olds.  It states inside the magazine that it aims to look at 6 areas of learning 

• Being creative
• Feeling good
• Physical development
• Maths
• Communication 
• Finding out

The aim of the magazine is to "make art fun, accessible and exciting for young children".  The idea is that activities are provided which the child can either do independently or with an adult. Each month the magazine is dedicated to a different art skill this month was shapes.  This is perfect for Little Boo. What do you think are there any good art/crafts magazines that you enjoy together?  

Hope that everyone enjoys the opening ceremony this evening, I can not wait! 

Chocolate medals

In celebration for the Olympics starting tomorrow we decided to make some sweet treats to enjoy ourselves and to give others as presents. These chocolate medals have been great fun to make and so simple. All you need is 

• Two blocks of cooking chocolate or one depending on how many you want to make 
• Decorations
• Mould 
• Laces

Break up the chocolate trying not to eat any

Melt the chocolate in the microwave.  Little Boo enjoyed putting the time in.

Place chocolate into moulds we just used the cupcake ones.

Place decorations onto the chocolate (we were able to sprinkle these above the cases as the chocolate is still quite warm so be careful)

Place into the fridge to set

I put holes into the chocolates using a skewer.  

Thread the medals with strawberry laces

Decorate the medals with squeeze icing (add numbers 1st, 2nd, 3rd)

Little Boo enjoyed this bit we did some with
numbers then the others we just made pretty.

Store in the fridge and eat and enjoy!  Sorry about the unhealthy nature of the post.  I just thought they would make great gifts for people to enjoy during the opening ceremony.  Get us thinking about all those medals! 

Our pom pom Olympics

Today we have done a really simple activity and made some pom poms they are so cute! I got the idea from a website and just changed it a bit to suit what we wanted to do. To make this activity easy I prepared all the cut outs such as the feet and the cone for the torch and placed double sided sticky tape on all the items.  

All the items needed were in my craft cupboard which is even better! 

What is needed for each one 

• 2 googly eyes
• one big pom pom 
• piece of card to make a cone or pipe cleaner and own choice of flag printed.
• piece of card in shape of feet (as shown in picture)
• tissue paper -red, orange and yellow. (if doing Olympic torch)
• double sided sticky tape
• PVA glue

The double sided sticky tape just means that Little Boo can create this more independently and she also loves to peel the backing off, which is all good for improving fine motor skills! 

ripping the tissue paper for the torch 

Place PVA glue into the torch then add the tissue paper

Sticking on googly eyes 

Peeling off the sticky tape back for the feet

We just stuck the torch on again using double sided tape then one was completed but  "he needed a friend" 

So we set about making a "friend" exactly the same way but printed off a flag instead for him to hold. 

It was really good to show Little Boo what the different flags looked like.

The flag was printed twice on a long strip then just folded over  the pipe cleaner. This was taped onto the bottom of the pom pom.

Then there were two. With a little bit of blue tac these are going to proudly sit on my computer!  

These would make wonderful Olympic themed gifts for people. 

Toddler Olympics (part 2)

Glad that people enjoyed yesterdays post on the Toddler Olympics here are the other games that we played enjoy!

Who can get the biggest bubble?

This was a fantastic activity and one that was done with items around the house.  I have wanted to make big bubbles and our own solution.  Something that I have wanted to do for ages but needed the weather! This website has loads of recipes for bubble mixture I looked in the cupboard and made the one with

1/2 cup of dishwashing liquid
2 cups water
2 teaspoons of sugar

This is only because I had all the items in the house.

We made the bubble stick in a really easy way just broke a garden cane in half taped the end so to avoid splinters. Wool was then taped on the top of the sticks into a loop.  This was probably the most unsophisticated way of making this but it worked! 

It then got quite competitive as  Mommy, Daddy and Little Boo (with help of Mommy) were trying to get the biggest bubbles. 

Pushchair Race 

We all then had a pushchair race.  All of us had to do a lap around the garden. Little Boo found it very funny watching Mommy and Daddy doing this. 

Fish for colours

 We then played fishing for colours where we all had a go at fishing for different coloured balls. This was also great to teach Little Boo her colours.

Its a Goal! 

More water play with the squeezy bottle! We had to get the ball in the chalked out goal by using the squeezy bottles.  Again Little Boo loved filling up the bottles.

Hope that you enjoyed some of today's ideas as well.

Toddler Olympics (part 1)

This week is our Olympic theme! In readiness for the Olympics which starts Friday. I am so excited. 

Little Boo adding her score on the chart.  As you can probably tell she has already helped to write Our Olympics. 

Today and tomorrow we are sharing with you our toddler Olympics! Due to actually having nice weather we got outside over the weekend.  The idea of having a toddler Olympics came about as the weather was wonderful and we wanted some outdoor fun. Due to this I quickly rounded up a few games we could play.  All the games were played with items that we had around the house so no need to go out and spend loads of money which is always great.


Pom pom balance

 This was a spin on the egg and spoon race but we used pom poms and wooden spoons. It was really good fun made better by the fact that daddy was against Little Boo you could see her determination to be first!

Knock over

Little Boo doing her best throw.

Good score! 

We used the no sew bean bags we made using odd socks. The aim of the game was to knock over as many bottles as possible. As you can see all the bottles were up-cycled all different sizes but this did not matter Little Boo actually enjoyed putting them back up as well.


Alphabet target

Then it was time for alphabet target ! Little Boo filled up a squeezy bottle with water then we took it in turns to shoot the letter targets that were on the wall written on with chalk.

Target in one 

Staying with the water theme we also did hit the target.  Little Boo loved this especially the water and filling up the bottle.

I hope that you are able to get outside and try out some of these ideas part 2 of the Toddler Olympics will come tomorrow and there will be more water games. Great for when the sun is shining.