The Bath Cafe

Welcome to our bath cafe! Really simple to set up and fun. All that is needed is some kitchen toys, a plastic lid from a box that fits across the bath and Fun foam to make the food.  Little  Boo spent ages in the bath making me sandwiches, soups and ice creams.  The food items stuck to the wall I just cut out of fun foam.  They work really well and stick on top of each other so a sandwich can be made.  This was great for learning numbers as I was asking Little Boo for a certain number of items for my sandwich.  Bubbles make a great pretend ice cream.  Fun foam was also used to create buttons on the pretend oven. This was to try and help Little Boo with her number recognition as I was encouraging her to press the different numbered buttons. 

Making tea for Mom, Dad and Me

Little Boo loves any opportunity to get into the kitchen so after seeing the Nurturestore ebook on playdough and the bread dough recipe and the success of using the recipe to make the smiley face bread inspired me to use it to make pizzas with Little Boos help. I made the dough up whilst  Little Boo was having a nap as it needs to be left for one hour to prove.  This also meant it was a nice activity ready for when she woke up.

All the ingredients that we used were in the house making this a cheap activity to do.

I just placed all the ingredients out so that they were easy to access for Little Boo. We placed the dough into  greased pyrex dishes and then added all the ingredients. This was a great tea to make as we could easily cater for everyones likes and it was simple to make one vegetarian one for me. 

All the Pizzas ready to eat. 

When the Pizzas are all ready I popped them in the oven at 220 c for 20 mins.  Just keep an eye on them as they may be cooked sooner.  Hope that you like the idea this is so simple to do and could also incorporate practising using a knife if you feel confident for your child to cut up some of the easier items. The cooking provided a great opportunity for communication as we talked about how we were spreading on the sauce then sprinkling on the cheese.  Little Boo also counted the pieces on some occasions.

Home made travel eye spy

I am so glad I blog as it has really encouraged me to start to research other peoples ideas and adapt them to suit Little Boo.  This week when doing my usual Link up with No time for Flash cards I noticed this scanner collage eye spy from another blogger.  I loved the idea and started to think how I could adapt this for Little Boo.  At the moment I am trying to reinforce colours and shapes so have created the collages to assist with this.  The idea is really simple I basically grabbed anything I thought was interesting scanned them (be careful not to break your scanner or scratch the glass) with a towel over the top.  

I have created a collage with coins as it will be interesting to see if Little Boo can distinguish what is money .  I did this one for work as well. I have created something very similar for the students but capturing the image this way is much more fun. I can not wait to play this game with Little Boo as I think she will love the items that I have picked.  The game will grow with her as the questions that are asked can become more and more complex.

At first I am going to ask questions like

Which one is a square?
Which one is Blue?
Where is Peppa Pig?
What colour is the flower?

The questions can then be developed to

How many squares are there?
How many animals are there?
Where is 1p?


Another way I will try to develop this is encourage Little Boo to ask me questions.   I am sure once I have modelled how this is done that she will try to do this.  

The scanned collages I have provided as a download I have tried to make them interesting and hope that some people will enjoy using them.  I am going to laminate ours then they can also be used with a board marker and the items circled this will also help with fine motor skills. May even add this game to our "Travel Buddy".


eye spy

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. 

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

Sharing a story- The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This story is wonderful it is one that I can remember as a child so therefore love reading it to Little Boo who to like myself always places her little fingers in the tiny holes. The book is wonderfully illustrated and incorporates learning days of the week, numbers, food names and all importantly the life cycle of a caterpillar, all in one book!  The book has 4.24 stars on Goodreads.  Here is how we shared the book.  A lot of the resources have been found through using the Internet I will be adding on the links (when I can find them as very helpfully I cut off the websites when making the resources)

This is our story sack nice and simple a pillow case with a coat hanger clipped on so it can be stored hung up in the wardrobe.  All that I used to get the image on the pillow case was a t-shirt transfer.

Little Boo was keen to see what was in there.

First of all a threading exercise whereby the green pipe cleaner is the Caterpillar and the fruit is threaded as he eats it.  This is brilliant for counting as me and Little Boo counted on the food for each day. This activity also encouraged Little Boo to look for different foods.

The caterpillar eating the apple.

One very greedy caterpillar!

Counting using pom poms.



Included in the story sack is also the days of the week printed out and there was (until it was returned to the library) a caterpillar life cycle book.  After reading the story I read through the days of the week and we talked about what usually happens on those days.

I hope that you like the activities the possibilities are endless with the Hungry Caterpillar and I feel that I will be adding more and more to my story sack as Little Boo develops.

Travel magnetic story tin

I am very fortunate to have an inspirational family who are always giving me fantastic items to do fun activities and crafts with.  This time I was given a tea tin by my sister and decided I wanted to make it into something that we could use as a travel toy.  I have recently brought some magnetic photo paper (from poundshop) so thought that was a great opportunity to use it and decided to make a story tin.

Me and Little Boo sat down and looked for inspiration from books for our magnetic story tin Nick Sharratt You Choose is amazing to use for this.  I was looking for things that would be interesting in stories for her what characters she likes, what settings, what props could be used to start a story. 

Using Nick Sharrett's book You Choose to inspire ideas.

I made a large list of all the characters that Little Boo liked and the settings for stories. We then went to the computer and chose lots of pictures and copied and pasted them into a word document.
Pictures of Little Boos family and herself  have also been used as characters.   We then set to work at looking for items to start a story like going through a magical door or having a magic key or wand. All very exciting!

We then printed all these images out onto the magnetic paper and cut around them.  Then the stories began! Without prompting Little Boo gave a wand to Cinderella and put the heron in the sky.  In this picture we were using the magnets on a ELC magnetic board however, the tin can be used (making it good to travel with) and any magnetic item around the house.

This can also be used as a spoting tin or to place the items in size order or matching.  The possibilities are endless.  I intend to get some more magnetic paper as I can then make letters and numbers.  I decided to decorate the tin and placed some questions around the outside such as who is in the story?, where are they?, what have they got?

The completed story tin when Little Boo was asleep I made it look a bit more appealing.  I just used some card and paper from my scrapbook collection then placed contact on top so that it stays on.

Hope that you like this idea we have been using it for a few weeks now with a lot of success.  We have started to colour in characters then scan the images to make our own magnets this has worked really well as Little Boo is using her imagination more and more.  

Imaginative Play

Ever since Little Boo went to the hospital for an operation she has become really interested in playing doctors and nurses. She woke up and wanted to play therefore her bedroom was transformed into a hospital.  We set up a little waiting room with all the toys who needed to go to hospital.

There was also a reception where Little Boo or dolly were answering calls.
















Then there was the nurses room where she treated all the patients. One of them apparently needed a bandage (made from one of daddy's old shirts)












This type of play is amazing for developing language and communication skills. Little Boo practised talking on the telephone and also her questions as she started asking the toys what was wrong with them. All the time she was verbalising what she was doing " I am giving dolly medicine because she is poorly". It is wonderful as all this comes naturally and the more we play the more she says.

Dolly and dog with their bandages.

Do not throw away your old camera

Little Boo liked the claws!

The floor was not missed
as it had "triangles"

We also saw circles on the
floor.

We have been to a local art gallery. Little Boo's Auntie was kind enough to give her an old digital camera. It has been brilliant to use as Little Boo took pictures around the gallery of what she liked.  The activity sparked loads of conversation around the gallery and it was funny as one of Little Boos toys was posing in a few of them. Hope you like some of the pictures that were taken.  How many of you have tried this with your children I would love to hear about the results. We intend to stick all the pictures in her scrapbook.