gingerbread man playdough

You know when you hit on a good idea when it lasts for most the day! In Little Boos advent a few days ago was a gingerbread man  cookie cutter.  This was so that we could make gingerbread men using the play dough recipe I had pinned.  This is the BEST play dough we have used it smells amazing and I think that the spices really help with the consistency of the play dough. Anyway thank you to 2 big 2 little  for the wonderful idea.

I have used their recipe as follows

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp cloves 

The smell is AMAZING! We did not have cloves so I just omitted this it was still great.  We played with this for hours Little Boo kept coming back to it. We made the gingerbread men then decorated them.  This was great for counting as Little Boo counted two eyes then counted on the buttons that she wanted. Little Boo then asked for her  toy oven to cook them.  I made a baking tray for the oven (a lunch box lid with foil over it). 

We had loads of cutters apparently there was a Mommy, daddy and a baby one 

Later on when the ginger bread men were cooked the dolls had a Little tea party. 

Snowman biscuits

We helped my Mom and Dad over the weekend to put up the Christmas decorations.  A tradition that I would never like to miss out on! I love doing their tree as it has loads of mine and my sisters decorations that we made when we were little, so many great memories! We tend to laugh at each others creations and at my Mom for keeping them ALL.  I can now understand why she keeps them all though I could not part with anything Little Boo makes.

 I hope that when Little Boo gets bigger that we will to have decorations that she can look at.  It was funny to watch Little Boo look at the decorations that we made with great interest.  I thought at one point that she may start to offer me tips for improving my master pieces.

Anyway due to putting up the decorations I thought it would be nice if we had a little something to take with us so decided to make some biscuits (always goes down well with my Dad he is a biscuit addict).  I searched on-line for the simplest recipe I could find and found this easy biscuits recipe this suited the limited ingredients that I had available and time.  Little Boo loved mixing all the ingredients that I had ready for her in bowls.  We mixed it then cut out the circles then all of them were ready to bake.

Only problem was that I had to be at my Mom's within the hour which gave them just enough time to cook and cool.  No time to decorate them.  I told Little Boo that we would finish them the next day which was met with tears, this meant that the biscuits went on a trip to Nannies to finish off cooling in the car as we drove there.

We finished them off once we had decorated and everyone loved them.  I know they liked them as some suspiciously went missing before they were even decorated! All we did to decorate them was add a bit of icing sugar then a sweet for the nose and chocolate drops for the eyes and mouth.  This is great for fine motor skills as Little Boo had to pick up the small bits to decorate the biscuits. They were then all finished to eat. Apologies that they are on an icing sugar splattered plate needless to say Little Boo liked spreading the icing.

This idea is really versatile and could be used for many occasions. All you need to do is decorate them differently.  If you do not feel like making the biscuits why not decorate rich tea biscuits?

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Today I am posting about the three ways that we have made snow.  Hopefully everyone will be able to find one that would be suitable to use.

Cornflour and shaving cream 
To make this I just mixed cornflour and shaving cream together until I had a good consistency where it would hold together if molded.  Thank you to Growing a Jeweled rose for this fantastic activity. Out of all the snow ideas I think that this is the one that Little Boo liked the most.  It feels wonderful! I made a snowman that Little boo kept having get fun "melting" basically just squashing it!

Little Boo had great fun scooping and making snowballs 

Some footprints as she had to get her feet in! 

White sparkly play dough
Thanks for this idea from Frogs & snails & puppy dog tails I followed the recipe (apart from adding self raising flour accidently) on here and made up a tray so Little Boo could make up some snowmen!

Inside of nappies and water 

I saw this idea on About.com chemistry and thought it was a good idea to try.  However, I was at first worried as there was mention of the nappies being toxic? I did a bit of looking around on the internet and after a bit of research I was happy to continue Almost Unschoolers did this activity and there was no mention of the nappies being toxic?

All you need is the inside of a disposable nappy which you just cut out out of the nappy.   Then  add a bit of water until you get the right consistency.  The more water the more sloppy it is.  It is not recommended to use this activity with children who would be likely to eat this as it expands.

Moving the snow with the trucks

Small world play

Snowman Bottle

I am really keen to show ideas that I think younger children would be able to do so have decided to show you this Snowman.  I remember when Little Boo was younger that she loved to pack things into bags and put things into containers so this really is a great craft for this stage.

All you need is

• A bottle
• googly eyes
• cotton wool
• Pipe Cleaners
• Buttons/ stickers
• Felt or up-cycled fabric
• Double sided tape (sticks better than glue to the plastic)

We did this activity just before bedtime it is not messy which makes a change :)

To start with make sure the bottle is clean and well dried.  Fill it with Cotton wool, we counted the wool into the container which was great for learning numbers. 

Screw lid back on either you could do this or the child as this is a great way to develop fine motor skills.  After this attach the googly eyes, add  nose and smile. Little Boo cut out the scarf herself and then managed to use the scissors to snip the frayed effect.  I am so pleased with how well she uses her scissors now mind you, I always used to love cutting up. We have some buttons that Little Boo chose three that she liked then stuck them on the bottle with double sided tape. All that was left then was to add the pipe cleaner arms which she stuck on with sellotape then the hat. 

Hope that you enjoy this activity we are using ours to place in the sideboard but I am sure that it could be hung up as it is not very heavy. I have already had requests to make a daddy one and a baby one!

The start of Christmas Craftiness!- Our ball ball wreath

I have decided that it is about time that I started to share with you the Christmas crafts.  Apologies to readers who do not celebrate Christmas. I have been doing lots of cooking with Little Boo just recently so have decided to post these ideas as well alongside.  This year it is brilliant as Little Boo is capable of doing so much more than last year! Her attention span has increased, she can use scissors better and even starts to suggest what we could do.  I will make sure to add in what we did last year when I open up the decorations box.

First I am sharing with you our ball ball wreath.  I saw this posted on Pinterest and just had to have a go at making it with Little Boo.  All you need to have is

• Hot glue gun
• 80 or so ball balls (you could upcycle some that are no longer used for the tree,this is the cheaper option, we brought ours from the £1 shop 12 for £1)
• wire coat hanger/thick wire

First of all you need to secure the ball ball and hanger with hot glue.  I did this part of the activity whilst watching the Television (I was also procrastinating from writing my assignment, whoops). 

After this I got the wire coat hanger (thanks to my mother in law) and bended it into a circular shape.  Then it was just a case of getting Little Boo to thread the ball balls onto the hanger.

There was no specific order or anything just go for it! It really made me realise how much she has developed her fine motor skills. It was nice as we were chatting as we were doing the activity about Christmas and Santa then about the colours that we were using.  It was funny as Little Boo still has a Mommy and a Daddy one for everything! so many of the ball balls were placed on in that way one Mommy then a Daddy then the baby ones. Anyway after this, I just (well my husband actually, I am weak) twisted the coat hanger back together.

We added a ribbon at the top and there you go a wonderful wreath for your house.  Many people who make these use ball balls that have been in the family for a long time as a way of showing them off in a nicer way than putting them on the tree.  Anyway I love ours even if the ball balls were only cheap, it would also make a fantastic gift for someone at Christmas.

Making a marble run with toilet rolls

As you know I am always trying to find ways to reuse items around the house. For today's idea I decided to reuse toilet rolls (as we always have them!) to make a marble run. I have wanted to make one of these for ages but have had to wait till Little Boo was old enough to have marbles and know not to put them in her mouth. I still sat with her the whole time we did the activity just in case.

Little Boo helped to make the marble run she loved it, as at the moment she loves sellotape.  I had a funnel from the scrapstore which was good fun to add in as the marble would spin around.  I cut most the toilet rolls in half then attached them with sellotape to a piece of mount card.  This was a trial and error process as we had to keep checking the angles were right in order to make the marbles go to the right place.

 Little Boo loved the idea and put marbles down and waterbeads and anything she could find.  It was good for her to see that some things would not roll down such as an elastic band!  The waterbeads were great fun to use as they bounce when they come off the marble run.  Little Boo loved chasing after them.

We started to count the Marbles as we put them down the marble run and would see which colour marble came first, second and third.  Therefore, the activity incorporated maths as well as fine motor skills to be able to pick up the marbles.

I have started Pinterest boards on crafts to make with cardboard boxes and toilet rolls I thought people would find this helpful.  There are ideas from us and from others so enjoy.

Play dough Sweet shop- Maths the fun way

A few days ago it was requested that we make another cake and sweet shop as we have done in the past. However, this time we made a few changes so it was a fun maths activity. I made up a new batch of play dough and decided on Strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.  I followed the no-cook recipe as I was trying to get it done quickly with as little mess as possible . Then we started to make our sweets and cakes. This in itself was a great activity as whilst we were making we were chatting  about what we were doing and our day.  I had been at work so it was a great way to relax and just enjoy some quality time together. 

Never throw away old chocolate containers they can be used as great moulds for play dough. 

Little Boo practicing with the cooking tweezers. 

I asked little Boo if she wanted to do a pick and mix! she was really excited about this. The idea behind this was so that we could count out the sweets as well as improve her fine motor skills as I had recently brought some utensils from Ikea which included some cooking tweezers these were great for the pick and mix. Which we placed into plastic cups.  

We set up the stall, Little Boo decided on how much everything was going to be. The scales were a great hit as she loved pretending to weigh the fudge. I put a mark on the scales where she needed to weigh too however, she just found it funny to keep on adding the fudge. Myself and her Dad were the customers who came into her shop and asked for items. To improve Little Boo's maths we were asking for specific amounts of sweets such as three orange ones. It was apparent whilst playing that it was a helpful game to play to learn colours as well. 

She used her till to add up the cost then wrote me and her Dad a receipt.  I just thought it was amazing how she had done the receipt like a list.  

It was obvious that Little Boo liked the activity as she asked to play the next day.  I had placed clingfilm over all the items so they were fine to play with again.  It was lovely as when I was at work she asked her Nanny to help her make some more sweets for the stall. They made a great job! 

Playdough Olympic medals

Today we decided to make Playdough Olympic medals this is to celebrate the Paralympics which will be starting very soon :) We used Homemade play dough  which I made the night before using the recipe in our sweet shop post . To add the colours I used some metallic paint and loads of glitter that we had however I was not really happy with the results that the paint gave and am thinking that gold food colouring gel would of probably been better but probably costs a fortune so this is a good cheap alternative and Little Boo was impressed!

I am hoping that you can see the sparkle :) probably needed more glitter! 

First Little Boo helped to organise some gold and silver gems and items to decorate the medals.  We also had feathers as the Paralympic medals this year feature the Greek Goddess victory's wing.  Due to this I thought that using the feather would be quite effective.

All we did is press the gold, silver or bronze play dough into the cake tin placing some ribbon in between the layers.

Getting the feather impression on the playdough. This showed up very faintly. 

 Once this was pressed in it popped out easily and we added gems and sparkly things to make it look pretty.  We also used our new letter stamps the idea was to write on the medals Gold, Silver and Bronze but Little Boo just wanted to stamp away which was fine as she was enjoying herself.

This picture was taken before I had the cake tin idea.  This was cut using a plastic cup.

Little Boos favourite toy wearing the medal.