Learning Shapes- Decorating a felt Easter Egg

I thought that I would share this with you a great way to learn shapes and decorate an Easter Egg at the same time.  It is so simple to make just cut out some felt eggs and shapes then all is left is to decorate! We talked about the shapes that Little Boo was using and the colours that they are.  We have the big, medium and little egg so this meant there was lots of discussion about their sizes.  I asked Boo to put different amounts of the shapes onto the eggs so this meant she was practising counting as well. I decided to add in some wool and scissors so Boo could cut up some wool to use as well. Lots of potential with this simple activity.

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. 

Sharing a book- The Paper Dolls

Little Boo had The Paper Dolls book for Christmas.  She really enjoys this book so we decided to make some of our own Paper Dolls.  This is a really easy craft to do and I can not believe I have not done this before with Little Boo.  She wanted to make them the same as in the book so this was a good activity to learn her colours as we copied the colours that were on the paper dolls in the book.  She also decided that she wanted to use the ruler to draw the lines on the stripy top.

The book is written by Julia Donaldson and scored high on Goodreads  with a lot of positive comments.  The story is really touching as the Little Girl makes Paper Dolls with her Mom and grows up and makes them with her daughter.  I love the idea behind the story and the easy craft to accompany the book is a bonus.

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.