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.

Busy bags part 2

Today I have three more of our busy bag ideas to share with you. First of all I decided to place all our busy bags in clear pencil cases which were purchased at 99p each.  These have been plenty big enough and enable Little Boo and me to see what is in each bag. I could of brought the binder pencil cases and was considering this until I saw that they were quite expensive.

First of all is the sandpaper and wool bag. The idea came from Modern parents messy kids blog . This is a great bag as the ideas are so versatile children can either make letters numbers or simple patterns. This bag is so easy to transport as well. The sandpaper I brought from the pound  shop so it was not very expensive at all.  The wool was brought from a  local shop and was £2.00 for each massive ball.  I had these in though as I have used wool before.

The next bag was so easy to get ready and probably the most popular with Little Boo. I have recently brought some little animals for her initial sounds tubs so have placed some of these into a bag with green, blue and brown felt or card. This means we can play a game of where does the animal live grass, water or mud.

The last bag I am sharing with you today is the lollipop sticks and velcro. This idea was again inspired from the web and Tots Treasures. Little Boo was able to make shapes and patterns with these or stack them. The only problem is that I did not find these very appropriate for in the car as they ended up everywhere as she pulled them out the bag or apart. I decided to hot glue gun all the Velcro onto our Lollipop sticks simply for the fact that when I made these before Little Boo very easily picked the Velcro off them.

No more odd socks!

I do not know about you but where do all our socks go? especially Little Boos, I have an ever increasing pile of odd socks, so set to work to think of something useful for them.  Whilst cooking the tea I had inspiration, lets make them into bean bags .  Little Boo just recently has started to really enjoy playing football and throwing the ball.  I also knew that I had a stash of popcorn kernels and various seeds which had gone out of date, they had been used previously for a pouring activity but I knew they would work to make the bean bags.

The pile of odd socks or ones that are too small. 

Turn the sock inside out . 

Fill with seeds of your choice 

squash the seed down then place an elastic band around, fold over the remaining top section of  sock

The completed bean bags they look really pretty.

We then played games with them in the garden

Daddy did some juggling 

Little Boo made up her own game trying to throw the bean bags into the peg basket 

We then had to try and knock the ball out the square with the bean bags. 

Then Little Boo and Daddy had a competition who could be first at throwing the bean bag at the letter Mommy calls out.  The letters used were those in Little Boos name as I want to get her familiar with these first.  

Then we had to throw the bean bags at the correct shape 

After all that fun it was time to pack away and count the bean bags back into the basket. 

Hope that you enjoy that activity.  Have you reused socks to make something?

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

Make your own texture rubbings

These are so simple to make but really effective.  I made my rubbing to take out with us in our travel buddy folder (just a little teaser for tomorrows post there) . I am really impressed with the results.  All that is needed to make these is strong card (I used mount card I have had this since I left college, I would of never imagined to be using it to make something for my child back then) and hot glue gun or glitter glue works to I found.

Apologies for the images but this was a quick activity done in the morning and images were just took on my phone.  I did carefully select the rubbings that I made for example letters of Little Boos name, interesting lines and of course shapes but just the basic ones for now square, triangle, circle and rectangle.  I feel that this activity would encourage children to use crayons as it could be turned into a game where they close their eyes whilst you place the rubbing underneath the paper.  They open their eyes go over the paper and it could spell out a hidden message or they could try to guess the shape as they were colouring.  There is also an opportunity to make their favourite characters from TV, or animals as they can be printed  stuck onto cards then the lines just traced over with the hot glue gun (may try this one myself only just thought about it). Obviously, if you can draw that is wonderful personally I would need the help of the internet :)

This idea can be developed and used with leaves and bark on trees (great outdoors activity) but at least this idea is a portable activity and so much more interesting than just colouring.  It would also be a great way to use those home made crayons! as they have a large base and many colours in one crayon.

You will probably notice from the image that I stuck down the rubbing and the paper over the top with some masking tape.  It can get very annoying if the paper or the rubbing moves and Little Boo was going really quickly over them.

Game to help shape and colour recognition

Just thought I would share with you a simple few games that we did the other day. Little Boo had her foam shapes out we laid them on the table and I started to ask her questions such as " find me a blue shape?", "find me a triangle?" the questions then got harder such as " find me a blue triangle?" "find me a yellow square?". This went really well and I was impressed at how well she was doing.

Placing the shapes in size order

Spotting different shapes

We then progressed to putting the shapes in order largest to smallest. This is such a versatile game as you could start to ask for the odd ones out as well or creating patterns all these games for a 99p pack of shapes.