Oh no rain again...

It may be July but the last few days we have had nothing but rain. I must admit I really do struggle to keep the kids entertained and also to keep my patience when stuck in all day. Here are a few things we have been doing any way. Sensory tubThe latest sensory tub for this month (except I am never organised enough to actually present the kids with it at the start of the calender month) is a kind of sweet shop/ice cream shop theme. I added pompoms, plastic reuseable ice cubs, scoups, bowls and tongs and then I added some beeds to empty gumball machines. The kids have used this to play sweet shops as well as making sequencing patterns with the coloured pom poms and ice cubes using the ice cube trays. In the Pond I came across some wonderful pre school packs on a site called homeschool creations which I have been printing off to put aside for rainy days. Each one of them fits in with a theme and I have that many books that I should be able to find a related book for each one so I thought on rainy days we could focus on a different pre school pack. I am the kind of person who if I don't have a plan, I will just tend to leave the kids messing around and spend far too much time online browsing Facebook etc.. Anyway the first one I chose was the Pond theme as we have a book called In the Pond which fits in well with this! Also, on a site called Sparklebox.co.uk I found some wonderful 'life cycle of a frog' cut and paste activities! Again these fitted perfectly with the book! and finally here is a video of Melissa singing a song she learnt at ballet which cheered us all up in this gawd awful weather!!!

fairy gardens

Linking up with Nurture store's play academy


I have been wanting to make fairy gardens for a while with the kids and have finally got round to it.
For the container we used a seed tray with holes in the bottom so that they can be kept outside. We firstly filled them with compost and little stones. I bought a few bits to put in-bridges, mini fake pot plants, blue gravel to act as a river, some plastic trees from the dinasaur set and best of all some tiny minature garden gnomes!!!
We added in some plastic Disney characters but hopefully another activity might be making 'peg fairies'!

Melissa's garden




Louis' garden

June-gardening theme.

I have been very lazy about blogging lately!
Firstly we have just got back from a short trip to France to see my husband's family so I will beging by sharing a few photos. My husband's family are dairy farmers-infact he grew up on the farm.
Here is a photo of me and the kids with my husband's brother in his tractor

Here is my husband playing in the barn with the kids



and here is Melissa all dressed up for an evening in a restaurant...





We all had a great time. I was suprised how relaxing and enjoyable as I had been a bit anxious about it as my French is not so great plus their way of life is so slow paced compared to ours. Three days was not long enough particularly as they had such gorgeous weather and we are having horrid cold rainy weather in Engand.

So now onto our new theme for June. I decided on a theme about gardenning. I have ordered stuff off amazon to make minature/fairy gardens. So far all we have done is fill a tray with soil and use some stones off the rockery but hopefully this time next week we will have more detail :-)




My sensory tub is combined with my playdough theme this month. I filled the tray with fake flowers, plant pots, kids gardenning tools and some brown playdough to act as 'soil' for potting the flowers!
Next week I will get a photo of the kids in action with the sensory tub. I had to just take a quick shot as I have had no camera batteries for days!!!



We have also done tons of 'real' gardenning, involving potting bedding plants in tubs!

Wedding activities

This post is a week late! Last Friday we celebrated the wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate. I tried to do some wedding related activities. However the weather was so nice in the week running up to it that we spent most of the time outside! Anyway, I found some great activities on www.activityvillage.co.uk which has loads of theme related stuff! Melissa enjoyed dressing up at the Princess! And here is a video of my cute lil guy singing :-)

Easter

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This week we have been doing activities to celebrate Easter. We have been bless with some gorgeous weather (every rare in the North West of England especially so early in the year!) so most activities have been done outside. This is very good since the new house has a carpet rather than laminate so crafts such a painting and playdough are harder to clean up (must invest in a large shower curtain to put down under the craft table!
So here goes...

The Easter Sensory Bin




Not one of my greatest sensory bin attempts I must say but rather thrown together at the last minute! It contains, Easter grass, mini chicks and rabbits, large open and close plastic Easter eggs and some flowers.


Easter PLaydough



The pound shops had some fab Easter themed playdough cutters so I made some pink playdough for a Spring/Easter theme! I also added these cute egg trays, again from the Poundshop!


Egg cup painting



Again another Pound shop find. I bought some clay 'paint your own' eg cups for the kids to paint. They didn't quite get 'wash your brush between colours' as normally when painting we just have a different brush for each colour!


Easter egg hunt



I hid several little plastic eggs around the garden for a simple Easter egg hunt. I had to slow Melissa down and practically guide Louis right to them or Melissa would of found them all!

Easter bonnet




Not really a craft with the kids but my attempt at making Melissa an Easter bonnet-you better be impressed lol!

Here we are

Well long time no post BUT we have FINALLY moved house-7 months after accepting an offer on our old house and putting in an offer on the new one, we finally got there! The new house is much bigger and in a nice area; the village I grew up in myself so we are absolutely delighted to finally be here! It needs decorating and rewiring which will have to wait until our finances recover but absolutely love it!
Anyway, firstly some pictures:

My husband cleaning the kitchen lights


Louis playing with his Melissa and Doug food


The back garden




The front of the house

The Lounge

The kids playing in the side garden

So needless to say, activities with the kids have been rather neglected. However I have plans for the rest of April. This week will be Easter themed activities and the week after will be Royal Wedding themed. Am not a big fan of the Royal family at all and I think Kate Middleton and Prince William and terribly bland and boring but its a big deal so I want to do things this kids will look back on and remember!

Underwater sensory tub and playdough

Well the plan for March was to have an underwater theme. However, due to yet MORE moving house problems in that our buyer is now delaying things, stress kind of put paid to this! Things are now looking better as we have a new buyer so this week I put these plans into practice!

So far we have an underwater sensory tub:


This includes:
-Aquarium rocks
-Foam ocean themed bath shapes
-Mini fishing nets
-Star (fish) shaped glass beeds
-Star (fish) shaped ice cube trays

Notice the unused removal boxes in the background! Grrr

Playdough
I made a blue glittery playdough to represent the sea. I wanted some sea themed cutters to go with this but couldn't find any so we just ended up with a range of lots of different cutters!



Trip out
By coincidence really, we visited the World Museum in Liverpool which had a great aquarium section

Visit play academy on Nurture store http://nurturestore.co.uk/play-academy-31