School holidays

Well, the school holidays are almost over. Louis had his first day at pre school and Melissa will have her first day in reception class next Monday. I haven't really blogged much over the holidays so this post is a summary really of what we have been up to.

Meeting up with friends
I got the phone numbers off quite a few of the mums of children Melissa had played with at pre school so on most days when I wasn't working we had someone to meet up with. Activities included, trips to the local park, trips to soft play (when the weather was bad) and playing in the house. It was nice that Melissa's friends included Louis too, infact most of her friends have a younger brother or sister so he had people to play with also.

Baking

Unfortunately I have come to the realisation that I am not in any way shape or form any kind of cook so our baking activities involved making up packet mix cakes.

Horse riding

My sister and mum have horses-actually one of them was mine before I had the kids. We took Melissa and Louis down to the stables a few times and they enjoyed brushing and a quick ride on the smaller of the two horses.





Playing in the garden

I usually jump at any chance to get out in the garden with the kids at any sign of sunshine (a rare sight in the north of England). We bought the kids a trampoline which they love!



Outdoor chalking has also been a hit...


Days out

We have had 3 proper family days out. The first was more an attempt at one as we set off from our house in overcast but dry weather but when we arrived at our park of choice, only 11 miles aways, everything was soaking. It ended up being a trip to costco instead!



Another day out was to Southport where we had a walk round, some fish and chips and then Melissa and Louis went on a few fairground rides.



Thirdly, we took a trip to Tatton park, a national trust park which has a fabulous adventure playground and lovely gardens and nature walks.

Caravan mini breaks

My parents have just bought a caravan in the Lake District so we have had two long weekends there. Unfortunately, particularly the first time we went, the weather was quite wet. However the kids enjoyed the indoor pool and have improved their swimming and managed to get a few goes on the outdoor playground. In the evening we went to the clubhouse and my husband and I had a few drinks while the Melissa and Louis watched the children's entertainment. Louis even won the fancy dress competition.

Jam jar decorating

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Being a typical North west England summer, we have had quite a lot of rain in the last couple of weeks so I have had to find ways to keep the kids busy in the house (my least fav thing,being stuck inside with bored kids!). In preparation for this, before the start of the summer holidays, I asked people at work to save for me any old boxes and also jam jars.

The boxes are for junk modelling which we have not yet done and the jam jars for decorating.

I did consider using glass paints but thought the kids may be a bit young especially Louis. So I decided the best thing to do would be firstly paint the jars all over with thick pva glue.



I then gave the kids a tub each of tissue paper shapes and asked them to stick them all over the jars so no white was showing.




The results turned out quite good!

Ibiza holiday

This post is about 2 months too late but I wanted to do a little post on our summer holiday to Portinax in Ibiza. We went with my mum, dad, sister and her boyfriend as my dad paid for us all to go for his 60th birthday/retirement celebrations.

We stayed in a wonderful all inclusive hotel which was extremely child friendly. Melissa enjoyed going to the kids club in the mornings where they did craft and theme related activities. Louis unfortunately would not be left in the kid's club as he is going through a phase of being very clingy (dread nursery start in a few weeks!).

We had gorgeous weather and spent every day partly by the pool and then partly on the beach and the kids stayed up really late in the evening to watch the entertainment.

Here aere some photos anyway :-)
The beach....




Melissa and Louis in the kids pool (excuse Louis sunhat!)



At the beach


Melissa on the slide



We all had a lovely time and have booked to go again next year!

Outdoor play-camping and kitchen

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So the last week or so we have had some semi decent weather-not paddling pool weather but certainly outdoor weather. The good thing with outdoor play is it means the house stays tidy :-) and I can get on with a bit of gardenning while the children play.
Anyway, firstly I decided it would be quite a nice idea to make a home made tent. I bought 5 long bamboo sticks from a DIY store and me and the kids tied them into a basic tent shape. Unfortunately I didn't have an ideal blanket to cover it with as all my spare ones have been used as floor cloths for painting so we used a fitted sheet.


If we do this activity again, then I am going to buy a special 'thing' which can be used to make a tipee! These can be bought from the DIY store as they are designed for making a tipee to grown creeping plants on!

In addition to the tent I decided to bring the children's kitchen accessories out which we bought in Ikea. They don't use them much in the house but I saw many ideas on blogs about setting up outdoor kitchens so thought they would be ideal for this. Added to that I brought out a mini oven which I purchased for £3 at a local car boot sale.

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!