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

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Lots of Valentine activities!

We had lots of fun with the valentine's theme this week!

Tissue paper hearts.




I prepared these by cutting out lots of squares of different coloured tissue paper hearts and foam hearts. I then cut out heart shaped outlines from card and then hearts from sticky back plastic (contact paper?). We ran out of sticky back plastic so the remainder of the hearts were made by gluing onto white paper! These were then hung up!

Heart prints
These are ultra simple. Using different coloured paints, the kids used playdough cutters of various sizes to print onto large sheets of paper. These were used as wrapping paper!


Heart stencilsThese came in a craft pack from the Poundshop. All the kids did was paint over the stencil onto paper plates but they came out quite nice!





Sensory Bin
Even though valentines is over we will use this for the rest of the month to get our money's worth from it! It contains lots of fake rose petals, heart ice cube trays, heart shaped beads, heart shaped rubbers, pink heart on a stick things (which I have now pulled off the stick!) and fake roses along with the usual scoops and tubs!

Valentine activities

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I decided on a valentine theme for our crafts and activities for February! I have tried to buy some stuff in the Pound Shops to make a sensory bin and use for crafts but most of the products are a bit X-rated lol. None the less, I have managed to get some fake rose petals, heart ice trays, heart confetti and red kitchen utensils. I don't have any pictures yet as I want to buy more rose petals to bulk it out a bit and might even chance the dreaded rice!

So onto other valentine activities then...
Valentine playdough.
This idea was taken from the fabulous Counting Coconuts

I made up a basic playdough recipe with cocopowder mixed in for a lovely chocolate scent! I then gave the kids heart shape cutters, scissors and best of all, empty chocolate boxes so they could pretend to make valentines chocolates! It was a bit messy but they enjoyed it!


Heart biscuits
As with last month's snowmen biscuits, I made a basic biscuit recipe into heart shapes and the kids used pink icing and marshmallows to decorate!




Valentine boxes
I found some cute heart shaped gift boxes in the pound shop along with some sticker sheets containing gems and some containing baby related things (think they were for making gift cards but the kids insisted on the baby related ones lol). A very simple craft of decorating the boxes with the stickers!


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Chinese New Year

Using printouts and craft ideas from Activity Village we celebrated Chinese New Year

I firstly told the kids the story of Chinese New year which I also founf on activity village. We then played a matching game using laminated cards of all the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.

We then found as many toy animals as we could to represent each animal. We did quite well although we didn't have a monkey and had to use a dinasaur instead of a dragon.
The animals had a Chinese New Year party!



As it is the year of the rabbit I gave the kids a cardboard cutout of a rabbit to cover with cotton wool and draw a face on. These were then stuck onto an art straw to make a 'puppet'. We did the same for more of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac-although these were just coloured in. Melissa is from the year of the dog so she coloured a dog and Louis is from the year of the rat so he did a rat. They then did Oxes and dragons and then got a bit bored of colouring so we left it there!




Finally, using A4 paper decorated with crayoning and glitter glue, Melissa made some Chinese lanterns which I strung up accross the room.

New Year, New Blog...

Well I have been meaning to do this for a month but only just got round to it. I am going to be using this new blog to focus on the activities me and the kids do and the other blog will be a more personal one about milestones etc... so I will be making that one private and this one public!



Anyway now onto my first Totschool post of the new year!
Our theme for January has been Winter (couldn't really be anything else in this weather!!)

We have had a Winter Sensory Tub


This contained:
Cotton Wool Balls
Various small animals
Clear glass pebbles
Mini glass 'crystals'
Whole Walnuts
Ice cube trays
The usual mini kitchen utensils

Art and Craft
Using an idea from No Time For Flashcards I glued the shape of a snowflake using PVA glue. The kids then stuck mini marshmallows along the glue!




Baking Snowmen
I used a basic 'Sugar Cookie' recipe and made biscuits in the shape of snowmen for the children to decorate with white icing, mini marshmallows and chocolate buttons. This would have gone better, only I didn't make enough iscing so there was a bit of a fight! I will be trying this again but with valentine hearts though!