how to make the best of a monday :)

Jeepers.

How did that happen?? One minute I have a million plans for the two week school holidays and suddenly we are back at school!!
We had a great school holidays.. huge appologies to those who were waiting for posts for things to do...


Anyway, we are back on the school/preschool/madness horse and Im struggling to find balance again... or is it still?
Anyway, Monday dawned yesterday and I knew I had to make it work for me.
Amahli hits me every Monday morning with "what adventure can we have today Mum?" and  I have struggled to find cool stuff for her to do. Through the holidays though, it hit me that we are nearly half way through the year and she is off to school next year so its time to spend some time together!

I had a tonne of washing ( no, seriously. I had 99% of everybody cupboard contents on the floor of the laundry.....not a fun sight) to  fold, and also a delivery to do plus she wanted something fun AND a bike ride so I had my work cut out for me......

But we pulled it off :)

Starting with my delivery, it just happened to be on the North Shore which involved a car ferry trip across the water. My kids love this thing! So that was my first double tick, something fun as well as something I HAD to do.
Next stop was the Koala hospital, something shes been asking me to do for ages. We are so lucky to have this great place to visit, lots of koalas to see and a really beautiful spot to visit. for some reason I was joined by a friendly unicorn for most of this visit... ;)

On arriving home I had the unpleasant job of folding. I HATE this job with such passion. It takes forever, its so boring and relatively pointless and so time consuming. Today I was not going to let it beat me. Dragging all the loads out side to the front lawn on a big blanket, I also grabbed Amahlis bike and helmet. She looked at me with such surprise at being allowed to ride on the road and happily rode around for nearly two hours whilst I folded clothes... soaking in Vitamin D, watching a happy girl, the folding didn't seem nearly so bad :)
After finishing, we put all folded piles inside, grabbed the dog and headed for a walk :)

A really well balanced, fun day :) It just takes some extra thinking to make it work, but its so worth it.

cool paint activity

We are on school holidays and I LOVE IT!
We've been busy here, we have some friends from Sydney and so we've been to the beach, strawberry picking and hanging out :)

Ive also got some plans for crafty things over the holidays but we haven't had a chance to really do much yet! So this is something I did with Amahli last week.

I realised late last week that I hadn't been doing as much with Amahli for a whole heap of reasons... been really busy, lots of things on, preschool excursions, STUFF! But we were home for a day last week and she was "bored" and I realised I hadn't been actually sitting with her and doing anything for awhile. So I grabbed the pastels and began a crafty arty activity I did moons ago with Jumeirah that I knew she'd love.

Colour all over the page with pastels, all colours, all over. Make sure there is no white paper showing.

Paint over the coloured page with black paint.
Using a stick ( end of a pencil, skewer, matchstick, paddlepop stick, fork) and draw in the black paint.
Colours start coming through! its really pretty, you can make fireworks, whatever! If you aren't happy with your drawing, just paint over with black paint and start again :)

Amahli did lots of swirls. For her it wasn't about the end picture, it was pure enjoyment and seeing the colours appear :)

Its a simple idea but can be done with such a broad age group.
Why not give it a go!

more pre writing ideas

Get right into the pre writing tasks for Amahli at the moment and shes loving it :)

It takes me a bit more to prepare it and to get my brain into the right gear but its good for her and its fun, plus its really getting her ready for reading and writing, as well as recognising words and their forms.

Todays cool idea Ive seen and done before with Jumeirah but realised I hadnt done it with this little miss.
All it requires is their name on a piece of paper ( you can write it to save time but mine is printed and laminated so I can use it for other things) and some playdough ( again, you can buy a tub of the gunk or you can make your own awesome stuff)


Get the child to have a look at the letters of their name on the paper. Ask them to make each letter out of dough. They may need a hand to get started, maybe to make the first log to shape, but once they start, it takes off :)

You can give them other words of they want to do more, talk to them about the letters they are forming, let them hear you say the name of the letter and then what it sounds like. This activity is also really good for strengthening muscles in the fingers, so needed for pencil holding and control.

happy easter!! easter hat :)

Happy Easter!


I had some requests to show the final product of Jareds Easter Hat parade hat :)

He had such fun making it, he helped with the design, luckily it was fairly simple and easy to make, I was still tired from making the superheroes costumes!!

So we went with a simple cardboard base as grass and have some painted eggs hiding in the grass. Was easy to make, and he got right into painting the eggs... with some foil, green cardboard and paint we were done in less than half an hour :) Now thats my kind of easter hat ;)

superheroes

Recently I have had a run of making costumes for my kids... from spiders for the Nursery Rhyme parade for Jared, to now making easter hat parade costumes.. I kinda enjoy it, the challenge, the pressure and finally, the result :)

The most recent was a party they had all been invited to.. a Superhero party. Jared was set on being spiderman with a costume he had been given ( YES! thats ONE less!!), Amahli decided she was going to be Foxy Rainbow Girl ( I dont know either... shes creative, that one!) and after some encouragement from daddy ( who made awesome suggestions but then couldnt find the costume thus leaving me to make it...hmmm) Jumeirah decided to be Supergirl. Sure I totally have time to whip that up for you!! not... *sigh*. But I knew she would love it, so I had to at least give it a go :)


Im not going to tell you that this was a piece of cake... or that I didnt swear at least 100  times at it... or that it took me an entire day to make ( stupid stupid ideas!!) but by the afternoon, just before school pickup, I had a costume laid out on her bed :)


And this is how she rocked it :)

And only with a day to spare! Until I realised....

STUPID MUMMY GOT THE DATE OF THE PARTY WRONG.  I was a week out. So I had a week more to curse the outfit... but it meant that I also had three superheroes dressed a week too early... so I did what any sensible photo lovin mum would do...  I shot them ;)

Jared was SO keen to pose for me for the first time ever. I had a vision in my head ( does that ever work though really?) and took a whole heap of shots of him... didnt quite come out how I would have liked but here is his superhero shot post processing... he loves it :) Going to enlarge it to put on his wall.

The girls shots arent done yet.

But the whole process made me realise that as a mum, I push myself hard for them. I dont think I would have done this for me, but they were worth the effort.

What crazy things have done for your kids? or if you dont have kids, what have you done for someone else you wouldnt have done for YOU?

prewriting fun

a quieter little Miss yesterday... think she is a bit run down and feeling a little tired from the constant daily grind that has become our busy life... poor thing. Now she knows how I feel ;)


So today we drew, and painted and read books and did a spot of cleaning....
And then I had the request for "homework". Since Jared started school, homework has been a BIg thing in our house. HE LOVES IT! Crazy, I know, considering I had to bribe him to do anything with me but at school hes thriving and loves to be doing all right things, homework being one of them.

So I created Amahli some homework after finding some cool things on Pinterest ( gosh, how boring would my nights be without it!) and she got to work.

The idea behind these flashcards is for the child to copy the pattern or shape on each card and draw it in a box.  I drew her page up into 9 squares so she had a pattern for each square.

You make a pile of the cards, flip one over and try to copy it.
We had some trouble to start with, she instantly said with every one "oh I cant do that!" but with encouragement, she was able to complete them all and went on to fill another two whole pages of symbols and patterns.

Once she has mastered this a bit more, I will change some of the patterns for letters and numbers.

I found it here on pinterest :)

indoor fun

Yet again, two weeks in a row, we have been hit with yet more flooding in our region.
Not quite as severe as the week before, but enough to again cut off parts of Port and cause wide spread damage.
Im not sure how the beaches will ever be the same..... this photo is our version of snow... dirty flying foam!

And so again, we were stuck inside for a weekend. I did take them to the beach for a quick walk but after finding a cow ( or sheep, we arent quite sure) washed up on the beach and  torn in two, we decided to head home.

Now, mostly I am fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda mum. But sometimes I do things REALLY awesomely. Like at christmas and birthdays, I hide half of the booty so that when its crap weather or school holidays or anything like that, we have stuff to do! Its usually all the crafty stuff, and no one has ever really noticed.
But today, when the ferals were reaching their peak, I pulled out the coolest idea ( from jareds birthday two years ago!!)

Make your own jet fighter planes. 4 pack!

And so planes were made and flung around the house for a good hour. ( I hid for part of it but came out a couple of times so as not to get left out ; ))

And then the plan changed to go fly them in the rain! Sure! Go get wet!! And so they did :)


Such fun.... lasted most of the worst of the rainy day, burnt off stored energy, and saved me from the dreaded "Im BORED!"

what are your tricks for rainy days??