cotton bud painting/ butter making

Everyday, Amahli wants to be more involved in what Jared and Jumeirah are doing. She follows them around, squeals and yells for their attention and now that shes walking, shes is never far behind them. She is also coimpletely taken with bouncing on the trampoline.
THis morning I thought I would put out a painting activity that would be perfect for her but that the others would enjoy too :)

Cotton Bud painting

really simple, low messy but great fun!

I use a tray with kitchen sponges in it, so that there is no excess liquid to spill. Using food colouring makes it really bright colours. Put a cotton bud in each colour and away they go!

Amahli is still at the "lets paint ourselves" phase but she really enjoyed doing it.

This is why I use food colouring :)

Jared..hmmmm jared... was not into this today and was totally happy watering the garden ( what will I do next year without my little crafty girl??)
Jumeirah got right into this today and did HEAPS of them. All of them were dot paintings and looked great. The Starfish

After this, I got out an activity I did at preschool with Jumeirahs class this year which they loved, Making butter from cream.

Seeing as I had an almost full container of thickened cream and nothing to eat it with I thought this would be a good time to do this great little science experiment.
(food used for teaching purposes contain no calories)

What you need:
Cream ( thickened cream works quickest, DONT NOT USE LIGHT CREAM. It doesnt work at all!)
a jar or container that seals well

How to do it:

Find a container or jar with a very sealable lid. ( we had to change containers early on this activity cos the cream kept raining on me)
Fill the jar about half way with cream
Put lid on very securely :)
SHAKE IT BABY SHAKE IT!!

This does take a fair bit of shaking, but soon you will see the cream changing from very runny cream, to thick cream, to watery butter like substance to BUTTER!! throughout the shaking, toward the end, I open the jar and tip out the butter milk ( the liquid that has seperated from the butter) and keep shaking till its a big blob.
Use butter on biscuits or fresh bread... YUM

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

THIS IS THE BEST BUTTER YOU WILL HAVE EVER TASTED and dangerously moreish.
But as I said earlier, Foods used for teaching purposes contain no calories :)
Its also really fun!

check out that fast shaking action!!

you can see that we have only just begun... having a glass jar means you can see it changing

its getting there! you can see the buttermilk here as well

oh yum yum yum

Anagrams

I love activities that increase a childs sense of worth. Jumeirah and I were talking and making up new words ( fantacular and specialiosis to name couple) that described her. So I suggested we do an Anagram of her name :)

We wrote down the page the letters in her name ( yes there are a lot!) and I asked her to think of a word that began with each letter.

"Jumpy!" she started which describes her completely. This child jumped before she walked, I kid you not! She is an incredibly bouncy child who would rather skip and hop than walk in the shops, is permanently attached to her trampoline and also loves to test bed springs :) Maybe there are springs in her blood, maybe THATS why her hair is so curly :)

We got stuck on "U" so we had to google words beginning with "U" and came up with "useful" .
"Its perfect for me cos I am so useful!"
And away we went, finding the most perfect words to describe this beautiful little person, who is just a few months will be leaving me and the everydayness to join the ranks of "big school". YIKES.
And as we worked our way through the letters, I loved watching her face light up as I helped to work out these words. "Marvellous, Excellent, Interesting, Rainbow girl" She was just beaming as I spelt them out and she wrote them. Most of them she worked out herself, I really only had to help with a few, but it was such a lovely time for both of us. Me, to encourage and cement that each word was exactly her, and Her, to realise what a wonderfully whole little package she is :)
"Amazing, Happy!" and we'd finished a lovely little Anagram all about Jumeirah.
"lets do a Jared one tomorrow!"
And we will. And I am going to frame her anagram so she will always remember just how great she is :)

threading/shades of purple/Slime/ hill fun

busy busy BUSY day...

With all thats been going on the last few weeks, and with Daddy at home, crafty stuff has taken a bit of a back burner. Which has been nice except that this morning we had to get back into it. And boy did we do that!

With Tim off to work, I had three little ducks who wanted something to do. " fun, painty, different" ( why different I ask?? I love the old stuff!) and so we began...

Jumeirah was happy to start with some threading. The best thing about moving house is all the boxes you have at the end! Provides lots of lovely thick caradboard. Instead of the typical stitching today, I taught her to back stitch which she did really well. We sticky taped the end of the wool to help it pass through the holes easier.




We then moved onto painting at Jareds request. Today was a free painting but we experimented with different shades, talking about how colours change when adding white to them, making them lighter.
We also tried to name as many different colours of purple we could think of: indigo, purple, lilac, mauve.... Jared used his paint brush as a frog jumping on the page, complete with sound effects :) Jumeirahs painting of "the wind"

Jareds "Frog jumping" painting


I then tried something I have wanted to do with them for AGES. I knew I had to tread carefully as this is a really messy activity :) Its called Slime and its made out of Lux Flakes ( found in Coles). It was a bit of trial and error as I couldnt remember the recipe completely but it made for a bit of science discovery as well.

To start we used: ( WARNING THIS ONE DOESNT WORK VERY WELL:) )
3 cups of water
2 cups of lux flakes
And so we began to beat the daylights out of this stuff... the whisk, forks, and finally I pull out the big guns and use my new electric beater. None of these really gave the desired "slime" effect, just lots of froth ( which made for awesome "cuppucinos").

And so we tried again, figuring that maybe it wasnt disolving and we needed the water to be hot. This time we used boiling water.
3 cups boiling water
2.5 cups lux flakes


Yup thats the way to do it :)

No one was keen to go for this one (of course), but I had a ball squeezing this gunk through my hands. Jumeirah didnt want to use her hands but she had a wonderful time making cuppucinos, then using all sorts of pouring and spooning things to transfer the first mixture into various bowls.

And, with only a little bit of encouragement, she had a go at playing in the gloopy slime :) This stuff is really fun ! I tinted the second lot so we can see what happens to the two mixures when left overnight.



( Jared left us after he saw me start using my hands and headed to the not-so-messy playdough).

And the last thing we did today was to try out the slope of our new grass hill. Jumeirah and Jared have been trying out rolling balls down it and rolling the trucks down it, but today Jumeirah got game and tried sitting on the truck to go down it :) SO MUCH MORE FUN!


Even Amahli had a go thanks to Daddy :)

its the process not the product: playdough

Playdough today Mum" my eager 4 year old announces at breakfast. No problem, I thought as I began to pull the stuff out of the cupboard. "No Mum, I' m going to do it today, all by myself". Its on the tip of my tongue to say " no its faster if I do it" "its too messy for you to do" and just plain "no, not today", but I took a second and thought about it ( rare at 7am to be able to do that really!). How often do I say " no" when really she could do it herself? How often do I do things for her cos its easier and less trouble?? Why not let her have a go? So I took a big breath and said "Ok." (Hey whats a brand new kitchen when your making playdough?!? ;))

And so she found the ingredients and laid them out. Found the recipe on the cream of tartar pack ("Wow! Isnt that handy Mum!") Gets the pot out of the cupboard along with a spoon...cant find a measuring cup bigger than a 1/3 cup. No worries we'll just work it out...


"Mum not food colouring today, it needs to be bright and happy"... Hmmm ok so we will add real paint. Not too difficult, slightly more messy but still ok.

"Mum we definitely need two different colours". Oh no come on really?? This means two batches of playdough to make, two lots of mess, two pans, twice as long to make.....and my 7am brain again says "no really one colour is enough" but somehow we decide that it would be much more fun to be able to play with two colours.

*sigh*

And so, by herself, she begins to make her purple bubblegum-looking playdough. We talked about how three 1/3 cups is the same as one normal cup, how adding more purple paint makes it darker, and how it looks good enough to eat :)

She read out the recipe herself, I helped with the cooking part (thankfully I was allowed to do that part seeing as I tend to burn it everytime I wasnt sure how it would turn out.. possibly better no doubt!)

Purple done. Now onto Pink!






And its funny, it took us most of the morning to make it all and clean up and we only played with it about 10 minutes. But it was the process that she thoroughly enjoyed and learnt so much from. And she was really proud of herself as well.


And I realised that maybe, just maybe, I should say " yes, why not!?" more often :)

whats in your house?/tracing/drawing for babies

I found this great idea from a website I subscribe to called "Lets Explore". Its great to get ideas from new places! I keep them in a seperate file on my computer for those " help my brain is gone" days....

Anyway, this idea was really easy and got Jumeirah to work on her counting and adding skills and also kept her busy whilst I unpacked yet another box :) Jared was happy today to help daddy water again so he wasnt interested as much. Goodness knows what will happen next week when he goes back to work! Will have to be super organised :)
I printed off the PDF from Lets Explore and gave it to Jumeirah with the instructions that she needed to tally up everything on the list: how many bathrooms, how many beds, how many windows etc. and she happily set off. She has some trouble in writing numbers as we havent done a lot of practising with them so we will continue number activities throughout the week.


I have also been realising that my youngest monkey ( whos about the somehow turn ONE!) is really interested in everything Jumeirah and Jared are doing. So I have started to allow her to experiment with textas and pencils as well as the painting she did last week. Strapped into her high chair not only is fantastic as she cant go anywhere and for 5 minutes shes not climbing my legs, but I am also not finding lidless textas on a lounge or random steaks along the walls! She is one happy contained explorer :) ITs also great for her to practise pulling off lids which is her current favourite thing to do.



The other thing I did recently was something very specific for my poor perfectionist child who cant have anything less than exactly how its supposed to be . Jumeirah wanted to draw a picture of a mermaid for her beloved preschool teacher. Only she couldnt draw the head properly. After three growls and a number of crashes into bin I realised she was throwing them away in frustration and thought of a way I could help.

rescued from the bin, this one had a wonky arm too

I talked to her about what she didnt like in her picture and apparently she couldnt get the head right. So instead of throwing them away, I introduced the very simple process of tracing. I got her to trace the parts of her mermaid she did like and then redo the head without tracing. She was much happier with this and quite enjoyed copying her picture. She then painted it, which luckily turned out perfect the first time :)


"a beautiful mermaid in a rainbow ocean"

coloured sand

This is a quick and easy one tonight.. its already 11.34pm and I am pretty exhausted but thought I would post this quick and easy craft for you :) Arent I just lovely.

I wasnt well yesterday thus I missed a day of blog and today we have entertained again tonight ( 4 nights out of 5 this week!) (crazy) but today I was being asked to do something "fun". So out of the packing boxes came my containers of homemade coloured sand. I made this some time ago but it last for ages so it was still good to go.
Colouring sand is really easy. I do mine with food colouring so its safe to use. Find a container and fill about a quarter with sand ( I use old butter containers) To the sand, add a squirt of food colouring. Now you can have as dark a colour as you want. I start off with a squirt and add to it if it isnt dark enough. The colour will lighten as the sand dries. Lay a kitchen baking tray out and cover the base with the coloured wet sand. You need a fairly even and not too thick layer of sand for this to work properly. Lay in the sun until its completely dry. Break up clumps with a spoon. I put each colour into a different container WITH A LID as it tends to go everywhere! Colours are a bit hard to see but they are green, blue, red and maroon.

To use the sand, I gave Jumeirah and Jared 4 colours of sand, some white glue and a large clear container to "contain" the sand... once I did a free style with this craft and got it on the floor. No big deal until I mopped the floor a few days later and mopped red and blue food colouring all over white grout... not good no.

Both kids love this for different reasons. Jared likes the "sprinkle sprinkle" part of pinching the sand and sprinkling it on the glue, Jumeirah likes the gluing bit best. But they worked together and had lots of fun.

The glue can be used to paint a picture and then add the sand or better yet, let them just drizzle glue all over it and then add sand. Either way it turned out pretty good!