Teddy biscuits in bubble baths

Teddy's in a bubble bath

We had a play date set up so i thought id try making these treats that the kids loved helping with too!

They are so simple and only need a few ingredients..

Chocolate ripple biscuits

Small marshmallows

Tiny Teddy biscuits

I put each choc ripple biscuit into the microwave for 20 seconds or until soft. Moulded it GENTLY when they came out and placed them into a muffin tray. Then i put in the tint teddy and covered with marshmallows. Placed the whole tray into the oven at 100 degrees for 2 minutes or until you see marshmallows JUST soften. Take out the tray and press the marshmallows down lightly the mould them in to each other. Let cool and enjoy! Will keep for a few days in airtight container 

String painting

While "Sissy" is at school we start our new year of activities for Mason!

This is our string painting with some neon colours.

I used small lengths of string mixed into some paint and plenty of butchers paper.

Mason is a child who prefers not to have messy hands so i am providing more experiences to allow him to feel comfortable with the sensation.

This is important for not only sensory awareness but can also relate to food. Some children will not eat foods that are messy and this can affect diet with refusal to eat certain food groups. Thankfully we aren't that far along but watching Mason in a messy environment showed me he was uneasy and i needed to address that for him.

Tara's first day of school

Our grown up miss 5 all ready for her first day of school

For those of you who has been with us since the beginning, i thank you for your company and hope the journey with your children has been as jam packed with fun as what ours has.

This blog started all because of this little girl and her thirst for educational activities. She is a motivated, creative little soul who will succeed in whatever she chooses in her life.

Not only was this a milestone day for her but also for me.

Having a child by your side 24/7 for 5 years grows a deep bond that no one can describe or replace. I will miss her smiles,giggles,cuddles and even the crankiness while she is at school but i know this is the path she is seeking. The opportunity to grow through new experiences and mixing with many personalities will allow her to learn self skills to manage.

While i struggle to hand over my child to the care of a school teacher, I look forward to being here for her  when she needs advice,words of encouragement or just a cuddle from mum.

My long days of play are over but a new stage of our mother daughter relationship have only just begun....

Tara & Mason's LEGO party!

Wow! Seems like forever since my last blog. We haven't vanished or stopped blogging. I'd love to tell you we have been on a break holidaying in the tropics or something lovely like that but reality is we have been flat out!

Christmas along with 2 birthdays within 2 weeks keeps mummy on her toes which is why we try to squash it all in together to celebrate. The kids share a party (while we can still get away with it!) as most of their friends are the same anyways so when Tara chose her Lego theme the preparations got underway and here is the result...

Lego invitations

The two birthday buddies with their proud parents

The food table

Outdoor area

Mason's LEGO shirt

Necklace and bracelet making

Paint your own brick

Free play

The LEGO cake

LEGO name

LEGO name

Making marshmallow pops

Finished marshmallow pops

Lego cookies 

LEGO men lollipops and LEGO fruit holder

LEGO water labels

Pass the "Brick"

We used Tara's LEGO shaped lunchbox to pass around the circle.If the music stopped while you were holding it. You got to choose a LEGO gift from the prize box in the middle of the circle

BRICK and SPOON race

A plastic spoon and a 8 sized brick from start to finish without dropping it

Build a LEGO man game

You have to find each part of your LEGO man in each container. Put him together and first to show me a complete man with legs,body,head and hair wins.

Each container was filled with sand, bird seed, soapy water or rice.

BRICK transfer game

A pile of 4 sized LEGO in the center of the table. Each person has a bowl and straw. Within 2 minutes you have to transfer as many LEGO pieces as possible into your bowl without using hands. Just sucking to hold the brick on the straw. 

Prize Box

LEGO head PINATA

How i made the PINATA

2yr old gift bags

Colouring pages from LEGO.com, board book, stickers,play dough, builder bubbles, LEGO ring and a mini figure

LEGO favour heads

Hubby spray painted these baby food jars and i added the face. Filled them with wrapped lollies as favours

5yr old gift bags

colouring pages from LEGO.com. a homemade LEGO crayon, stickers,play dough,bubbles,a mini figure, lollies in a legohead jar, lego ring, and a duplo thank you card

Homemade LEGO play dough

I found a LEGO mould at a cake decorating shop and used it to fill with play dough and gently release to make LEGO play dough

Mini Cakes and a special visit!

In the school holidays we had a lovely visit from some of our Montessori friends Julian, Alyxia and Elodyn. Julian has many adventures with her two beautiful daughters and we shared stories of our love of parenting and learning from each other.

You can find Julian's blog here...

http://www.alyxia.org/

After we showed the girls around our place and had a play we sat down to some mini cakes. These little cuties would be great for any tea party or playdate. I gave the girls two oreo's, some icing and a few decorations.Then the decorating fun began!

Here is the lovely Alyxia sprinkling some sprinkles on her mini cake. Once you have iced and decorated the mini cake just use a sharp knife to cut a slice out and enjoy your party!

Shoelace box

We had been reading the lovely Golden book "The shoelace box" at bedtime as it is one of Tara's favourites. Such a lovely story for the preschool age and so the next day we made our own shoelace box to practice for school next year...

We needed one shoe box,some ribbon of all widths,textures and colours and scissors

With the scissors i made two holes about 2 inches apart. The ribbon i tied together at the ends and

threaded through the holes.Having different colours helps distinguish when folding and crossing. Tara found the thick satin ribbons easiest and in time will manage the thinner ones.

 One happy girl after tying her first shoelace!

Origami sight words

I remembered folded paper games from when i was younger and they were always so much fun at school so i googled the instructions to remind me how to fold them...

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-fortune-teller.html

On each section i added a word for Tara to read and then in the last section that you open up a little note like "Your a star!" "You get a big hug" "one extra book at bedtime for you!"

We made big ones and small ones and even a tiny one for Mason with colours on it to choose from.

 If you have never played one before they are very simple. Using your thumb and pointer, you move the origami open and shut. You ask a friend to choose a word, colour, number or whatever you have on your origami and the you move the origami open and shut to spell the word, colour or number.You do this again on the inside then open the triangle up to reveal the last message. Give it a go,fun for all ages!



Dino toothbrush holder

Sometimes you just need a little incentive to get kids WANTING to brush their teeth!

I picked up this plastic dinosuar second hand from the local baby and kids markets with the exact plan of what to do with it....Hand it to daddy to make. I'm not familiar with drills and tools (Mason is still teaching me the difference between excavators and dump trucks!) so i asked Daddy to put two holes through the middle to fit a toothbrush. Daddy came back with two holes plus added another for drainage underneath to prevent mould-clever thinker!

I think the little man was pleased as punch!

Lego Crayons

Ok, so word is on the street that this years party for my kids will be a LEGO party!

So in true organised style, we decided not to leave all the preparations till the day before and to start organising favours and other non perishables asap! 

We found this silicone brick mould on ebay (i think it was $5 including postage from hong kong?) Filled it up with crayons that were broken and placed it in the oven at 150 degrees celcius for about 15-20mins or until melted. Very carefully then we placed the whole mould into the freezer overnight.

In the morning we popped them out of the moulds and there we have our Lego crayon bricks to add to our gift bags.

Couldron of fish

Mason got into the Halloween season this year too with his couldron full of fish!

With his fishing rod, he caught a magnetic fish and pulled it out to tell me the colour he found. Great little game for toddlers to increase their attention spand, vocab and fine motor.

Pumpkin sight words

Tara is really enjoying reading. It may have something to do with how mummy jumps up and down,squeezes her tightly and says how proud i am of her but yes she is happily reading a book each night to me and extending her sight words as she goes.

Being Halloween and all,i made up a pumpkin full of sight words during October she used them for lots of games and activities.

1.Place the sticks in a line and play long jump whatever you land closest to,you need to read-parents can get involved too!

2.Chooses a word a day and if one person says that word you have to pick a stick from the pumpkin and read it aloud.

3.Pick a colour each night before bed and run through all the words then swap colours the next night.

So many ways to get reading without even realising!

Halloween 2012

Happy Halloween Peeps love Tara & Mason



Grape construction

We had tried marshmallow construction a few months back but after our fruit cake we had a few grapes left over that we thought we would see how constructing towers of toothpicks and grapes would work out! Tara really enjoyed it,Mason was a little to young to get the hang of it but it was yet another activity that provided language opportunities about shapes and height.

Mathematical bottletops

Our collection of bottle tops seem to grow at the same rate as used toilet rolls! Fast! To reduce,reuse,recycle...we decided to make a mathematical problem solving game. I marked out the bottle tops with numbers 1-12 as well as the + - and = signs. I made up an equation and Tara had to choose her bottle top answer. Then she made one for me and so forth. Its a great little activity that can grow with your child. leaving out a part of the middle of the equation or adding times by or percentages.

"Fruit" cake

Recently one of Tara's preschool friends had her last day at school so we decided to make her a little going away cake that was allergy friendly,yummy and healthy!

This tower of fruit is a watermelon, rockmelon and pineapple carved out of its skin and held together with one wooden skewer. I also used cookie cutters(and some play dough cutters!) to create shapes to "stick" to the tower.These stay in place well as the juices help it stick together. Tara practiced her sequencing by threading the grapes in order of red and green onto wooden skewers then Mason added a strawberry at the end. I then stuck these into the watermelon base. Lastly i cut up some leftover fruit and placed it around the base.

This idea is great for first birthday parties or those tricky parties with children allergic to wheat/dairy/egg etc.

Garden bed rock labels

We have been in the garden planting our spring vegetables. Most of them were from seed so to help us remember what we planted and where the children made these rock labels. We collected some smooth rocks that we found around the property then Mason painted the whole rock  in one colour.We dried them in the sun and then Tara used a permanent marker to draw the picture that corresponded to the word i wrote on the rock. She then painted her drawing in and we finished them with a spray of glitter spray to protect them from the elements.