Smellydough

I know, i hear you say..."Not another play dough recipe!" But wait, this one is my favourite. Great texture and smells delicious, give it a go!
I found this recipe in a cookbook called "Gifts from the kitchen" by Company's Coming, If you can get your hands on it, its a fabulous book with so many beautiful ideas to make and do
So for this recipe you need
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup salt
1 pack of fruit flavoured drink mix
2 tsp. cream of tatar
1 cup water
1 tbsp oil
Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium saucepan then stir in water and oil. Heat and stir until thickened to the consistency of mashed potatoes. Cool for 5 mins then knead it on a floured surface until dry.

We made a lime and an orange smelly dough and it smelt lovely. We found we didn't need any colouring added to it as the drink mix was vibrant enough but you could add your own colours.

Browning apple experiment

Tara has had an interest in experiments lately and a fascination about browning fruit so we did a simple little science experiment that she really enjoyed.
She helped cut up two apples and one lemon. We placed the sliced apple onto plates and labeled them "lemon juice" and "no lemon juice". Tara squeezed the lemon juice on the one sliced apple and we waited a day to see the result although she had already had her own hypothesis
Which she proved to be correct. Lemon juice will stop her apple from going brown!

Ladybug play tub

This sensory play tub was made up of from our previous post when we made a sensory farm. The grass is coloured coconut and i added some wooden ladybugs of varying sizes and some leaves, along with a wooden pond with green frogs.
Making the most of the afternoon sun in the cold winter, sensory tubs are always a hit!

Pom Pom's for Baby

Mason is now 6 months and really enjoying his play time so Tara decided to make him his first pom pom.
A great soft toy that he can explore and manipulate with his little fingers.
First we needed to make the template which consists of two circles on a thick piece of cardboard. We used a glass for the outer circle and sticky tape roll for the inner circle then cut them out
The template should look similar to this

Now for the fun bit! Cut your wool into strips of about 1 metre or whatever your child can manage, starting from the outside weave the wool into the center and out and around again making sure always to finish your wool length on the outside. Do this until all the cardboard is covered in wool

Next step is to use scissors to cut all around the outside of the circle. It's easiest to keep your scissors tip in between the two pieces of cardboard to guide you through. It will then look like this..

Take a length of wool and wrap it around the centre of the pom pom and knot it as tightly as possible, this is what will keep your pom pom together. Lastly cut through your cardboard disc and removed it completely. Trim your pom pom so it is even and you have a simple, homemade pom pom that will delight your little one!

Nut and Bolt matching

I have had this on my list to do for a while now and when our easel broke it gave me a perfect piece of wood to use. A few leftover nuts and bolts that hubby no longer needed and we had our own nut and bolt matching activity
I used superglue to keep the bolt in place on the wood and i placed the nuts in a container next to the activity when i presented it to Tara. She chose one nut and guessed which one it would fit until they were all on the correct bolt. Like most Montessori activities this is self correcting so there is no need for the parent to be involved in the activity.

A2 homemade ice-cream

We are big fans of A2 milk http://www.a2milk.com.au/
So when i found a simple recipe for homemade ice-cream i thought we would give it a go with our own milk to make A2 Ice-cream!
The recipe is easy...
3/4 cup of A2 milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
A tray of ice-cubes
6 tablespoons of salt
1/2 cup water
powdered flavouring if you wish, milo/nesquik etc
To prepare it...
Combine milk,sugar and flavouring in a small zip lock bag. Seal it and shake it until combined.
In a large zip lock bag place your ice cubes, salt and water.
Put the small zip lock bag into the large zip lock bag and seal.
Gently squish the bags together for 5-10 minutes. This will start to freeze the milk and the longer you do this for the thicker your ice-cream will be...

Yummy homemade A2 strawberry ice-cream!