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