Coloured rice

This was a quirky alternative to sand for the sandbox. They loved messing up the rainbow!

You use uncooked rice, food colouring and vinegar to set it. Then let it dry out on baking trays.

Fun things to do when the boys get home from school. Hunting with water bombs.

This was waiting for the boys when they got home from school today. There would have been more water bombs but they took me hours to fill. They are tricky little beggars!

Lego party food & games & party bags

We had a little birthday tea for Max's birthday and it had a lego theme.

There is tonnes of ideas on the net. This is just the bits I pulled together for his little party tea.

1.Legohead marshmallow cakepops

Dip marshmallows in yellow food paste coloured, melted, white chocolate. And topped with a yellow smartie or skittle. Face painted on with black icing.

Lego head tophat/cakepops

2. Lego brick biscuits. 

Nigella's sugar biscuits covered in coloured water icing and 6 smarties or skittles would work too (with brighter colour matching)

Lego brick biscuits

3. Lego brick sandwiches

This idea went down a storm and I have made them several times since. By request for lunch boxes and for our early doors car journey to legoland! The photo isn't great but hopefully you get the idea. Make a simple sandwich, cut off the crusts and cut in half horizontally. Using a small  round cutter, cut multiple rounds from another piece of bread and stick on 6 to the sandwich using philly or spread. Easy and highly desirable by small and big boys alike!

4. Lego brick juice boxes/cartons.

I found a free printable on one of my internet trawls (sorry I can't find it to post it here) and printed it on coloured paper and wrapped around the juice boxes. Fab idea!

Non lego related food products were served in lego/duplo (sterilised) box/containers. That was a job I could delegate to the boys and kept their hands out of the way for a while!

Duplo made food serving vessel

Other decoration ideas I used;

1. Birthday message written in lego.

2. I found and downloaded a free lego font and  used it to make this backdrop sign.

3. The lego head made of cardboard. which was used in one of the games as well as for decoration.

4 And lots of print outs of head found on the internet.

Games we played

1. Pin the head on the lego man!

2. Throw the lego bean bag in the lego head.

Party bags included
1. Lego bean bags
2. Lego name plates
3. Lego erasers
4. Lego cake
5. Lego pop
6. Homemade lego colouring book

Lego party invite and thank you letters

Colour mixing and mess-free mark making in freezer bags

This is another common idea from pinterest (see Teach, Play, Love- my boys here) adapted to what I had available.

I used large ziplock freezer bags and paint (a lot use coloured hair gel but I don't have any hair gel!). I wanted C to learn to how colours mix to make other colours so I used 2 colours in each bag, and sellotaped the top shut, after expelling any excess air.

C got a lot more from this activity than I expected him to. First of all was the fun of 'squishing', and the fun of 'spreading out' the paint to fill the bag. He used his hand and cars for that.

Then he 'drew' in the paint with an empty pen shell on the table and then we stuck it on a sunny window pain and had a long session mark making with the empty pen, his fingers and even the sellotape roll.  The resulting 'rainbow' looks so lovely on a sunny Spring day!

It was a great success and I recommend it to anyone.

 
 

Bicarb and Coloured Vinegar - Artistic and Scientific!

This was an exercise in trying to improve Max's fine motor skills and strength by using pipettes and syringes to transfer coloured white vinegar into a tray of bicarbonate of soda to make little fizzing mountains of coloured fun!

Fun things to do for when the boys get back from school - Duplo puzzle- ing clue.

This was another idea I found on a late night pinterest hunt. (See my pinterest board entitled Teach, Play love - my boys here for original source)

Today seemed like a great opportunity to actually do this rather than letting it fester, unacheived on the pin board. A parcel arrived for them so I quickly built a duplo tower, stuck some paper on with pritt stick, wrote my clue and then cut the paper on the brick joins so that they separated into a puzzle.

The boys were so excited to find something so fun out of the blue and even more excited when they realised it was a clue! And then when they found the 'surprise' (a box of lego from the internet, paid for with Olly's birthday money!) - well the roof nearly lifted! Great fun!

This year's Pumpkins

A Witchy with a Parsnip nose, hat and a green glowstick instead of a candle

The Witches cat with kebab sticks for whiskers, the stalk for the nose and other cut outs for the ears.

These were from designs the children drew on paper and recreated by their Dad's. The staple gun was particularly successful as scar stitches.

Olive leaf wreaths

We are loving the Gymnastics, swimming and the rowing and, well everything about the Olympics is fabulous; EXCEPT, those silly poncy flower bouquets of garish coloured roses which offend me mortally as an ex florist!!!

So to abate this disgust, I made the boys make some much more classy and sylish olive leaf wreaths!

We made them using green sugar paper strips and stuck on leaf shapes, then backed them with some strong (and trusty) duct tape in a circlet the size of their head. I think the boys look so much better than the male Olympian champions of 2012 with their silly flowers. Much more fitting for men (and women- how good are the women!) of such strength, commitment and endurance.

Fathers Day Interview

This year as part of our fathers day celebration we undertook a Fathers Day Questionnaire Interview as past of the boys card to Daddy. Here is what they said. (Questions were taken from a few of the different, many and varied Father's Day Questionnaire ideas you can find on the internet, plus some of the boys own ideas) We hope to make a tradition of it, at least until Charlie is big enough to answer too!


1. What does Daddy do at work?
Ollie;  He cooks salads. He is a Chef
Max; Makes some food
2. What does Daddy do at home?
Ollie; He relaxes and watches the racing cars and kisses mummy.
Max; Sleeps
3. What does Daddy like to watch on TV?
Ollie: Rugby
Max: Football
4. What does Daddy do after you have gone to bed?
Ollie; Makes dinner and watches farm programmes
Max; Kisses me goodnight
5. Who does Daddy love?
Ollie; Mummy and us
Max; MEEEEE!
6. What is Daddy’s favourite food & drink?
Ollie; Salads & Beer
Max; Pancakes & Beer
7. How do you know when your dad is happy?
Ollie; Because he has a smile on his face and kisses you
Max; When he is smiling
8. What makes Daddy cross?
Ollie; If we shout or if we fight 
Max; I don’t know
9. Name something that your dad is really good at?
Ollie; Cooking and making lego with me
Max; He can do tricks; like exercising 
10. Name something that your dad is not so good at?
Ollie; Maths
Max; Climbing up trees
11. What does your dad do for you that your mum can’t?
Ollie; Makes loads of money, and does good lego
Max; Making lego
12. What three adjectives best describe your dad?
Ollie; Hard working, loving and helpful
Max; Crazy or sumfin?
13. What is your favourite thing to do with Daddy?
Ollie; Playing on the Wii with him
Max; Playing lego with me and Ollie
14.   What do you like the best about your dad?
Ollie; He laughs a lot and smiles and is really happy to see us
Max; When he does shaking to music
15. When is the best time to talk to Daddy?
Ollie; On the weekend
Max; At bedtime
16. What is cool about your dad?
Ollie;  He knows about cool music
Max; Daddy’s not cool.
17. What do you know about your dad that other people may not know?
Ollie; He put love in his salads
Max; We are getting him a present
18. How much do you love Daddy?
Ollie; A million and nine hundred and seven
Max;  I love Daddy a hundred times; more than a house
19. If you could buy Daddy any present in the world what would you buy?
Ollie; a big machine full of beer
Max; Another coffee machine
20. Is there anything you want to say thank you for?
Ollie; For being the best Daddy in the world
Max; Thank you I love you.

Strictly Come Dancing Party Glitter Ball Pinata

 The last item I made for the party was a Glitter Ball pinata.

In retrospect should have sprayed silver under the squares as if you looked carefully could see  the newspaper)

You can just about see the pull string at the bottom (attach the string inside to a wide bit of card so pulls the whole base out)

Punch balloons covered in 2 layers of newspaper dipped in flour and water - drying outside (as drips!)

Boys playing with the punch balloons first

I thought about this for a while and did some online research. This is the youtube clip I found on how to build one. I didn't follow it exactly. I wanted it to be a pull-pinata rather than a bash one so I made a trap door as shown here. I made the squares a ruler width as that was easier and quicker. I ended up using no more nails to stick them on because that was all I had to hand. I filled it with metallic foil wrapping paper that I cut into little square/rectangles, glitter and a few sweeties (though not too many as I was worried about how strong the trap-door would be!) I made it with the image in my mind that my sister would pull it open at the end of the night (after it had served it's dual purpose as a glitter ball decoration) and get showered with confetti and glitter.
It worked well except that there was no where to hang it!

Cookie monster beanbag aim & throw game

This was another monster inspired game that we made and played at Max's monster party. Simple as simple can be, just a cardboard box, painted blue with a mouth cut out and two eyes stuck on to look as much like Sesame streets cookie monster as possible. And some simple felt, cookie shaped, beanbags to toss into the target from a distance. All cobbled together in less than 30mins and cost basically nothing!

Other monster games we played (other than the monster modelling kits shown below), included;

Monster Tag

Pass the monster

Monster statues

Monster dancing to 'monster tunes' such as Monster mash, Lady gaga Monster, She's a monster, a beautiful monster & What's that coming over the hill?Is it a monster?

Monster modelling kits as a Monster party game

More from the monster back log! Here are some homemade monster modelling playdough kits I made as in-party entertainment! They made for a nice change to the usual party games. They were super easy to pull together, I just made a couple of batches of homemade playdough (see the homemade playdough post) and put a couple of balls in a sandwich bag with some googly eyes, pipe cleaners and cut up straws. I then made up a header on powerpoint, printed them off and stuck them to the top of the bags.
We broke them out during the party but you could just as easily give them as great monster party favours.

This was my favourite though!

Junk modelling -Craney truck

Monster feet

More monster party preparations.
I made these monster feet from A5 foam sheets purchased at the pound shop.
I am envisioning them wearing them to play monster tag, or monster statues, or monster bumps.
Idea and pattern from here

Monster birthday invitations

Max is 4 next week and so we are having a little birthday tea at ours this weekend. We asked him what theme he would like, if any, and he said a Monster Party. This seemed fitting!

So we cobbled together some monster party invites using foam sheets, black and white paper and pritt sticks;

Roman centurion/ Eco Warrior

It was Eco week at school this week and the boys could dress up in something they had made from re-utilised and re-cycled bits and bobs.

Ollie has an obsession with picking up hubcaps at the moment so this seemed a good way to get them out the

Things that entertain a 1 year old - part 1

Charlie spend nearly an hour posting chalks through the hole in the water/sand children's picnic table!