A Sunflower grown from LOVE

This is a gentle story about unhappiness, bullying and reconciliation, with an understated message which is nevertheless important to small children. With the Spring sunshine out it seemed such a perfect day to plant a sunflower and do some craft. Master 3 had a friend over so we got busy making these cute flowers. There's something really special about a painting that has your child's hand prints on them. Maybe it's that I can cherish it forever and ever and remember those chubby little hands that I love so much. 

I started by drawing a small cirlce on a sheet of paper so Master 3 could paint around it with his hand.

Cover the whole hand with yellow paint and make a hand print on your paper, make sure the hand print faces outwards to depict the petals on the sunflower.

Using green tissue paper cut up into small squares make a stem by pasting it on with glue.

Get some real seeds (whatever you have in the cupboard will do) and put some glue in the centre of the sunflower and sprinkle them to cover.

This is a great fine motor activity as you can see Master 3 and Little Miss 3 concentrating hard to pick up the little seeds in their fingers.

Paint the pointer finger green to use for printing the grass along the bottom of the page....

Here is the finished sunflower, made with love and one that I can keep forever!

Pirates Ahoy Party

A couple of weeks ago my boys were invited to a friends Pirate Party. It was so much fun,so full of Pirate activities, games and fun that I wanted to share it with you.

As we arrived at the gate we knew we were in Pirate Land!

Ahoy Me Hearties it's the Captain Birthday Boy!

My two little Prates were so excited about the day.....

Playing with some big and little Pirates!

Pretend playing with our Pirate friends!

We even walked the plank ....

What fun it was having a three-legged race!

We went fishing for treasure!

We pinned the treasure on the map!

We had a treasure hunt and finally found the treasure!

We had some face-painting and tattoos!

Love the pirate swords in the fruit!

Pirate sausages in bread and fish fingers with sauce, just what a pirate needs!

Pirate Pizzas!

Tiny Teddy Pirates on their ships!

And of course a cake fit for a Pirate!

Loved the treasure chest loot boxes!

All Pirates at the party received an eye patch and a bandanna to take home too!

Stick Patterns

I'm working on developing Master 3's mathematical vocabulary at the moment and finding he is loving it. Maths activities are so much fun with little one's as they are all hands-on and quick and easy to put together. This week we have been looking at making two-coloured patterns.

You can use just about anything around the house to do this little activity, I love colored match sticks. You can pick these up from any discount store.

Master 3 happily made three different patterns using his sticks. Get your little one to say their pattern out loud as this helps them to understand the repeating factor involved.

Then I gave him a piece of black card and some PVA glue and he happily made these stick patterns.

A Pirate's Adventure

Master 5 really enjoys the opportunity to construct things using boxes, containers and pretty much anything else he can source from the house (or his Nan's). Today we have had a Pirate Day at home and along with Master 3 have been busy doing lots of Pirate crafts. While Master 3 had is daytime nap today, Master 5 asked if he could have the empty milk container sitting on the sink to make a pirate ship. He likes time on his own to work on these little projects without any interruptions from his younger brother.

We cut the plastic milk bottle down to look like a ship and then I left him to it ......

Here's master 5 busy putting some Pirate play figures into his ship with blu-tac.

This is a little box that he wrapped in baking paper and decorated with gems from the craft box.

Love the tiny telescope at the rear of the ship! He has rolled a tiny piece of baking paper and used sticky tape to attach it.

Every Pirate Ship needs a plank and a sail!

He has decorated the sides by sticking on mosaic pieces left over from another craft activity and cutting out pictures of pirates from some cheap cards we had.

I love this. Here Master 5 has scrunched up some baking paper to make an island and stuck a plastic palm on it. He told me this is where the treasure is hiding! Ahoy!

Polly Want A Cracker?

Last week Master 3 picked up this library book on our weekly visit and asked me to read it to him this morning. It is a lovely book, and gave us the chance to talk about the many different types of birds we know and see on a regular basis. There has been the ongoing topic of swooping magpies in our house since being attacked while out riding a couple of weeks ago. The boys and I had a good look at pictures of parrots on the Internet. I like to use the Internet with them occasionally, particularly for a simple task like searching Google Images for a particular picture.

We decided to look through the craft box and see if we still had a collection of coloured feathers and make a parrot.

This is a very simple yet effective craft activity that both the boys really enjoyed. All you need is some paint, PVA glu and coloured feathers from the discount store.

The boys painted a parrot. I left Master 5 to paint his own, however did draw a rough outline for Master  3 to guide him.

Then I gave them both some coloured feathers and PVA glue and left them to decorate the parrot.