Happy Chinese New Year!

One of my (Chinese) New Year Resolutions is to update my poor neglected blog more often! This week we've celebrated Chinese New Year with some lovely crafts and activities for kids of all ages, as well as trying some Chinese Food.

Using footprints to make a horse picture was very popular, the children really enjoyed the tickly feeling of the paint on their feet!

  

They made Chinese lanterns too - great for practicing scissor skills:

Using some printables from the fantastic Red Ted Art the older children made these Chinese Dragons

Noodles made for some lovely messy play:

And we tried a variety of different Chinese food today, chicken and veg stir fry for dinner and vegetable spring rolls and prawn crackers for lunch!

Happy Mother's Day!

We've spent the week making lots of lovely presents and cards for our Mummys! I wanted to make things where the children could really get involved in and enjoy the process.
We made truffles that had crushed biscuits in them, it was lots of fun making the crumbs:

So was mixing and rolling the truffles, as well as decorating a cone to put them in:

Painting the cards and a flower pot was also fun! We went to the garden and I let the children choose which flowers they wanted to put in their flower pot.

The end result looked pretty good too:

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus!

Heddiw ro'n ni'n dathlu Dydd Santes Dwynwen gyda crefftiau a coginio:
Today we were celebrating Santes Dwynwen Day (the Welsh equivalent of St Valentine) with crafts and baking:

 Quality sweet wrappers stuck onto some sticky back plastic make a lovely suncatcher!

Oes ti ddim yn gwybod amdano Santes Dwynwen, dyma'r stori/If you don't know about Santes Dwynwen, heres' the story; Pwy Oedd Santes Dwynwen?

A festival of Christmas activities!

We've rounded off a brilliant year with some lovely Christmassy activities. I've not got round to blogging much as we've been so busy, so here's a quick run down:

We've made christmassy cupcakes:

 Saltdough decorations:

 Mincepies:

 We've partied!

 We've played with snowy sensory trays:

 And peppermint christmas tree playdough:

 We've decorated the Christmas tree:

 And exlpored a Christmassy discovery box:

 Done Christmassy colouring in:

 Made snowmen:

And gingerbread Christmas trees:

 Explored the oaty, pepperminty Christmas sensory tray:

 Gone on a trip to Winter Wonderland:

 Made Christmas cards:

 Been to see the Coca Cola lorry:

 And finished off with Christmas dinner:

It's been so much fun - hope Father Christmas brings something lovely for all these good little boys and girls!

Today was B-day!

We made some letter Bs (and bs!) today, once I'd cut out all the pieces it was easy enough for the children to glue them all on:

You can't tell very well from this picture but I made their toast into letter Bs using a cookie cutter:

 

Then we had fun with a Big Bucket of Bubbles:

And I drew some Bs on the wall for them to paint off with water:

We also made some Butterflies by painting kitchen roll with watered down paint:

Stained Glass Windows

Inspired by this post on Red Ted Art, we made some 'Stained Glass Windows' today. As I was doing it with 2 year olds I didn't attempt a theme, I just cut up a load of tissue paper and let them do what they wanted:

The result was really pretty!

And when her older siblings saw what she was doing they wanted to join in - but with their own ideas, this is apparently a fairy!

This activity was a big hit and so easy to set up as well - just a card frame around a piece of contact paper.

Artibods Swansea/Waterfront Nippers

Elin and I just got back from the monthly Waterfront Nippers session at the Waterfront Museum in Swansea. Run by Artibods it takes place on the last Friday of every month and has different themes and activities for preschoolers. This week the theme was 'cars' and we made a Car Air Freshener out of felt and essential oils (I'll definitely be trying that one at home at some point!) did some sticking and gluing, painting and playdoh. It's all free and lots of fun for little ones!

Sul y Mamau Hapus/Happy Mother's Day!

We've been making some very simple gifts for Mother's Day - something that both my 21 month old and my 3 year old mindee can manage with minimal help: a heart card made out of handprints and some heart and butterfly cookies. Not very adventurous but very sweet!