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!

Oat-so much fun!

Today's messy play activity was oats! My 2 year old and the 1 year old I was looking after loved this - they scooped them with spoons and put them in cups and bowls, they chucked them all over the floor and ate a fair few as well! Definitely one to do again another day:

Jelly - but not on a plate!

More messy play today, and this time we used Jelly! It's perfect for messy play with babies who still like to put everything in their mouths. I buried some wooden animals in the jelly to encourage the children to get digging around in it. My 2 year old loved it and had a really good time spooning it into different containers and digging out the animals:

Of course, they couldn't resist having a little taste too!

Mud Pie Kitchen

I've seen these on a few parenting blogs and been dying to make one! I cobbled it together from a few bricks and planks of wood and chopped the bottom off some plant pots to make the 'hob rings'. The kids loved it of course - it was messy! Major downside was that they kept bringing me overflowing bowls full of 'soup' so I got pretty muddy myself!

Good Clean Messy Play

This is always popular with toddlers and preschoolers - shaving foam! I put a load of it on trays and added a few drops of paint. I also gave them a paint brush each. They loved mixing up the colours and the sensation of the foam on their hands. My 3 year old had an absolute ball, asked for spoons and cups so he could make 'ice cream'!