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!

'Cloud Dough'/homemade Moon Sand

Another day, another idea stolen from my favourite blog The Imagination Tree. It's basically just flour and glitter mixed with oil...it turns into a Moon Sand like substance and the kids LOVED it. They played with it for a good 40 minutes, we made 'sandcastles', they filled cups and bowls with 'ice cream' for me and we used some of my Moon Sand moulds. It just looks like a grey mess from the pictures but is actually quite pretty and sparkly in the flesh and so easy and quick to mix up.

Chocolate playdough heaven!

Some of my favourite blogs have been posting lots of great playdough ideas in the last few weeks. It inspired me to do something a little bit different, so we used a recipe on Nuturestore and made some 'chocolate' playdough.

At first I set up it up as 'mud' with some pebbles and tractors for my 3 year old mindee to play with:

This was fun but nowhere near as big a hit as making cakes and chocolates with it was:

 Even my older 2 had great fun with this one.

We'll definitely be taking the Playdough Pledge next week and finding more interesting recipes to use!

Helfa Gair/Word Hunt

Another idea stolen from the fantastic Imagination Tree blog. I wrote the names of objects on various items around the garden in chalk. Then I told the kids to go and find all 15 objects and write them down. They loved it! The original idea is to give your child a different coloured chalk so they can copy over the words - this would be perfect for preschoolers. As mine were a bit older I wanted them to write the words independently. An easy peasy way to get the kids practicing their reading and writing!

Fruity Fromage Frais Cake

I love the recipes on Cbeebies I can Cook, they're usually pretty healthy and the kids can do most of it themselves. We made this today, all the children were able to join in and it tasted delicious!

What a lovely day for doing the laundry!

This has always been a big hit with my children; a box of soapy water, dolls clothes and a child-size washing line. Nothing like doing a spot of laundry on a sunny day!

All Aboard for Some Pirate Adventures

One of the children I look after is really, really into Pirates at the moment so I declared today 'Pirate Day'! We made Pirate Flags and Pirate Telescopes, we dressed up as Pirates and did a Pirate Treasure Hunt.

It was all really simple, the Flags were made with black paper and some pirate print outs...

 ....the telescopes were simply rolled up card decorated with stickers...

.... and I made treasure maps with brown parcel paper and 'coins' with foil covered chocolate buttons.

Excuse the poor quality of the pictures - not only was my camera playing up but I struggled to get anyone to keep their flag still enough for me to take a photo of it!