-
Summer Butterfly Collages: An Invitation to Create – using materials as a stimulus
I love to wander around “Euro” or “Pound” shops looking out for bits and pieces to use in art projects or play activities. On one such trip recently I found these card butterfly cut outs. I’m not a huge fan of using templates and cut outs but I find if they are used in the right way they can be very useful for creative process art projects. Often I use some sort of a stimulus for our art activities – a book, an item, a picture, or even a piece of music. I also use the actual art materials as a stimulus, which is what I did for this…
-
Super Soft Colour Surprise Playdough
I love trying out new play dough ideas. Doodles and Oodles love playing with playdough, they play with it most days. I haven’t made it in a number of weeks as the play dough recipe I generally use makes a dough that can be stored in the fridge for weeks and weeks and used over and over again. Recently on Pinterest I spotted this really great idea by Learn Play Imagine for Colour Surprise Playdough – it looked like so much fun, I was completely intrigued by it and have been waiting for the right opportunity to try it. I changed the recipe as I wanted to try out a…
-
Fun Pre Writing Activities – Early Literacy & Fine Motor Skills Development
Over the past few weeks we have been having quite a bit of fun developing our fine motor skills, in particular we have been working of prewriting activities. Doodles is starting school in September and is very eager to do homework at the moment (let’s hope he maintains that enthusiasm in the years to come!!!). Activity 1 – Writing Trays Using a Variety of Materials: Sand Compost/Peat Moss Flour Rice Paint Linseed What do you need: Trays, baking sheets Flour Rice Sand Compost/peat moss Coloured paper/card Paint Paint brushes Lolly pop sticks Pencils Both Doodles and Oodles love this activity and it is so easy to set up. Simply add…
-
Messy Play Madness – A Spur of the Moment Messy Play/Sensory Activitiy
At lunchtime today Doodles and Oodles asked me if they could make Gloop. I agreed immediately and started to get out the cornflour and paint etc. (see here for our gloop recipe). They then began shouting out other things that they would like to add to it. So today we are sharing our spur of the moment messy play fun. It was their little experiment to see what types of textures they could make using a variety of materials. What we used: Cornflour/cornstarch Plain flour Olive oil Paint Glitter PVA glue Mini pasta shells Shredded dry noodles Water Animal toys Smurfs Wooden spoons, balloon whisk What we did: I’m…
-
2 Super Easy and Quick Last Minute Easter Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
Happy Easter! This morning Doodles and Oodles were dying to get outside to play but couldn’t as Mr G is cutting all the hedges with a supersized power tool of some description. So for health and safety reasons and in order to maintain my sanity while struggling to keep two very outdoorsy children indoors I suggested we have some more Easter fun. You can see what other Easter fun we have been having here, here and here !!!!! Glittery Egg Decorations: What you need: Polystyrene eggs PVA Glue Glitter Pins Ribbon I bought polystyrene eggs last Easter and we had a few left over so Oodles had great fun rolling…
-
Easter Holiday Adventures Part 2 – Fun and Free Frolics!!!!
I haven’t had much time to blog this week. My son is on holidays from preschool so we have been havibng great fun getting out and about. The weather has also been amazing so we have been outdoors all day, everyday. We are all sleeping like logs and appetites have improved and everyone is in good humour – yaaaaay! Today I am sharing with you 3 fun and free activities from our adventures so far this week. 1. Splashy Fun at the Beach! We all put on our rain gear and welly boots and headed to the beach early one morning this week. We are very lucky to live about…
-
10 Fantastic Spring/Easter Books
There are so many beautiful children’s books with Spring themes available, we have so many of them I wasn’t sure where to start with this post. With the help of Oodles and Doodles, I have put together out top 10 Spring themed books! 1. The Velveteen Rabbit – not strictly about Spring but a gorgeous, timeless story . 2. That’s Not My Bunny – one of Oodles’ current bedtime touchy-feely favourites. 3. Spot’s First Easter – a fun, colourful, simple, lift-the-flap, Easter egg hunt book. 4. Emma’s Lamb – in true Kim Lewis style, a stunningly beautiful book about life on the farm in Spring time 5. Little Tail –…
-
Easter Art for Toddlers and Preschoolers
We finally got around to starting our Easter artwork today. I’m sure that we will manage a few more seasonal projects over the next week or so. Today we have 2 to share with you. Potato-print Easter Chicks: These were so much fun to do.. Doodles and Oodles love printing so there was great excitement when I handed them potatoes and Lego/Duplo to print with today. What do you need? Potatoes, cut in half and allowed to dry for a couple of hours Lego or Duplo blocks Paint Paper Instructions: Have fun! We used the bricks to create our grass Our chicks were made by printing with the potatoes. We…
-
Displaying Children’s Books -Encouraging Young Readers
We are book lovers here at Our Little House in the Country. Our home is full to the brim with books. I recently donated about 10 large boxes of books, mostly novels, in order to make room for the rest. I have been collecting children’s books for over 15 years and we have hundreds. We have picture books, board books, children’s novels, non-fiction books, story anthologies, pop-up books, lift and flap books, you name it we probably have it! Both of my children love to read and look through their books. I have tried to encourage this by displaying the books in a way that is child friendly and accessible…
-
Doodles’s Book of the Week – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
Doodles’ is my 4 ½ year old boy and a serious book lover. His book of choice this week surprised me a little. Not that it’s not a great book as it truly is but because he loved this book when he was younger but seemed to have grown out of it. However, over the last week or so his preschool class have been working on this book, going on their own bear hunts, creating small worlds, painting and drawing their favourite parts of the story etc. So this probably explains his renewed interest in this book. I’m sure that you are familiar with this book but in case you…
