Garden Small World Play

Wugs is fascinated with flowers at the moment.  Thankfully we live in an area that is plentiful with them. Lining the path from our condo to the local supermarket is a hedge full of little orange and yellow flowers. Every time we come back from our walks, Wugs insists on picking an orange flower from the hedge and taking it back home with him.

I decided to have some fun and experiment with a small world  play based on his love of flowers and incorporating a couple of sensory materials.  I added a little edible treat to the small world play in the form of milo chocolate cereal balls which surprisingly took him a while to discover.  He played with this for a full hour and was so careful with the scene that when he finished, we were able to fasten down the lid and play with it the next day.

What we used:
Large shallow container
Green play dough (following this recipe)
Rolled oats
Artificial flowers
Small plastic flowers
Small plastic bird figurines
Toilet roll
Milo chocolate cereal
Scoops
Dishes

Expanding Vocabulary Using Old Greetings Cards

I'm in decluttering mode at the moment.  It's a therapeutic activity I turn to whenever I feel there is just too much stuff in the house and things are spinning out of control.  I found myself in the spare room this afternoon sorting through an old box of stationery that I brought across from England. I discovered some beautiful old greetings cards and art postcards there that I have held onto for years.  I didn't really want to throw them out, but I couldn't find a use for them as it's been a few years since I wrote a letter by hand.  Just then a little head popped up...Elijah gathered up the cards and started pointing out the different things he could see.  It occurred to me that this would be a wonderful way for him to expand his vocabulary and an interesting (and cheaper) alternative to using flash cards.

Play Dough Gift Tubs

It was Wugs' birthday party today and I was in a rush to complete my play dough gift tubs which I added to the party bags for the children to take away.  They were a fairly inexpensive gift to make.  I made a couple of batches of play dough using the recipe from this site and dyed it blue, green and red and filled the tubs to two-thirds.  The remaining play dough I dyed yellow (which came out a darker yellow than I anticipated).  I added some gold glitter to the yellow play dough and filled the tubs to the top separating it from the first batch of play dough with wax paper.  Finally I inserted a cookie cutter and they were ready to go.

What we used:
Playdough:
Flour
Salt
Vegetable oil
Cream of tartar
Food colouring
Glitter

Cookie cutter
Small tubs