Christmas Art

Today's activity was all about celebrating creativity.  The children love crafting and naturally pull out crayons and paper and start drawing even outside of their home environment.  Today I wanted them to choose which supplies we would use to create a craft, without having the constraints of a particular project or theme in mind.  Wugs chose the paints and Dooey chose the colours pink and blue.  This was the first time Dooey was painting on an easel and it was very cute to see Wugs on the other side of that easel with some ink stampers thumping big yellow circles into his sheet of paper.  After Dooey had finished I swapped them around and gave Dooey a paper plate to use with the stampers.  (I find paper plates really handy with small children because they are small and tough, so easy to hold in place and the ridged piece at the edge of the plate can create a nice border if the art work is to be displayed).

Unfortunately Dooey puts everything in his mouth - the paint brush dripping with pink paint, the stampers and even the plate!  He hasn't been very well for over a week so he became easily agitated (I include this just so people know that although we do a lot of crafting, it isn't always easy - we have tantrums over paint brushes and mess all over the floor - all the things you can possibly dread when doing a craft with a little one).  Wugs continued with his painting and started working on a paper plate as well.

I hadn't planned to continue the craft for the rest of the day, but in the evening Wugs pulled up a chair and took down his paper plate and carried on.  (I was inspecting some glitter glue and a snowflake cutter I had purchased at the weekend which Wugs wanted to try out).  We decided to try out the snowflake cutter on their painting which was now dry and Wugs cut out loads of snowflakes.  (Later I used their cut-up painting to make some Christmas cards to send to family and friends).  Afterwards they tried out the glitter glue on their paper plates.  We decided that the paper plates looked like baubles and hung them in their playroom.

Just when I thought stage two of our crafting day was over, Wugs took down another paper plate, folded it in two and made a mouth with it.  He started stamping green circles on to it and took a wet wipe and smudged the green over the surface of the plate, chatting away while he was doing it.  (Wugs likes to imitate Mr Mister Maker from CBBCs).  I asked what he was making and he said "a crocodile" and then I looked closer at the plate and realised that the green circles were the scales and smudged green was his skin.  Unfortunately the glitter glue that Wugs applied to the plate to create eyes, mouth, nose and ears came out so fast that the different features intermingled into one big glittery blob.  Nevertheless, the process of watching Wugs experimenting with effects, colours and different mediums for crafting was fascinating!

What we used:

Paints

Paper

Do-A-Dot ink stampers

Paper plates

Glitter glue

Hobbycraft snowflake cutter

Kitchen foil

Card

Glue

God's Provision - Baking Bread

"Give Us Today Our Daily Bread" (Matthew 6:11)

Today's activity was all about giving thanks for the ways in which God provides for our every day needs, like food.  One of Wugs' favourite activities (and one of my least favourite) is cooking. I had a close friend in Singapore who used to send over her culinary delights every fortnight and she would talk about food with such passion and detail.  I admired her and would nod unknowingly, wondering what it must be like to experience such satisfaction at having spent ages cooking something and for it to taste so delicious.  Well, today God was clearly with us because a miracle happened - we baked bread (something I have never tried before) and it came out brilliantly!  It wasn't burnt, under-cooked, congealed, lumpy, flat (I'm trying to think of all the cooking disasters I've had of late).  It was actually edible and took just 30 minutes to bake.

What we used:

Allinson Easy Bake Yeast (the recipe is on the side of the tin)

Allinson Strong White Bread Flour

Salt

Sugar

Butter

Warm water

I involved Wugs in measuring out the ingredients and Dooey in kneading the dough.  (I gave them a ball of dough to play with as they wished so that they could still enjoy the experience without me worrying that the entire batch would get ruined - given that usually these things get ruined anyway when I'm in the kitchen!)  It was very cute watching them both stand on the play tower.  I remember justifying our need to buy that play tower when I was pregnant with Dooey, on the grounds that it was big enough to hold two children.  Two years later and it was nice to see it being used by both of them, as intended, for the first time.  

   

Creating a Nature Table

"See how the flowers of the field grow.  They do not labour or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these" (Matthew 6:28-29)

Today's activity was almost cancelled as Dooey woke up multiple times last night with a high temperature and I anticipated that he would be too ill to engage with the activities.

I had planned a visit to the winter walk at The Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley today as it is very near to where we live and looks stunning.  Then I stepped outside and it was so cold that I knew the little one couldn't take it.  (Click on the link above to see pictures of the beautiful gardens there anyway).

Following on from our walk, I planned to set up a nature table that celebrates the sights, smells, tastes and textures of the festive season and we managed this, taking some of the items for the nature table from our garden.

Our table consisted of:
Pine cones
Reindeer moss (which is actually a lichen and is patterned just like a deer's antlers- not to be consumed)
A wreath
A cutting from a bush in our garden (which looks just like holly - it's prickly, green and shaped like holly, but turns out to be an "osmanthus" , a shrub - commonly called "Variegated false holly")
Some red berries from a bush in our front garden
Cinnamon Sticks
Cranberries
Oranges
Twiglets (something I've often associated with Christmas and they suited the nature table as they look like mini twigs)
LED tea lights (a candle would have looked nice, but Wugs and Dooey love playing with LED lights)
Warm spiced drink

The nature table went down well with the boys - the consummables (although not all of them were specific to the season) were a nice addition as Wugs and Dooey were eating and drinking while playing with the pine cones and smelling the cinnamon sticks which made the table a truly multi-sensory experience.

I'm considering keeping the nature table as a permanent feature in our house (at least throughout December) as a place to collect interesting finds.  And hopefully we will get a chance to visit Wisley Gardens and I can update this post with some amazing pictures.

Wisley Garden pictures from our outing on 9th December:

Advent Calendar 2014 Activity – Day 1: God Is With Us Through Creation

Today is the start of this year’s advent calendar activities which are based around the theme “Immanuel – ‘God is with us’”.  (The name given to Jesus by the angel Gabriel when he appears in a dream to Joseph to prophesy Christ’s birth (Matthew 1:23)).  Each day we will be doing an activity that celebrates the ways in which God is present with us.

“…all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17) 

I love the holistic spirit of this passage - Jesus is not simply a baby in a manger or a man dying on a cross, but a Person through whom everything finds its purpose and connection with everything else.

My favourite room in our house is the conservatory.  It is full of light and enables us to have a close-up encounter with the animals and plants in the garden without actually being out there and suffering the cold.  This morning I arranged for Wugs to put out some bird seed and nuts to entice more wildlife into the garden.  This simple activity taught him a couple of things: hand control when pouring the food into the containers and an appreciation for animals, who are worthy of our care and attention. 

We went back into the conservatory expecting to see a garden full of squirrels and birds, but all morning we observed only two magpies and a robin in a tree.  This could have something to do with the fact that whenever a bird flew anywhere near the conservatory, Wugs and Dooey would rush to the window and holler “BIRD!!” at the top of their voices so the birds ran away!  I tried to make a game out of being quiet and walking slowly, but this inevitably failed.

                              

Well, as the birds wouldn't come to us, we created our own.  I opened up some air-drying clay and a couple of packets of feathers (new sensory materials for Wugs and Dooey) and helped mould their birds’ bodies and faces with Wugs adding the eyes and feathers (strengthening his fine motor skills).  The birds didn’t look quite like the birds I’ve seen in our garden or seen anywhere else for that matter, but the boys recognised them as such. 

What we used:

Bird feeder

Bird seed and nuts

Air-drying clay

Feathers

Peppercorns (eyes)   

It seems the lonely robin in the tree made quite an impression on Wugs.  This evening, he was asking about the robin, so we looked up a couple of videos on You Tube of robins singing before he went to sleep.  Hopefully the robin will be back in the garden tomorrow so he can see the real thing.  

Sock-Matching Activity for Busy Parents

Whether it is the huge change of moving across continents, saying goodbye to friends and temporarily staying at two addresses before arriving at our new home or the fact that Wugs is going through a developmental change (he turned three last month), we are encountering some interesting behaviour from him.  For instance, he will often ask for a hug and when I go to give him one, he will reject it saying he doesn’t want it.  When I turn away, he will then ask for one again and he will repeat this seemingly contradictory behaviour over and over again.  The same is the case with certain activities, such as putting on his socks.  He will sometimes refuse to do it and when I turn away (finding socks just another piece of “unnecessary” clothing on top of jumpers, hoodies and jackets that we have managed without until now), he will then ask for his socks again.  We have spoken a lot about every stage of our move to the UK with him, even down to the finest details of what we will do the next day before he goes to sleep so that there isn’t any surprises the next day, but we have been very busy and my activities with him have ground to a halt, so I’ve been looking for ways to include him in the jobs we need to do around the house.

On this occasion, I had a basket full of socks that I had just pulled out of the tumble dryer (all of us have been walking around with odd socks over the last few weeks so I did a wash that only included socks in the hope that they would be easy to pair up) and I was facing the unenviable task of having to match up about 30 of them with Wugs lying on the floor refusing to wear any.  I decided to turn the situation into a game by laying one pair of each sock on the table and leaving one pair in the basket for Wugs to find and match up.  He jumped to it right away and happily matched up the socks, pointing out the images on them.  A picture of a car led to a discussion about traffic lights and our new black car and when we would be travelling in it again.  The game became more challenging when it came to his dad’s socks which are of such subtle and varied patterns and shades of grey, black and brown that I have frequently mismatched them.   

There you go!  A way to involve your three year old when you are knee-deep in washing! Thankfully at the end of this activity Wugs found a pair of socks that he was happy to wear.  

We've arrived!

After weeks of car-hunting, house-hunting and clothes-hunting, we have finally moved into our new home in Surrey and Wugs and Dooey are enjoying their new playroom in the conservatory.  I have found myself sitting in there when it’s raining outside and listening to the rain hitting the glass (it sounds pretty loud in there) and being reminded of the monsoon season in Singapore when the skies would go dark and the heavy rain would hit against the balcony doors. We are adjusting to our new life over here…slowly… and I hope to post some more of our activities as Christmas approaches.  

A Cutting Box

In the final weeks of our stay in Singapore, I was busily packing boxes and needed an activity that would keep Wugs and Dooey entertained for some time. I realised that many of the materials I was throwing in the bin could be recycled into a cutting and colouring activity for them which helps develop fine motor skills.  I arranged the materials that were of varying degrees of toughness in a box and together with a pair of child scissors (for Wugs) and a packet of crayons (for Dooey), I left them to it. Sometimes it's the simplest activities that are the most effective and that was certainly true of this activity. Wugs asked for his cutting box and scissors every morning for a week to the point that we started to name him "The Shredder".

Here is a list of the items in our box:

Unwanted mail
Old magazines
Receipts
Wrapping paper scraps
Coloured transparent paper scraps
Bubble wrap scraps
Foam paper scraps