Play Sushi - tuesday treasure

Step 1. Make rice play dough, i found adding about a cup of rice to the play dough worked really well, and unlike the lentils and seeds i tried in lumpy bumpy play dough the rice stayed in the mix really well (must be a shape thing). I added the cup of rice once i had combined the dough. (basic play dough recipe) Colour wise i chose white for the rice and i was inspired by wasabi its a fantastic green!

Step 2. Found some green cellophane, i cut up the cellophane and wrapped up play dough dough like sushi rolls. Decorated with coloured sticks and sequins and so on. I cut out what i thought was cute little cake looking things. Gave him some chopsticks, a pair of tongs a Asian style soup spoon and voila a tray of pretty sushi inspired food.

Step 3. let child lose on it. He unwrapped, decorated pretend ate, dished up and generally really enjoyed the imaginative food play. My floor didn't enjoy it so much but i think the littler brother was to blame for most of the mess. Who cares about mess if you get a chance to clean the windows uninterrupted I'm going to make the most of it!

Sushi play dough tick, big success.  love sassy

Fun - Friday Finds

These are Fun! go out and have some fun too!

things we forget

improv everywhere

.random acts of kindness

the fun theory

Preschool Style Bottle Rockets

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launch
Ok take a soft drink bottle or juice bottle, pop some stickers on for windows, cut some triangles then snip in the middle of the longest side a cm cut, fold in opposite directions and stick tape the wings to the bottom of the rocket. Sticky tape some wrapping string or fabric leftovers or ribbon on the bottom in flame-ish colours, this helps with the whooshing effect.  Kids can fill bottle with sequins, little balls of alfoil, glitter, pom poms whatever you like really. In one bottle each boy got tiny drip of washing up liquid and about 1 ½ cups of water, in the other bottle they got about ¼ cup of baby oil and the rest of the bottle filled up with water. Some food colouring was added to both, lids secured tightly and then taped up so little people don’t consume what’s inside.  Shake up and see the different kinds of bubbles.  We then launched ours down the slide.

 Recycling plastic bottles is a great cheap toy; you can also make noisy ones with coloured rice or barley, lentils or split peas. We have a big container that sits in outside full of interesting combinations. Eli likes throwing them about, Flynn uses them as fuel to fill up his ride on cars. A yellow dish liquid one got taken to the shops yesterday it was “Spiderman’s kaboom bottle”  “you push the button on the top mum and kaboom spider webs whoosh whoosh out” see so many uses, great imaginative play.

ps. thanks Alicia for teaching me the joy a plastic bottle can bring to small ones x

balloon play idea

A great little play idea, I have never met a kid that didn’t like balloons and when I need a sanity moment like I did this Sunday this is one way I occupy the littlies. I blow up a dozen balloons tie a length of string to each one and masking tape them just above a doorway. Kiddies can whack them, run through them, look through them and I got Flynn to find different colours and count how many he could find in that colour. I blew some big and some small and I got Flynn to find different sizes too. It was perfect little game for Eli who has just started to walk he loved being able to grab the balloons and bash them. When the interest in the balloons began to dissipate I got out some office supply stickers and the sticky tape, Flynn made faces and Eli peeled stickers (he tried to eat some too).  After they finished I moved them to Flynn’s bedroom and he can have a pretend birthday party with some toys later in the week.  When bath time rocked around Flynn asked if he could take a balloon in the bath, they had a lovely time holding the balloons under the water and releasing them with a whoosh. Last year Flynn had an emergency trip to the doctor when his eye swelled up due to an allergic reaction to something, he was very very sad that his eye was “broken” and to cheer him up I filled his bed with balloons he thought this was fantastic it cheered him up immensely. I often have a balloon or two stashed in my purse for emergency play moment if you get stuck somewhere waiting they are a sanity saver. I love simple classic play things.