Toddler Book Club - session 5 "Lost and Found"

I've recently started a "book club" for toddlers in our home (you can read more about how it works here - but the schedule has changed since!) and would love other bloggers to join in - so if you fancy reading the book and then doing a related activity (either what we do or something different), let me know. If you'd like to join in without blogging just leave a comment, or if you blog about it, give me your URL and I'll update the post to include your link :)

Here's a link to our first two sessions:
Elmer by David McKee
The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss

How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers

Paddington by Michael Bond

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LOST AND FOUND

This is another book by Oliver Jeffers - I just adore the simple but sweet storylines and the lovely illustrations. They are a big hit with D too and even better Iz can also flick through the books on her own as the pages are thick card and so un-rippable!!

"Lost and Found" is about a small boy who finds a lost penguin and tries to help him find his way home. They have lots of adventures but in the end realise home is where your friends are. How sweet is that?!

Snack: Penguins galore!

There are so many cute penguin snacks so we couldn't settle on just one! We made penguin sandwiches using pastry cutters, toast penguins with cream cheese and blueberries and lastly penguin Babybels :)

They all took only seconds to make and D was so excited by both making and eating them! Iz was also fascinated and I think she's now at an age where she notices when things are presented in a different way or look unusual.

Activity 1: Penguin footprints

Yep I'm a sucker for another footprint craft. We made footprint Penguins and how cute are they?!

I painted D's foot black and white and we did his picture first. With Iz's (definitely a little more challenging!) I just painted her foot black and then added the white to the paper later. For the wings I just painted their thumbs and did thumbprints. Then when the paint was dry I just used a sharpie to add the eyes and a little bit of orange paint for the beak. Super simple and super cute!

Activity 2: Arctic gloop

I froze some water and blue food colouring in penguin shapes and made some white Oobleck (see here for the recipe). This was Iz's first experience of Oobleck but she was fascinated! First they put the penguins into the 'arctic gloop', watched as the blue colour slowly leaked out into the white surroundings and then spent ages putting the penguins in and out of a smaller box. D was mainly putting them in whilst Iz kept taking them out... Lol. There was also the obligatory tasting - that's why all our play at the moment has to be taste-safe!!

 

  

 

 

How did it work?

We had lots of fun with this theme - D has always loved watching penguins at the zoo so it was nice to do a few activities around them. There's a few more ice-related activities we've got planned so I'll blog about those as we do them :)

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At our next book club we're reading "The Hungry Caterpillar". If you've done any penguin or ice-related activities I'd love to hear below. Or if you're planning to join in next time it'd also be great to hear from you :)

Hand/Footprint art

I LOVE anything that involves hand/footprints - I'm a complete sucker for those little chubby hands and cute squidgy fingers :)

I've been meaning to post this for a while but then we kept doing more art using hands/feet/fingers... Anyway here is the lowdown on what we've done so far:

Pottery

These were the first things I did with D when he was little. We went to a pottery cafe and they helped me do his prints. I got a bit carried away and made about 5 plates but they were perfect presents for grandparents (and mementos for us!) :)

 

Look how tiny his hand is compared to mine!

Reindeer/santa cards
These were from D's first Christmas - I think they turned out pretty well as I did them by myself with him (getting handprints especially is always easier with someone else helping!! Lol)

Christmas tree cards

Iz's first Christmas card - I tried several arrangements of the sticker "baubles" and definitely preferred the random arrangement. You can read more about how we made them (and the tinsel one below) here.

Tinsel canvas

I love this - the top string is made up of Iz's thumb prints (it was way too difficult to try and get fingerprints from her!) and the bottom line is D's fingerprints. He had great fun doing this as he loved choosing which colour was coming next and doing a random pattern of dots. I think it's really cute having their different sizes side-by-side.

Butterfly prints

The top ones were from Iz's feet when she was 4 weeks old. I used a rainbow stamp pad, inked her feet and them stamped them on some plain paper. Once they were dry I then cut them out and made cards. The bottom picture is from D and he had lots of fun helping me paint his foot with lots of different colours and then standing on the canvas. The antennae are thumbprints :)

Heart thumbprints
We made these with Iz and D just before Valentine's day this year - you can read the full post here.
 

Flower card

We made this for my mum when she was really sick. My husband said it looked "too good" to be homemade but it is!! (see here)

Foot Magnets 

We made these using the same rainbow ink pad as above but stamped the impressions onto a magnetic sheet. Once dry I just cut out the footprints, annotated them and put them on the fridge :)

Thing 1 & 2 prints

We made these during one of the "Toddler book club" sessions (more details here).

Sibling hand casts
I think this is my favourite handprint make we've done to date. Just too cute. You can read about how we made it here - very easy and a lovely way to preserve just how small their hands were forever.

Easter cards
D made these this year. Just his thumbprints in stamping ink and then accessorised by me (more detailed post here). When he's older he'll be able to do that bit himself - can't wait to see what he creates :)

Our next projects include ghosts and fish :)

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Have you done any footprint or handprint art with your kids? What have been your favourites?

Easter crafts

I'm not sure who these bloggers are who manage to not only do all the seasonal crafts ahead of time but also write up their blogs before the holiday.... But anyway I am clearly not one of them, so here is my post about Easter crafts - 2 weeks after Easter! :)

Tape resist eggs

I got these flat ceramic "egg" shapes online and D had his first go at "tape resist" art. I cut out some shapes from plain white stickers and he stuck them on the egg. Then using the ceramic paints from our Elmer plate activity D got to work. 

The pens are quite difficult to squeeze and draw with at the same time so doing the dotty design really suited D. And when his attention spanned waned it was very therapeutic to do some myself :) 

On the other egg I squeezed small amounts of paint out and he then smooshed them around.

I'm not quite sure why this pic is upside down... but this is them halfway through :)

After the paint was dry I peeled off the stickers and we were left with these:

After baking them (to set the paint) we gave them a coating of clear glaze and I think they're pretty cute for our first attempt. 

Polystyrene eggs

This was a "filler" activity whilst I was cutting out the stickers above. I gave D some polystyrene eggs and some felt-tips. A completely child-led activity :)

Easter cards

We don't usually send Easter cards but D was given his first Easter egg as a present so we decided to make some more as a thank you card. And because I'm a bit obsessed with anything D makes we made an extra one for us to keep :)

First D did some finger and thumbprints in ink along the bottom of the card. Next I added little faces and details to turn them into chicks and rabbits. Lastly using our alphabet stampers he stamped "Happy Easter" and added some stars and hearts. I mounted them on a piece of card and there you go:

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So there you go, 3 pretty quick and simple crafts but all fun.

And here's how we finished off the weekend:

An Easter egg hunt - love that he's still happy doing it with plastic eggs!

Chasing giant bubbles

And popping them...

Toddler-friendly egg and spoon races

Rabbit pancakes (courtesy of my talented sister-in-law!)

Hope you all had a lovely Easter too!

Toddler Book Club - session 2 "The Cat in the Hat"

I've recently started a "book club" for toddlers in our home (you can read more about how it works/the schedule here) and would love other bloggers to join in - so if you fancy reading the book and then doing a related activity (either what we do or something different), let me know. If you'd like to join in without blogging just leave a comment, or if you blog about it, give me your URL and I'll update the post to include your link :)

Here's a link to our first session: Elmer by David McKee

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THE CAT IN THE HAT

Everyone loves Dr Seuss - I can remember reading the stories with my mother when I was only a bit older than D is now and he loves the funny words, rhyming sentences and wacky pictures. It's quite a long story compared to some of his other books but it is so catchy that the story is over before you know it and D will happily sit and listen to the whole thing without moving.

Having a sneaky read before anyone else arrived...

Snack: Strawberry/banana hats
In homage to the hat in the story we made fruit kebabs with strawberries and banana. D could have pretty much made them on his own but I didn't trust him to cut the strawberry slices evenly so I did that! We used cake pop sticks as skewers so they were blunt at each end and perfectly child-friendly and put banana pieces at each end as that held the fruit on the stick. D was so pleased every time he threaded a piece of fruit on and was so proud of the final result! I think they look really good and were very quick to make. And they got eaten just as quickly aswell ;)

Proud little face :)

Activity: Handprint Thing 1 & 2
We love doing hand/footprint crafts. D loves the process as he is completely "in charge" of his own hand, when he puts it down, how he holds his fingers etc. And I love it because they aren't small for long and it is so nice having concrete memories of just how small they once were. Anyway, back to what we did here...
I drew outlines of 2 jumpers on some card and cut out some circular white stickers. D coloured in the jumpers with a red crayon and then stuck the stickers in place. I then helped D put blue paint on his fingers and top bit of his palm and pale pink paint on his palm. He was surprisingly good at putting his hand down in the right place but needed a bit of help pushing his fingers firmly down on the paper.

It was slightly more challenging getting Iz's handprint so there are no pictures of that bit! But once they were dry I added faces with a sharpie and wrote Thing 1 & 2 on the t-shirts. I love how it turned out - and I think so cute having their handprints side-by-side.

I loved that D also free-styled on one of the pictures and painted a "head" and "hair" with the sponge. It's great when they let their own creativity shine through and we'll keep his picture next to the handprint one :)

How did it work?

I'm not sure if you can call it a pattern if it's only happened twice so far but we'll see after the next session! D loved reading the book (so cute when he was reading it to Iz and pointing out the "Things" to her) and doing the colouring and handprints but the other toddlers were much less fussed. I'm not sure if it's because they don't know the story and are a bit too young to engage if it's not something they are familiar with, or just because there were far too many new and exciting toys lying around to steal their attention away... Next time I might put a blanket over the toy shelves and see if that helps!

D even started colouring in everyone else's when they were too busy playing

It was an excuse for a lovely playdate anyway and then D and Iz had fun re-reading the book in the afternoon and doing the craft again.

Priceless...

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At our next book club we're reading "How to Catch a Star". If you've done any Cat in the Hat-related activities I'd love to hear below. Or if you're planning to join in next time it'd also be great to hear from you :)

What Iz loved - January 2015

Ok so I am officially rubbish at doing this post in a timely manner... *but* I love doing these monthly summaries so will continue doing them albeit rather late!

Here is what Iz loved this month...

1. Fairylight fun

2. Mealtimes

3. Door bouncing

4. Meeting her new monkey friend 

5. Swinging (with a little help)

6. Drinking - soooo much water. No idea why!

7. Being a tiger

8. Joining in crafting with D

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If you want to do your own "What baby/toddler loved" then link up with Rachel @dinkythinks - you can see her latest post here :)