What we've been doing Wednesday

First off, I need to apologise for the recent lack of posts. My husband is a teacher (don't know if I've mentioned that before) so is on holiday for 6 weeks - Yay!! This means that we have been doing (not necessarily frugal) family things, with access to the car. A lot of our normal groups don't run in the holidays either, but normal service will be resumed in September.

I'll give you an idea of what we have been doing though:

Soft play

We went to Sea World in Birmingham while visiting my brother in law and his partner (half price tickets booked online in advance!)

We went to the RSPB nature reserve in Sandy because little bear loves birds. It was £5 to park, and then free entry. Unfortunately we didn't see that many birds but we did see some rather pretty butterflies. 

I did a messy play date for some of bear's buddies, with spaghetti, jelly, edible paint and water play.

We've been swimming, and spent lots of time outdoors going on walks.

Next week we are going to the zoo thanks to Tesco voucher exchange, and at the end of August, we are going to Pembrokeshire for a bargain week holiday. 

I'll try to update a bit more regularly. xx

What we've been doing Wednesday

This week we have.....

been strawberry picking,

walked in the sunshine,

played with foam (not very successfully),

played with small bubbles and

big bubbles! 

Playdough

Like any mum who spends too long on Google, I came across homemade playdough. I've checked my 'diary' (Facebook time line) and I made this way back in February and it is still good now, in June. I used this recipe and apart from the cream of tartar and food colouring, I had everything in the cupboard. We bought the airtight tubs from tesco, and one quantity of the recipe made enough for all 4 colours.

I have since invested in these colours which should make the playdough much brighter as they are gel.

Playdough hasn't been terribly successful with little bear so far. He doesn't seem overly interested, although the most recent time, he squidged it in his hands. I keep bringing it out every so often anyway as one day he'll hopefully love it like I do! It is a good thing the playdough keeps for so long!

Not sure about the taste...

Still not sure of the taste...

These tubs are good though! 

What we've been doing Wednesday

Bit of a non week this week, with lack of sleep and some rubbish weather but we have...

been to the park,

practiced fine motor skills,

played with gloop (I did, little bear wasn't interested)

and played with the water for washing our hands.

How do you fill your week? How do you decide what to do each day?

Painting

I've been meaning to try painting with little bear for a while and finally did it. It wasn't a huge success but, as with every activity, I need to offer it a few times before he becomes interested.

The recipe I have is 2 cups of cornflour, mixed with 1 cup of cold water and then 4.5 cups of boiling water added one at a time and stirred in between. It looked like it would make a lot of paint so I halved the recipe, which was plenty. It is quite thick, good for finger painting.

I used the gel colours I got from amazon and took great pleasure in matching the colour to the bowls! I calculated how much this cost and it is approximately 32p (30p for the cornflour and pennies of food colouring).

Little bear didn't want to put his hands in the paint but did with a little 'encouragement' from me. In the last week, he has really got the hang of eating with a spoon so enjoyed using the paintbrush and the spoon I'd brought out to put the left over paint into jars.

I'm hoping that the paint will keep in these jars (that I got free off Facebook) as it would be a waste to just throw it away. It went a bit solid while it was out, the texture of set custard, but with a good stir, it was liquid again albeit with some extra lumps.

Update: it's 3 days since I made the paint. It separated in the jar but was a fine texture after being shaken. However, it does smell a bit so I probably wouldn't recommend keeping it more than a few days. Today's session was a bit more successful as I provided more spoons, and little bear put his hand in the orange, which means there are orange smears on everything (which is why I did this outside!)

What we've been doing Wednesday

So I thought I'd start a regular feature on what we've been doing in the previous week. I think it will be more pictures and less writing than other posts but we'll see how it goes.

Today I thought we'd try some messy, sensory play. I cooked some spaghetti, added food colouring and some pompoms and foam shapes. We went in the garden just in case but little bear couldn't have been less interested.

The cat seemed to like it though...

I had a plan b up my sleeve though. Blue and green, eucalyptus bubble sensory bath was much more successful!