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?

Salt Dough

As little bear gets older, I imagine salt dough will be a regular activity. He still isn't very interested in playing with it himself but likes to watch me. He had great fun looking at the cutters and throwing them on the floor (favourite thing at the moment).

I use 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of plain flour and up to 1 cup of water to make a dough.

The first time I made it, bear was only 4 weeks old. I wanted a record of his tiny hands and feet (not really tiny, he was a healthy 8lb 1 when he was born) but couldn't afford £30-50 to get a cast done in, for example, John Lewis. It's not perfect and took forever to dry so I now put them in a low oven (not as frugal). But it is still a memento.

One thing I realised from doing this one is it need varnishing otherwise it seems to suck up moisture from the air and go soft (pva glue is fine).

I have also made 5 little ducks, ready to go swimming and a rainbow. The red piece was still a bit soft when I gave it to little bear and he snapped it in two. Next time I make salt dough, I'll replace it. 

I want to try colouring the dough before it's cooked to see if they then don't need painting, 

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

Definite 'p' theme to this week.

 Pottering

Playing

Painting*

Paddling

*detailed post to follow

Card Catalogue

Before little bear was old enough to do much more than bat at his playmat and roll over, I got excited about all the fun things I could do with him one day like painting, nature walks, counting games, science experiments and lots more.

To keep a record of all the great ideas I found online and thought of, I created a filing system of record cards. (I have an underlying fear that my bookmarks and Facebook likes will one day randomly disappear so I wanted to have an old fashioned, paper copy).

Ī

The box is the bottom of a lunch bar box which just happened to be the right size. I covered it with some paper I had in my craft stash.

I really had way too much fun doing this! I decided on 6 colour coded categories; sensory, science and nature, maths, language and literacy, arts, and water. I made tabs by cutting off part of the header and drew up a key. Each page has a 'What you will need' list and a method, and an indication of whether it's an inside or outside activity. I spent many a happy hour colouring with felt tips, making everything neat.

When telling you about these activities, I will endeavour to track back to the appropriate source or link but will explain and apologise if I can't find where the idea came from.

Let's play outside

This is the best frugal find ever! There is a little boy at the school where my mother in law works who is very kind and generous indeed. He had outgrown his play house so GAVE IT to us because he 'just wanted other children to play with it'. Aww.

The log cabin's current RRP is £379. And we were given it. For free.

We did have to pay a man with a van £50 to bring it to our house as it wouldn't fit in anyone's car though. Also because the red is faded, I bought a tin of plastic spray paint for £8.99 so it now looks like this:

I had paint left so sprayed 2 little chairs we were also given to match.

The table is an old Lack from Ikea which I painted with blackboard paint (given a leftover tin by a friend) and bought a piece of oilcloth for £5 off eBay so it is wipe clean for messy play. I stuck some velcro dots (99p for 10, free delivery from eBay) to the table and the cloth so that little bear can't just whip the tablecloth off.

Lovely.