a nice gift

 A friend gave these to our children for their birthdays last year. They're by Melissa and Doug and are a clever pad of colourful background scenes and fun vinyl pictures to stick to them. The pictures can be repositioned as many times as wanted which makes them really child friendly. Ours love them and they've lasted us 5 months so far as I've been giving them one page each at a time (and storing them in a zipped bag when they're finished with them).

They generate lots of lovely chat about where to put things, why they've chosen certain spots etc. The habitat ones are particularly cool because you can talk about what types of animals live in the water, on land, in trees or can be seen in the sky. So if you're stuck for a gift idea, I'm sure most parents and kids would really appreciate one of these!

Both available on Amazon:

 play house reusable sticker pad

habitats reusable sticker pad

tin foil

We're on to day 3 of pretty cold and miserable weather. We wrapped up like we're off to Antartica for swimming lessons this morning but have been home since, both kids have streaming noses and croaky throats so it was another day in front of the fire for us! I wanted to try and do some more sculpture with them but lacked the energy for a whole lot of mess so decided on tinfoil. The kids struggled a bit with the 'joining' so I helped them with that but enjoyed turning flat sheets of foil into lumps and shapes. You might recognise some people and a chair ( made by mum) a crocodile ( a T and mum collaboration) and a snail made by M. M also decided to make a tiny little bowl of grated cheese and carrot for the people to share on their picnic- so kind.

                                                      

spray painting snow

The sun is out today and the snow is melting. Before it all went we sent the kids outside armed with spray bottles filled with water and food colouring, they had a great time squirting everything and seeing it change colour. We started out with blue and orange and later I added red to the blue to make purple and blue to the orange to make a green. The back yard looks gorgeous!

 

mmmmmm marshmellows

 It's snowing today. This morning I was half way to work and thought I'd call to check the school was going to be open. It wasn't so I turned around to go get the kids from their grandparents place and head home to our fire. On the way I stopped at Payless Plastics for some marshmellows and toothpicks. I'd seen this sort of thing before on the web and knowing how much our kids love marshmellows and 'building' I figured they'd enjoy it. 

The blog below recommends using stale marsh mellows ( I'm guessing as they'd be harder) but we wanted to eat ours. So with nice clean hands and warm cups of Milo we made some shapes and sculptures and watched the snow falling outside. The link below uses mini marsh mellows and they made cool big structures making ours look a bit pathetic, still, we had fun ( and it was yummy).

the artful parent

brrrrrrrrrr

a dog

a mouth full!

mum's star

a fence with a horse inside

pretty!

yummo

fishing for marshmellows

pet peeves

Do you have any pet peeves? I probably have more than I'm actually aware of! One that's getting to me lately is the kids taking the cushions and squabs of the couch and playing with them on the floor. I admit that it's probably not an issue for many people in fact I have friends who encourage it- but it bugs me.

There's a bit of dust in our house, roadworks outside, wooden floors and an unsealed/ stoney driveway will cause that. I have asthma so I vacuum every day but I still don't like seeing parts of our couch and my new cushions on the floor. We're also not strictly a 'shoes off inside' house because of the already sad state of our flooring ( this will change when we re carpet during our earthquake repairs...one day....sigh...). 

So, since I'd like to encourage their creativity and also save my nicer cushions this Winter, I've bought them some 'play pillows'. They were $1 each from a local op shop. They now have a big pile of ( washable in Summer but mostly very uuuuugly) cushions they can use to make their huts, little beds, cars and boats with. I hope they like them...

and it seems that they do!

macs and stuff

I love my MacBook Pro, the kids don't use imovie, itunes or iphoto on their own yet but they will one day when I show them how. In the meantime they enjoy 20 minutes here and there on some great kids websites I've found. The school M is going to next year use Macs which I'm pleased about, she'll probably get access to an ipad before I ever do too! I don't know heaps about computers but I feel like Macs are easier for kids and they are a bit more child proof, random clicking just seems to open windows but not actually change anything important. I've been through 4 macs- an earthquake took care of my last one but I try not to be too precious about it, the educational and creative potential for them helps me to share : )

Here are the sites they like:

super why

reading eggs  

count us in

miffy 

wiggle time

duplo lego

bunny dress up doll 

I also bought them Kids Paint for $7 from the Mac App store. It's quite cool, they can draw pictures and them email them.