Dinosaur Fun -

Our local shopping centre currently has a brilliant Dinosaurs Alive display. The dinosaurs move and make noise. Its a treasure trove of fun for the toddler and preschooler alike!  There is information on each one on display, which I must read over and over, and the best bit for Mini Miss? There are foot prints all over the shopping centre leading to each display! She is so focused on these foot prints every time we go, much to the annoyance of some older, less interested shoppers (to them I now say, get a life, she is 3!!). 

 

So for obvious reasons, Mini Miss has been OBSESSED with dinosaurs! No, these obsessions are not confined to boys! 

My first activity I found on Pinterest and as always, altered it a bit to make it more fun and more personal for my Mini Miss.... We built..... 

Dinosaur World!!

I bought a Kitty Litter tray from our local Dollar Tree for $3. Yes, that sounds gross, but I promise Miss Lucy is not allowed to use it! They are great for containing messy crafts, science experiments, and other fun stuff. You will see the 2 I bought starring in a lot of the science and messy craft Mini Miss gets to do! 

To do the landscape, I filled the tray with Baking Soda, which acted as the sand. I made a Bubbly Blue Lagoon using Vinegar with blue food colouring. I decorated with plastic trees and rocks. Then, The Piece de Resistance, The Erupting Volcano. 

I made the outside of the Volcano using our favourite home made Playdough recipe. (find it HERE). To make it more interesting I mixed granulated coffee (I know, it seems like a waste, but it was cheap coffee & it really did make a difference) into the mix to give it the brown colour, but also a bit of texture. Inside the Volcano was a plastic cup with a water/vinegar/dish soap mix coloured with red food colouring.  

Finally I added some dinosaurs and the masterpiece was set & placed outside (a great place for messy play, I highly recommend it!) 

apparently, from this photo, they were all headed to the Bubbly Lagoon!

Mini Miss got stuck straight in and had a ball with this. She loved the Bubbly Lagoon and although I missed taking a photo of the Volcano as I was supervising its eruption, she loved it! It oozed red bubbles everywhere. Lots of mess was made.

Of course, once all the contained bubbly fun was had, she got into the Making Mess part. This is more just fun than science, although there is colour mixing, more chemical reactions...you get the idea, but basically, its like playing with colourful mud! 

And then later in the day, even more messy play was had! This involved measuring and pouring, scooping and loads more wet gooey mess seeing as I had been busy with Mr Moo and hadn't got around to hosing it all away.

Yes, a bath was VERY necessary after this day!! 

Tips:

• For ALL outdoor messy crafts I keep 2 things nearby. A bucket of soapy water and an old towel. That way the mess does not make its way into my house!

• Spend time talking about why the vinegar and bicarb when mixed together bubble up.

• Encourage your child to think about what the world was like when there were dinosaurs, what was the land like? Were there people? Where did all the dinosaurs go? What about Volcanoes? What makes them erupt? 

If they have questions you don't know the answer to, I find honesty the best policy. I am not all knowing, but I do know how to find out and I love to show my kids how to use the tools they have to find out more. Mini Miss is already learning the value of Google. Investigating together is great fun and it teaches such valuable skills like researching, making sense of the information they find, and coming to your own conclusion with the information you have found. 

So get building, get messy and have fun with your kids! Play is such an important part of learning at this age! 

Activity Monday - Dominoes

So this Monday was a little hard. After spending several hours at the hospital with a somewhat sick Mini Miss on Sunday night, I had no time to prepare our activity. 

So, a spur of the moment decision to pull out one of my old toys (yes, I still have somethings from when I was a kid....yes, I guess you could say they are antiques...), Dominoes.

At first I was a little lost as to what to do with them. Then I thought we will start with some sorting. Having a domino set in 5 different colours made this easy. I just got a large muffin pan out of the cupboard, placed one domino of each colour in each muffin and showed Mini Miss how to sort them.

We talked about the different colours, we matched different colours. So, suddenly, what was a simple idea had turned into an opportunity for sorting. 

Once we had sorted them for a while, Mini Miss decided to make up her own game. This involved her purposely putting a colour in the wrong spot and seeing what I would do. It quickly became a funny game, where Mini Miss would put it in the wrong spot, I would notice "oh no, thats not right! Where should it go?", followed by her putting it in the right spot and shouting "we did it!" (again, Dora, you have so so much to answer for!). So, the activity also encouraged Mini Miss to think outside the box and make up her own game rules, and gave her a chance to show her awesome sense of humour! (she really loves to make me laugh, which I also love)

Then we decided to count them. Mini Miss loves to count everything, so this didn't take much persuading. Just because she can already count one to one doesn't mean we shouldn't practice this skill regularly, and try to extend it further! She can currently count one to one up to about 10-12. There were differing numbers in each section, with one going up to 15. With a bit of encouragement, and fumbling on 13, (what is it with that number? Miss Teen used to always just skip it when counting, Mini Miss seems to get stuck on it too....must be unlucky or something) I'm proud to say she got there. 

Once all the "learning" fun was done, I decided to show Mini Miss what I, as a 10 year old, used to do with my Dominoes. I was given them to set up in fancy tracks, then knock them down and watch them fall. After setting it up about 100 times (I'm not as steady with my hands as I used to be) I finally set up a fun little track, and Mini Miss was more than happy to set it off! She cheered and clapped her hands in absolute delight as they fell down one by one in about 15 seconds. She then wanted to set it up over and over and over again. Sadly for her though, my patience was shot. After having her knock them down too soon, or knocking them down myself with my old person shaky hands, I decided to give up! Happily though, she went back to sorting, grabbed a measuring container and "poured" them into the individual muffin sections, and generally amused herself.

So, although I was completely unprepared for Activity Monday this week, it worked out well! The dominoes are still out and I will leave them out until Friday as Mini Miss still isn't 100% well and will be home from school all week! 

Now, what else to do to keep her amused........

 

Activity Monday - Alphabet Train

Today was activity Monday for Mini Miss and myself.

For me it started last night with some preparation....Printing a train and alphabet cards and cutting them out.

Then this morning we set up the activity together.

By this stage Mini Miss was very excited about the train. She had already noticed the letters on each carriage and had been pointing out all the letters she already knew.

This activity was designed to encourage her to explore the alphabet some more and hopefully learn and recognise some new letters. At the moment she can recite the alphabet and recognises about half the letters, particularly the letters in her name, which she can give me in the right order (small mummy boast there! What?! I'm allowed to be proud!).

Anyhow, I showed her the box of "oh circles mummy" and how they each had a letter on them too. I had to demonstrate what to do. The idea being that you matched the circle to the letter on the train. 

This activity was so much fun! Mini Miss even enjoyed sticking the blue tack on each circle to stick it to the train. As well as alphabet recognition, we had fine motor skills, lots of talk about colours and shapes and trains...so much talk about trains! Mini Miss has a LOVE of trains, ever since we were lucky enough to win that wonderful weekend away to Sydney thanks to the Coffs for Kids website.

I plan on leaving the train up for the week. She has already gone back and added more letters, and even some stars as decoration for the sky! I think we will continue to decorate, and when we are done, because the train and the circles are made out of cardboard, we will pack it away for another day.

But as always, the best bit was we spent one on one time together! 

We talked, we laughed, we played. The train went on an adventure to a magical world of Mini Misses imagining....

We did so so much more today. Went on another nature walk, fished for alphabet fish, went for a swim....but I guess that is for another post! 

If you want to recreate our Alphabet Train for your little one, copy the pictures below, print on A4 card, cut them out and then set up your scene. We went simple as I wanted to focus today on the letters, but it can be as decorated as you want. 

We used blue cardboard as a backdrop, and purple paddlepop sticks as the tracks.