Making Pancakes is learning too - Green Goo Pancakes!

Mini Miss woke one morning and decided that it was a baking kind of day.

I went with it, choosing something easy, so she could help me. I do, afterall, love to cook!

Welcome to Green Goo Pancakes!

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! 

Rainbow Rice

This Muddled Mummy has been rather busy lately, and to say Mini Miss has been misbehaving as a result would be an understatement.

It's like, at times, like she has been possessed by a Poltergeist, a mischievous, very naughty, attention seeking monster! 

So, rather than spend all my time constantly berating her, putting her in time out, and generally making one miserable little girl and equally miserable mummy, we have reinstated the "Activity Monday". 

Activity Monday came about when I was working 3-4 days a week as a way to educate, entertain, extend and most importantly, spend time with Mini Miss. It was on a Monday, as that was my set day off! 

Now its just Activity day. The benefits of being a SAHM mean I can do more activities more often, as long as Mr Moo is behaving himself! I can REDIRECT her energy, her need for attention into something positive for both of us, rather than being constantly frustrated by her behaviour. This gives her the time and attention she wants in a positive way, and so far, so good, its reducing the negative behaviour!

Yep, its hard. It requires planning. It means letting some things go in the house until the days she is at daycare. That is hard for me. Its meant a reshuffle. 

But its so worth it!

So here is our first Activity....

Coloured Rice

Materials Needed:

• Long grain rice (we used a 1kg bag)
• Food dye
• Hand sanitiser
• Ziplock plastic bags
• A container to put it in
• Kitchen utensils to pour, measure, mix etc

The How To:

1. Separate the rice into the bags. We had 7 bags and I used scales to make them fairly even. No need to be that sad and precise, thats just me lol!

2. Add food colouring to each bag, I used about 20-25 drops of each colour to get a nice vibrant colour, add a big dolop (yes, that is a measurement!) of hand sanitiser and seal the bag. The hand sanitiser helps spread the colour and seal it into the rice grains.

3. The first fun part for Mini Miss was mixing the colour in the bag so that it coated each grain of rice!

4. The boring part....letting it dry. Its best left overnight, bags open, out of reach of impatient curious hands! The rice will be stuck together when dry in the morning, but a quick squish in the bag will loosen it again. 

5. To prepare what the play experience, I set up the rice in a flat container. Believe it or not, the tray is a kitty litter tray from a cheap shop, clearly NOT used lol! The end result was our RAINBOW RICE! 

Mini Miss couldn't wait to get into it. I set around the tray kitchen items such as scoops, funnels, measuring cups, spoons, various sized containers, even a silicone muffin tray for "baking". 

Keen she dived straight in....

It was fun. It was messy. It lasts. You can store it in an airtight container and use it again, and again and again! 

She measured and poured. When we were colouring the rice we talked about mixing colours. So lots of learning as well as lots of fun!

I got my inspiration for this, and for most of our activities, off Pinterest.

You can check out some of my kids activity boards HERE and HERE and even HERE.

Activity Monday Part 2 - Straws!!!

I love how one activity often leads to another one. When I let Mini Miss's imagination run wild, and follow her lead, we often end up where I would never have expected! Other times its my own imagination that runs off and leads us down the yellow brick road of craft adventures.

Bubbles Monday was no exception. Once we were done with our bubble painting we were left with lots more straws, and lots of bubble paintings.

So I decided rather than put these paintings away with all the other paintings that are gathering dust, in a box, at the top of our wardrobe, we would use them to make something else. 

So, off to Pinterest I went while they dried!!

And I found 2 great ideas that were perfect (that is quick and easy and didn't require any more planning or prep!)

First was at the Growing a Jeweled Rose website. This is a FANTASTIC site with sooooo many activities you don't ever really need to go anywhere else!! (but I still do!). 

Paper Rockets! 

Mini Miss loves rockets and space and planes and adventures. These were so easy to make and so much fun to play with. 

They are so simple to make. Cut an A4 piece of paper into strips. Obviously we used the bubble painting paper, but you could also get the kids to decorate some pieces of paper etc.

Roll the paper around a large pencil and either glue or tape shut.

Then to seal the top end, simply fold over and sticky tape shut.

See a full list of instructions HERE at Curious Kangaroos, where the original idea came from!

Then, inspired by a single image I found on Pinterest, I decided to make 

Straw Flowers.

Disclaimer: our flowers are NOTHING like those above! You know those "I found it on Pinterest and nailed it" memes? Yeah, we could be one! BUT, we had fun!

First I cut out some flower shapes from our paintings, found some colourful cupcake cases, and cut out some flower centres. And then I let Mini Miss put them together!

Then I found an (empty!) toilet roll and let her loose with the paint to make our vase!

And the final product? 

These activities kept us busy ALL day! Mini Miss was happy as she is at that "give me all your attention all the time, RIGHT NOW" phase and she was kept busy! I was happy too because as well as spending quality time with my Mini Miss, where I was focused on her, I can see all the skills she is learning, the fine motor development, the cognitive connections....or maybe that's the retired child care worker in me.......

Wonder what the plan for next Monday is? (no really! Any suggestions?! Its tough stuff coming up with interesting fun and engaging activities for a very busy active and easily distracted toddler!!)

Monday is now Activity Day - Playdough making

I don't spend enough time with my Mini Miss. Time has run away from me this year, and she is suddenly 2 and a half and is very interested in EVERYTHING! A little sponge, just shy of asking why all the time, but happy to ask "what that mummy?" at everything, or the new one "what letter that?". She is growing up fast, and I want to enjoy some of this new, sponge like time, before she turns into the 4 year old "know it all" or the 13 year old "I don't really need you anymore" kid!

Sooooo, I have decided that EVERY Monday will be a special activity day for just Mini Miss and Me. 

This week, we made home made, no cook playdough.

I went with no cook as I wanted Mini Miss to do as much of the making as possible, and I am not ready to introduce stove top cooking to her just yet! 

I found the recipe in the wonderful world of Pinterest, on the KIDSPOT website and it is just so simple. I can see us making this often. If you haven't checked out the Kidspot website before, I highly recommend it! 

To save time though, here is the recipe:

2-3 cups of flour
3/4 cup of salt
2 tbs cream of tartare
1 tbs vegetable oil
1 cup of water
1 tsp of food colouring

To make it is even easier!!

1. Put 2 cups of flour, salt and cream of Tartare into a bowl.

2. add food colour to water, helps it mix better in the dough
3. add oil and water to bowl and mix vigorously.

4. Add more flour if needed, until the mixture comes away easily from the bowl and turn out onto a floured board and kneed until it is no longer sticky. 

Thats it. So simple! 

You don't have to worry if they eat it, you know whats in it and its perfectly safe. (Mini Miss has definitely snuck a couple of bites in when I haven't been looking.....blue mouth is a giveaway!).

There are so many simple, yet important learning areas in this activity. We measured and counted. We mixed and poured. We watched as the white dough turned blue, and we talked about all the other colours we could make. We made things and she made up a little story about a snowman she made. (Mini Miss LOVES making up stories...all the time....about everything!).

Not to mention, it was awesome fun!

I loved spending time with her, and doing something just for fun. I love that Mini Miss enjoys helping with the housework, washing, dishes, cooking, just not vacuuming (not a fan of loud noises AT ALL!), but doing something fun together, was just so relaxing.

I highly recommend you try it if you have little ones! 

I am open to suggestions for next weeks activity so feel free to leave a comment with a suggestion/link!!