Play Kitchen Project

Today, little bear and I went to a play centre so Daddy could clean the house (double winning in my book!) They have play kitchens with food, pots and pans. Bear had a great time opening and closing the doors, putting things in and taking them out, bringing things to me in the process. I've been thinking for a while about making him a kitchen from a tv cabinet or similar. Kinda like this


From http://www.hillebrandphotographyblog.com
/2013/04/selahs-play-kitchen/

I've spent the last hour or so trawling ebay, gumtree and local Facebook selling groups to find the most appropriate piece of furniture with little success. I will keep looking and hopefully something will come up.

I have primer and white gloss in the shed but might get some tester pots to paint it. I'll need to get a silver bowl for the sink and I saw somewhere to use a 'J' decoupage letter upside down as the taps. I might get some cork coasters/ mats for the hobs, painted black.

I've also just been searching felt and crochet food to make sure Bear's kitchen is fully stocked. I have measuring cups that might work as pans, depending on the scale.

I'm getting really excited about this, even though it might not end up being very frugal!

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! 

Giant Fuzzy Felt

I think this is another Imagination Tree idea. I went to a knitting and stitching show back in March and a large piece of felt for the board was part of my 'to buy' list. Abakhan had a stall and were selling polyester felt for £2 / meter. I bought one meter and stapled it to a cardboard box that my sister got me from her work. There was a bit leftover so I glued on a small rectangle to keep the shapes in.

I cut the random selection of shapes out of left over bits of felt I had in my stash so I only spent the £2 on the meter of felt!

Felt stash kept neatly... in a plastic bag

 Still mainly into just pulling the shapes off

The pieces get wrinkled in little bear's sweaty hands!

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.

Fishes in the Water, Fishes in the Sea

I like to make something for little bear's Christmases and birthdays (all 2 of them so far!). Someone on a Facebook group I'm a member of made this for her little one, and I thought it would be great for bear. My guess was correct, he loves them :)

I got the fish pattern from here and based the pond/bag on this pattern. I crocheted a long chain and did a dc in each ch to make the drawstring. I used scraps of acrylic dk yarn I already had (the white one was a different brand of yarn so it ended up bigger -grrr) including black for the eyes and embroidering the numbers on. They are stuffed with ce tested toy stuffing, which I also already had so this technically cost me nothing to make (win!). I think I used a 4mm hook.

When he gets a bit older, the fish can help him learn numbers and colours. I also want to make it into a fishing game at a later date, using sticky velcro dots and a stick.

To extend little bear in his play, we have put the fish into the ball pool and got him to find them. Talking through how many fish he has found and how many he has left resulted in his 4th word being 'fish' (shish). He doesn't say mummy yet but can say fish!

Little bear likes the fish so much, this is what happened when I was taking photos:

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!