Sensory Sunday: Shredded Paper

Sensory Sunday: Exploring the world with little fat fingers.

During a stroke of genius, I decided not to put this all straight in the recycling and thought I'd give Zander some time with it first.

Careful examination...

This is the first time, the very first time, he didn't put it all straight in his mouth. In fact, he never did put any of it in, which is unheard of. He normally gives everything a little taste but not this stuff. Probably helped that he'd just had a massive bowl of poddidge.

Crawling through it makes a good sound.

He thought it was hilarious when I dumped it all on his head, especially when some of it stayed there balanced precariously on his forehead.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

This week's fun has really made me think about the benefits of sensory and messy play. I tend to save these activities just for Zander; I wait until the bigger boys are at school and then do it. It's nice because lets face it, if I didn't do this, all of Zander's Mummy one-on-one time would probably just be watching me do all the housework and I feel a hell of lot less guilty spending some time cleaning up once I've spent some serious quality time with my little Zander Boo.

But, I wonder...what about the bigger boys? They get one-on-one time with me too, so it's not about that.While we played, it occurred to me how much the boys would love to have a chance to throw this stuff about too and that maybe I should give them an opportunity. For them, even though they are well past the baby exploration stage, it would still be a joyfully sensory exploration of a different kind. Mostly, they'll probably just go completely wild, but it may also be a chance for us to spend some quality time together too. They'd probably love to experience 'silly' mummy for a moment too.

As I expected, it went very well...

Then Nanny came over and got buried alive.

And then we cleaned up together and got the living room back to normal...well...our normal at least.

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Sensory Sunday: Ball Pit

Sensory Sunday: Exploring the world with little fat fingers.

For some reason, we have a few ball pit balls mixed in with Zander's toys. I've tried to work out where they've come from and I just haven't managed it. He loves them, he mostly sucks on them and watches them roll. There's something marvelous about a lovely round ball.

This week we went to our local play center for the first time and this is the first time he's experienced this many balls.

He crawled off, and just lay there for a while, kicking his legs.

Then he realised how much work it was going to be to crawl back through it all and had a bit of a moan all the way back to me.

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Friday inspiration: Tails Sensory Book

Friday Inspiration: a picture of anything that makes me want to get creative.

While having a little hunt for ideas of sensory toys I could make Zander, I came across this cutey. Sooo much fun :)
My sister actually gave Zander one of these for Christmas and he loves it.

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Sensory Sunday: Christmas Decorations Box

Sensory Saturday: Exploring the world with little fat fingers.

Since they were coming out now anyway, I thought we'd have a good old mooch though the decorations boxes.

Straight off, Zander was a big fan of the tinsel. 

We also found some colour changing light up thingies; a snowflake and a little tree. He mostly tried to eat the part with the battery so they didn't stay for long.

We also had a giant bowl full of cinnamon sticks, pine cones and dried oranges. They smelt yummy but Zander didn't think they felt very nice.

Apparently, tinsel makes a great noise if you shake it.

We also tried on lots of festive hats. He didn't like this one very much and when I tried to take a photo of him wearing a cute penguin hat he made it very clear he just needed a hug now thank you please.

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Sticky Saturday: Squish Painting

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

I'll be honest, I've been struggling to organise messy play at our tots group lately. Life with a small human is incredibly demanding (as expected).
So I think, for now, I'll mostly be concentrating on sensory play with my little Zander for my Sticky Saturday posts.
I chose something nice and easy (and not so messy) for our first attempt.

Dead simple. I squirted some paint onto a piece of paper, popped it into a plastic sleeve and taped up the open end.

We tried this on the rug during some tummy time first, which mostly got eaten, so I tried it at the table. This attempt also got eaten. Even when I taped the whole thing to the table, he peeled it off and tried to eat it. On the plus side, all that squishing the whole thing in his hands meant the paint spread everywhere but I had envisaged him pushing the paint around, using his hands rather than his mouth and seeing the consequences of his actions. I tried to show him but he didn't seem to care.
Still, he loved the crinkly plastic and he had a lot of fun tried to fit a whole piece of A4 into his mouth so it wasn't a complete failure.

The finished article.

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#tbt: Ed's star hat

Throw back Thursday: taking a look at stuff I've made in the past.

This turned up on my time hop this week and, actually, it breaks my heart. The hat that squishy faced Ed is wearing was amazing but sadly it was lost. I think it was stolen, though I don't remember the circumstances. The stars on it were hard work and it took me ages the get them how I wanted them. Still, I shall have to try again. It's too cute not to give it another go.

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Monday Make: Framed Baby Handprint Keepsake

Monday Make: This week's project

When Ed and Bean were six months old, I made little hand casts and they've been sitting on my bedroom window sill ever since. though not without incident unfortunately. The glass on Bean's got smashed and quite recently, a certain wild thing decided to draw all over his cast. I tried to wipe it off, being only pencil, but the more I wiped, the more of the clay came away, removing precious finger prints so I stopped wiping.

I couldn't find a third frame the same, so I knew a plan B would have to be implemented. Luckily, while visiting my Mum's house one day, I spotted a triple picture frame with smashed glass heading for the bin. Obviously I salvaged it.

Once I'd finally dragged us to hobbycraft and bought some air drying clay, convinced Zander to make his handprint and left it for a few days to dry, I prized the older boys handprints out of their original frames, and super glued them onto this one with Zander's addition.

To solve the drawn on handprint issue and the fact that they were all different colours, I decided to give them all a skin tone coat of paint.

Then I printed off the name labels and glued the on too.

Et voila! 

Really pleased :)

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Tempting Tuesday: Baby Banana Fingers

Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.

I made these for Bean and Ed when they were tiny, so obviously Zander gets them too. They're so easy to make and they're brilliant for babies who are just getting the hang of this whole eating thing. They're also junk free, with no sugar unless you decide you want them sweeter.

Ingredients:

2x bananas, preferably ripe.

a mug full of self raising flour,

a mug full of instant oats (or smashed up* porridge oats)

100g butter or 3tbsp oil

1 tsp vanilla essence. 

Please excuse my three bananas, as I got so many of them in my 9 pence bag, I thought I'd make a giant batch and see if half of them survive going in the freezer.

Smush up all the ingredients together.

Make them into baby fist size fingers (yes, I know they look like poos), and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes (or until golden) at 180°C (fan oven)

*smash up porridge oats using a food processer

***************UPDATE***************

It took a few attempts, but Zander really seems to like them (although he's in his throwing stuff stage).

And the best news ever...they survive the freezer!! Once defrosted at room temperature, you'd never guess they'd been frozen. Yay!

Time to make a giant batch.

Free printable recipe card. Just right click & save as.

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Monday Make: Baby Beanies

Monday Make: This week's project

This week, I noticed the school had gotten a little chilly all of a sudden, so I decided to knock up a few hats for the little guy. I figured he's a baggy beanie kinda guy so that's what I was going for.

I found this wool in B&M, nice and cheap, gorgeously chunky.

And this wool was found in Lidl. There's enough left to make me one - yay!

Do you think I should do a hat making tutorial? 

I'll be honest, I make it up as I go along, but I could try and note down what I've done.

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