Balloon and cotton bud prints

Painting is a frequently asked for activity in my house, but can turn into a 5 minute activity with a 20 minute clean up: the favourite part for my boys is squeezing paint out of the bottles and mixing it together; after that they can lose interest pretty quickly.

Recently we tried making prints with balloons and cotton buds.

The first thing they both instinctively did was try to paint on the balloon by dipping the cotton bud into the paint. I showed them that they could also dip the balloon straight in and splodge it onto paper. Zeph’s splodges quickly turned into one big swirled splodge and then he tried making patterns on the painty plate using his cotton buds. Elly made some splodge and then tried to pop his balloon. Meanwhile I made some pretty patterns.

Make-up balloons

Draw faces on some balloons and let the kids loose with any old make-up you have lying around. Face paint should work too.

Given that I don’t wear make-up on a day to day basis (ok, or ever unless it’s a wedding or something – it’s too much like work), my kids have no idea what to do with it. But they had lots of fun smearing it over the balloons all the same.

It got a bit messy, but it wasn’t too hard to wipe up from the table and wash off the boys.

Mud construction and race track

We did this as a follow on activity a couple of days after trying out a bubbling mud kitchen. It was just as messy, but less structured.

I simply took the mud we’d already used and added a bunch of construction toys and cars for a child-led, messy, sensory play.Elly went back to filling his pots and had a little drive of a car, but distracted by Zeph taking a toilet break, he pretty quickly decided that a bath was the more interesting option.

Zeph meanwhile spent a good long time filling his trucks, creating roads and tracks for the cars to drive on and simulating earthquakes and mudslides to trap them.

Bubbling mud kitchen

This is a gloriously messy, strictly outdoors activity that I saw a version of on The Keepsake Co….Except we don’t have an outdoors and I really wanted to try it. So I threw down a plastic sheet and did it on the verandah – we have a wash-down floor out there which helps with clean-up.

You need:
Mud (I used a big plant pot full)
Baking soda (I used around 175g… I have no idea exactly what different proportions would do without experimenting, but we produced some fair bubbling)
Vinegar in squeezy/spray bottles

Optional, ideas of things to decorate the baking with:
Paint powder or crushed chalk
Flowers
Sticks
Stones
Birdseed

This was premeditated, believe it or not, so I had Zeph and Elly crush chalk for it a couple of days beforehand: we put our chalk sticks in a ziploc bag and bashed it with a rolling pin and a mallet. That went down very well.

For the mud kitchen itself we got out various kitchen utensils, pots, pans and baking tins and started out with the mud mixed with baking soda.Once they’d prepared a few cakes and pancakes and waffles I got out the crushed chalk and some flowers for decorating with.Next they took the vinegar in squeezy bottles and made their creations bubble!Finally, once we filled, refilled and ran out of vinegar, they dumpedthe mud out and played with it a bit more.And then I dumped them both in the bath, locking the verandah door behind us and closing my eyes to the mess for a day (okay, 2) so that we could use it again for this mud construction and race track activity.

 

Wet chalk drawings

This is great as an outdoor activity if you have paved paths or a patio in the garden, but can also be done indoors on tiled floors, walls or even on paper. All you need to do is throw some chalk sticks into water – the chunkier the better, and we use washed out yogurt pots.

The wet chalk draws much more silkily than if it is dry making it a completely different art process, and it is easily washed away after. Outside the clean up should be minimal to non-existent, and even inside (assuming there aren’t any major water spills in inconvenient places) it’s straightforward to wipe up. Another great thing about this activity when it’s done on the ground or walls is that it provides such a huge art space, encouraging crossing the midline and spatial awareness.

My two started out using a fairly conventional drawing style which progressed first to block colouring tiles and then to experimenting with their hands and feet.

Little kitchen helpers: homemade ice cream

My boys love ice cream and with the warmer weather well on it’s way we will probably be eating it pretty frequently. While I have absolutely no objections to buying some every so often, I do try to avoid sugar and additive stuffed varieties being the boys staple summer food. Especially with eczema being an issue for both of them. So here’s a gorgeous, simple homemade treat that has no additives or extra sugar and on top of that is packed full of real fruit.

Ingredients:
Should fill a 6-part ice lolly mould but may vary a bit depending on the size of mould you are using.

100mls milk

1 large banana

1 handful of strawberries and/or blueberries

Or

Other fruit of your choice – seedless berries are great because they tend to be soft and sweet, but others will work too depending on your taste.

You can also use frozen fruit if you prefer.

Method:

Put all the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth.

Pour mixture into an ice lolly mould.

Freeze until solid.

Salty letter writing practice

Here’s a simple, engaging activity for practicing letter or number formation (with bonus sensory stimulation!). All you need is a tray of salt and some letter guides – I’ve written the ones Zeph is using here on card with a pencil line at the bottom of the letter, an orange dot showing where to start writing it and an orange arrow showing the direction of the initial pencil stroke. You could use flour instead of salt if you prefer, but I find salt is less messy.

Today we focused on the letters used to write Zeph’s name. First we sounded out the letters and blended them to read the word and then we took them one by one to try writing them in the salt. At the moment this is a hands-on activity for me, both showing Zeph how to form the letters and talking him through it again as he does it to make sure that he is writing them correctly. I like to take advantage of the times he has interest in learning letter formation and he enjoyed this, but it did pretty quickly transform into playing in the salt with cars!