less can be more

well, not mathematically, but...

This was our drawing pens box;

all the pens, pencils, crayons were in one ice cream tub. After the recent 'mark making to writing' session, I have now spilt them

(crayons are now in the box labelled crayons, by the way!)

so, we have 1 for pens and 1 for crayons and I made a 3rd for pencils. all the spares are out of the way.

The session was great (I've already bleated-on in a previous post) and it gave me lots of ideas. One thing the trainer said is "less is more", so 1 colour of each pen, that works!, in a pot, is more inviting to a child than the big mixed box - unsharpened pencils, pens that don't work and broken crayons do not encourage little hands.Oh, and 1 pair of (child's) scissors is all that is needed. I check the pots weekly and sharpen pencils and remove any broken pens or crayons - i've kept the broken crayons as I've seen a few posts on Pinterest about melting them into new ones.

The felt pens pot - I made it as a cutlery holder for a Dino Dig party we had last year. Took yonks to make! (made from a baked bean tin, covered with paper mache and then painted green)

kitchen science - volcano's

we made an erupting volcano! bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, washing-up liquid and red food colouring.

The volcano is a small plastic mould that I found in a charity shop but there are so many tutorials out there on making ones of plaster (I bought some plaster moulding rolls from Hobby Craft for £1 each with the intention of making one)

This worked really well - given it's a small thing. Also, R extended the activity on his own - he got some plastic dinosaurs and they "all died beside the volcano and became fossils" 

a bit of fun on a Sunday afternoon that took-up around half an hour. one for the childminding list of to do's! 

"mark making to writing"

I attended a course yesterday evening, "Mark Making to Writing" - it was brilliant!

a lot was crammed into the 2 hours (the trainer had written it as a whole day course and WBC got her to present it in 2 hours!) - I came away with this long list of "stuff to do".

I'm not too bad at coming up with activities that "extend whilst being fun" (blah, blah, blah) but have so many more ideas now for helping my EYFS/Reception kiddies 

One thing the trainer did say, and it's something I bang on about so skip this if you've heard me bleat about this before :-) is that the Northern European countries (i.e. Denmark - highest academic rates anywhere in the world) do not expect children to read until Y2, when they are 7, and, boom!, they can read within 2 weeks. Yet, this country's successive governments' continue to lower the age of testing and increase expectation standards. idiots. anyway it is what it is and we are where we are...

We know that gross and fine motor skills are a precursor to being able to write and that, consistently, boys are more likely to be "reluctant writer"'s than girls - the key is to make writing available indoors and out, not make it about writing, using "dotty letters" is OK but that is not writing, it's handwriting! (why did I not realise this before now!!!)  story books, story sacks, powder paint in the rain - I have a huge list.

and so, this morning, we were threading loopy cereal onto pipe cleaners (I believe these are now referred to as "chenille sticks", whatever!), we then hanged them from a tree in the garden for the birds

My job today is to take photos of any birds I see eating the treats. How we extend this activity? well, possibly limitless - draw pictures of the birds, making a score sheet, make other treats, do different birds prefer different food?...

and, before, anyone makes a comment on the Fruit Shoot bottle - they are allowed 1 per week and they choose the day they have it but they must finish a cup of water before they can have it-those are the rules. I did research on the sugar content of bottled drinks, aimed at children, and Fruit Shoot won.

as cute as ...

a (cross-stitched) button :-)

but, interfacing needs to be applied to the aida before covering the button (I used a 22mm self-cover button)

and now I just need something to attach them to!

an A B C box

it has taken me some time to create this A B C box but it has, and continues to, be a great resource.

(when I find seemingly random objects, I always bear them in mind for other stuff-some people call this hoarding...)

The box is irrelevant-an ice cream tub in our case - getting the child(ren) involved in decorating the box is a good launch platform for this resource.

1. an A to Z magnetic set of letters - I got a set from the £1 shop
2. assorted items from A to Z - this takes time and I haven't got objects for all letters
3. a tub to store it all in - recycled ice cream tub

We play various games - I say "find a thing, find a thing..." and boo rummages for an object, says the beginning letter and then has to find that letter. I also use some of the objects in sensory bins. Some of the toys are "wind-up's" and so we play racing games. Once an object and its letter has been found, they get put back in the box and the letter is placed on the 'fridge (well, today it was)

This leads on to other challenges - can you find objects in a sequence that spells a word

I need more objects :-) and then a bigger tub (more ice-cream?)

cake day tomorrow...

School cake bake tomorrow - and no, I have no idea whether they meet food regs, but hey-ho

I love our little library (we go every week) and I am always picking up the latest cook book, I saw this:

me and the librarian had a chuckle about how everything was going to be too difficult for a "home cook" and that it's a nice coffee table book. yippee! so wrong, the recipes are in British measurements (hoo-ray) and they are doo-able - i took a lot longer to achieve results and I cook every day and bake every other day

Inspired by the rainbow cake - which is a magnificent looking thing! I've made these cup cake for the school cake sale tomorrow

Boo says they taste better than a rainbow - I can only guess that nothing tastes better than a rainbow, unless it's cake :-)

Since then I have topped them with some butter cream and sprinkles: 

in the background are some jammie dodgers from the same book - I made small ones as opposed to the one large one and the recipe amount made around 24 - but, I had some casualties because I have a fan oven and I have never cooked biscuits before so lost a few to trial and error

left-overs for lunch!

here is lunch from today and it was lovely :-)

yesterday, I made a chicken schnitzel with garlic butter (not quite a Kiev, but, yeah) and served it with a broccoli and potato mash. As I made too much mash I kept it in a bowl and today added some salt and pepper and then formed them into rounds and fried one of them - if I do it again I would coat them in breadcrumbs

whilst they fried off, I had a patty of microwaveable haggis that I ping'd for 60 seconds - truly, a great invention!  and then I poached an egg

it's topped with some left-over peppercorn sauce from a couple of days ago

as it happens, I made 6 of the potato cakes and hubz had one with his lunch and our son had one with his tea (he's 5 but ate half of it!) and I'll freeze the other 3

who says there needs to be waste :-)

Story Book Bag - "The World Came To My Place Today"

boo's school is adopting a story sack approach to encourage reading and they have a book week planned for later in the month. So, my homework was to put together a story sack - woo-hoo for me

Bag - I could (should) have made the calico bag but was in hobby craft the other day (if only I could get a job there...) and the are selling them for £1. I cut out a circle of blue felt and sewed the continents onto it and then hand appliquéd it to the front. I drew the continents freehand so no marks for accuracy!

Felt Map - this thing took months! I had an idea of a felt map/jigsaw thing and had started to make the sea but had no real idea of how I was going to make animals or the like. Did a quick search on Pinterest (my favourite waste of time!) and boom! there are various ones out there but I picked 'imagine our life' - - because the mum who runs the site obviously had the same idea as me and so I used her animal templates. Cost? it's difficult to value this because whilst there is the cost of the felt and velcro (but I had used scraps from my making stash), there is the time it took which was at least 2 months, probably longer, and there are still a couple of extra animals I could make

Books - "The World Atlas sticker book" cost £4.99 from our local bookshop and I bought "The World Came To My Place Today" by Jo Readman from Amazon after it was recommended to me

Ocean Map - was a royalty-free image from google images library

Blow-up Globe - cost £1 from a local toy shop

Country Cards - these came free with something and I have had them for ages; I expect Usborne or Orchard Toys would make something similar

Total Cost: around £30, not counting the cost of my time to make it...

Next bag? I am working on a "Very Hungary Caterpillar" one for the younger children I child-mind but need some ideas for other ones

Links: http://www.imagineourlife.com - most of Stephanie's patterns are free but even the ones for sale are inexpensive (no more than £3) and there are a couple of other ideas of hers that I would like to have a go at. Shame I didn't find her before I made the doll house!

beautiful soup - butternut squash

I love soup,

especially when it's a vegetable soup.

This lurid coloured one is a butternut squash one, and while it was cooking on the hob I made some soda bread to go with it :-)

Butternut Squash Soup:
1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into chunks
600ml vegetable stock (i'm using a low sodium stock these days)
1 (large) onion, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 table spoon vegetable oil
1 tea spoon dried thyme
1 tea spoon rosemary leaves (but only because I have a rosemary bush in the garden, it does add something to the soup but next time I will make it without)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 tea spoon chilli flakes
salt and pepper

1. heat the oil and then add the thyme for a few seconds
2. add the onion, garlic and chilli and season with salt and pepper
3. simmer for around 10 minutes - until the onions have softened but do not allow them to colour
4. add the squash and stock, bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for around half an hour - until the squash has softened
5. blend until smooth - I have a stick blender (a must have for me and my soup making!)

Tony Singh's Soda Bread:
140g plain flour
140g wholemeal self-raising flour
1 tea spoon baking powder
1 tea spoon salt
125ml cold water
125ml plain yoghurt (or buttermilk)

1. preheat the oven to 200oC/gas-6. lightly dust a baking sheet with flour. Tip the two flours, baking powder and salt into a bowl and stir
2. make a well in the centre and gradually stir in the water and yoghurt, until combined. Allow the mixture to sit for 5 minutes
3. shape the dough into a round on the baking sheet. leave to stand for 10 minutes before baking
4. cut a cross (1cm deep) on the top of the dough, using a floured knife. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes - the loaf should sound hollow when tapped

I didn't have any wholemeal self raising flour and so I used the wholemeal bread flour I did have and ordinary SR flour; also, his recipe does suggest buttermilk or thin yoghurt and so I used a small pot of plain yoghurt I had in the fridge

If you've not heard of Tony Singh - I love his book

I borrowed the book from the library but now have to buy it! I want to make everything in the book - a bold statement from me, given how many cook books I have!

up-cycled fluffy top to a cushion cover

up-cycled fluffy top

I was gifted this fluffy top by a work colleague and knew it could become a cushion cover! It took an hour to sew-up the head and arm holes and add some trim and the 2 buttons

The buttons cost £1.75 each and the trim was 72p. I have had the cushion pad for a while and think it cost around £5.00 so a new cushion for under £10 isn't too bad.

It's not quite as purple as my (terrible) photography makes it look. That said, I don't have any purple-themed rooms so no idea what I am going to do with it!