Crafty Monday

Happy October!!

Another beautiful Autumn day and as is becoming our routine we headed straight out for a walk.

After some fresh air we headed home and Little 'A' headed off for a sleep and I could have a sneaky cuppa. I have a new starter Little 'O' who arrived after lunch and we had a bit of quiet play time with animals and cars. Once 'A' had woken up and had some late lunch we decided to finish off some of the crafty bits we started last week.

I don't often do organised 'Arts and Crafts' with very young children as it's so easy to get caught up in making something to send home. Which is of course a lovely thing for families to have, but it becomes an exercise in leading children to make something you want rather than what they want to do. Which is often simply exploring the media, feeling textures with their hands and just practicing control with various tools.

At the end of last week however I did do a bit of painting with Little 'A', took a print of his hand and arm and he also painted a couple of empty toilet rolls brown

Something Little 'A' is really enjoying at the moment is making sticker pictures. I put a bowl of stickers down on the floor and 'A' sits and picks out the sticker he wants and then puts it on the picture.

I then have to pick it back up again and tell him "peal the back" and then hold it out for him and say "stick" for him to place it back where he wants it. He hasn't yet started trying to get the backing off himself, but I'm sure that will come in time!

A lovely Autumn tree!

Next we finished off our toilet rolls, the idea was to make some owls so I drew on some marks for wings and then asked Little 'A' to put on some googly eyes (more sticking!) and then gave him a pen so he could do some more 'detailing' for the owl.

Little 'O' had said he didn't want to join in any of this so far and was happy playing by himself. He has only been here a few days and has had a lot of changes to his routine in the last couple of weeks so we're taking things nice and slow. He had however come over to the kitchen gate by this point and had started watching with a bit more interest so I asked again if he wanted to join in. He said yes but he didn't want to make owls, but did want to make a monkey and an elephant instead!

So I gave 'A' some paints and a brush to play around with and a quick improvise, (and a google search) we found some paper in the right colours and started cutting out arms, legs, trunks, tusks and tails and 'O' stuck them all on with some more googly eyes and even drew on some banana's for the monkey!

'A' had a lovely time with the paint, using the brush and then watching the marks his fingers make and then wiping with his whole hand. I took a couple of prints in some lovely autumn colours

After all this crafting there was just enough time for the boys to help me set up the Guinea Pig cage again. We got a bit covered in hay but it was good fun!

Our previous baby boys went to their forever home about a week ago so we've been waiting for our next foster piggies to arrive which I am off to collect tonight. We are having a pregnant mum this time so that will be lovely for the boys to see mum alone and then a few new ones 'appear'!! We don't know exactly when the babies will arrive as mum came to the rehoming place just pregnant so some time in the next 10 days is the estimate but we shall see....