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....

Autumn Beginings

We are most certainly well into Autumn, the weather is getting colder, the leaves are beginning to turn and I'm starting to get my hibernation feeling! Not that I want to hide away from the world, but I do want to be curled up in a blanket with a book or some knitting in front of a fire....shame we don't have a fire!

This morning we got out of the house for a nature walk! We went looking for those tell tale signs of the change of seasons

Beautiful red and orange leaves

Also took this last chance to get some blackberries before Michaelmas and began collecting some bits for our Autumn Nature Table!

Not many leaves have fallen yet so we didn't get as much for the Nature Table as I would have liked but we did add a bit to our already HUGE conker collection and found a bit of a branch.

It was a lovely morning out in nature, letting the dog have a run around and snacking on some wild blackberries, Little 'A' however slept through the whole walk so I enjoyed it by myself!!

Back home after Little 'A' woke up and had some lunch we sat down to read some nice stories we got from the library earlier in the week. We read 'Knight School' by Jane Clarke (also linking in nicely with Michaelmas next week) and 'Sometimes I like to Curl up in a Ball' by Vicki Churchill. Two lovely stories with a bit of an Autumn theme.

Although Little 'A' is now only 15 months he loves to sit and look at some longer books aimed at older children. He listens to the rhymes in the stories and points to the pictures of things he recognises often with a sound and an accompanying baby sign!

Shame I didn't get any pictures but next up we played with a sheet of bubble wrap. Little 'A' already has a good pinching grip but I thought we could work on improving his strength, and what can be more fun than bubble wrap! We started with some pinching and one fingered pushing, Little 'A' has worked out he can pop the bubbles by scratching with his nail too. He then went and got a building block and started hitting the bubbles with that but soon found it didn't really work, so he stood on them, lay down on them and then started grabbing the sheet in a grasp and squeezing a handful at a time. All wonderful fine motor practice and just plain good fun, I got some huge smiles with each 'pop'!!

Next we grabbed some paint!

Over the last couple of weeks Little 'A' has started displaying some ability to use tools for a purpose, connecting his movement to the parks they leave, so we'll be building on this over the coming months.

We painted some toilet rolls...

...and took some hand and arm prints. These have been left to dry and will need to be finished next week now...can you guess what they will be yet??

After all that excitement Little 'A' went off for another sleep, he's been quite tired the last couple of days, there was just enough time for a bit of diner before Little 'A' went home for the weekend.

So that was our first fun week of Autumn!

New Arrivals!!

Oh I'm so excited about this, not a new child but some more new animals!!

A pair of baby Guinea Pigs!!

Over the last couple of weeks my partner Georgia has been getting to know a lady through facebook who runs a small animals rehoming center which it turns out is literally just around the corner from us at the lady's house! I had said to Georgia a few times about getting piggies, but she had never been really all that keen on them. However her mum then got a couple through another rehoming center run by my sister in law (this one however only really takes rabbits hence my mother-in-law ending up taking the Guinea Pigs!) and Georgia began warming to them. So after a bit of thinking, we decided to do some fostering!

And they are so lovely!! They are approximately 3 weeks old which sounds awfully young to be separated, but male piggies are fully mature at 3 weeks and so there is a chance they can get mum pregnant again which is not what a rehoming center is about at all!

They do love a bit of kale!

These two are not brothers but came from 2 litters born around the same time and the center managed to get them into bonded pairs for rehoming. Small animals can't really go to a forever home until around 8 weeks so we have these two cheeky boys for the next 5 weeks at least. Lots of handling and getting used to noise (which there isn't a shortage of during the day here) and people and hopefully they will be found a nice home soon!

Proving popular with the kids already!

Oylmpic Torch!!

Well it's been coming for quite some time, it's been pretty much everywhere already but we were still excited to see it coming through our home town!!

Baby 'A', little 'C' and I packed up some bits for a trip into town! We found a really good spot near the beginning of it's route through town so got front row seats!!

 Police escorts...lots of them!

 Coca-cola truck!!

 ummm...some people on scooters, not really sure what they were about...

 My boys sat watching just in amazement I think!

 This nice policeman stopped to say hello to the pre-school group across the road from us

 Baby 'A' was being kept amused by these blow up torches!

  

 There it is!!!

 Lots of security men!

It was very busy in town I'm glad we got a spot near the beginning!

After all the excitement we wondered down to the library to look at some books and then a quick drink and snack at a cafe in town, the boys were both pretty tired after all that so we went home for sleeps!

Happy Fourth of July!!

Little 'C' in my setting is American and I live in a village which houses lots of American Air Force families  so I thought it would be nice to have a big American day and I invited http://wormseye-view.blogspot.co.uk/ along too!!

We started off with a little basket of American bits to explore

'E' found an eagle which he then played with for the rest of the morning, asking what they eat and where they live. He also found a shark in the other animal basket and became engrossed in telling us all how the eagle would swoop down and grab the shark out of the sea and eat him for lunch!!

I've had this lovely Native American play set for a little while now, it's not quite 'Fourth of July' but I've been waiting to get it out so thought why not today!!

I decorated the living room with these hand and foot prints, we had used these last month as a Union Jack for the Jubilee

Quick snack of cut up bananas, strawberries and blueberries!!

Next, time for some drawing and painting!

 Baby 'A' has not quite grasped the idea of what drawing is about yet, he keeps wanting to suck the pens rather than having connected the pen with the marks it makes but we'll keep on practicing!!

 Good concentration here from little 'L'

'E' did such a good job at colouring in each of those little stars! He worked very hard on his picture.

Next we did some stamping with a couple of star cookie cutters

Little 'L' and 'R' did very well at sharing the paint and taking turns with the big and little stamps

We then turned these stamp pictures into lanterns but I didn't get a picture before they took them home

Lunch Time!!!

We had Hot Dogs, pretzels, cream cheese bagels and dried cranberries mmmmmm

We also had some cranberry juice to drink

Lovely face 'L' is pulling here!!

We got the Atlas out over lunch to show everyone what America looks like and where Texas is, as that is where little 'C' was born (and so was my big brother!!). We spoke about how Texas is bigger than the whole of England!

For pudding we had warm thick pancakes with maple syrup and more blueberries, these were a BIG hit!!

After lunch the children went off for another quick play before home time

'L' is going through a little phase where she screams if another child touches her and I think she had just been told off for it here but I wanted to put this photo in anyway because she looks cute in the garland! hehe

We had a few balloons around which are always popular!

A lovely day was had by all, I'm definitely going to do some more 'country days' in the future!!