Craft idea! Painted names

Here's a great craft idea I found on Pinterest. We did it together over the holidays and the boys LOVED it. Just write out their name in masking tape on a large sheet of paper, tape the paper to the table so it doesn't slide around and let them go crazy! Once it's dried, carefully peel off the tape to reveal a white name surrounded by their lovely artwork! This is a good one to teach name recognition too, and I found it really interesting to see their different styles - Hugh did a very precise rainbow and Noah's was just a mess that turned into preschool brown very quickly... Give it a go!

The humble sandpit

From a humble plastic box on a bench to a full scale playground with slide from the balcony and everything in between. A sandbox is a surefire way to keep the kidlets entertained for hours. Here's some inspiration from Pinterest...

Lazy summer days

Something to do with the kidlets. We did this a few times over the holidays - just lay outside on the trampoline, looking at the sky through the trees... counting clouds, birds, planes... Silly? Perhaps. But somehow special too...

Holy bird wings batman!

"My, what lovely bird wings you have..." isn't something I often hear - but that's probably because I don't have a set of these pretty puppies! I found them over at The Beetle Shack and my favourite thing about them is....

You can make them yourself!

Hmmm, they certainly look doable! Almost easy! Uh-oh, I feel a project coming on... 

Click over here for the tutorial and let me know how you go if you give it a whirl...

Messy but fun activity for the kiddos

This is what I got up to today with the boys. We made what I prefer to call Chalk Paint. I found the recipe on Pinterest and it's a super-easy little recipe with stuff you've probably already got in your pantry. The boys got involved from the get-go and helped mix up the paint, adding the food colouring and mixing it all together. Being slightly OCD about the whole thing I put each colour paint into a corresponding coloured bowl (small things like this make me happy - I think it's a sense of order amidst the chaos thing), and we got to painting. Each boy was armed with a paintbrush and things escalated from demure little painting strokes to flicking huge sprays of paint around the yard on the pavers fairly quickly! It kept them busy and happy for almost an hour before the paint and clean paver space ran out and we had to find clean clothes...

Definitely one that's worth a go if you've got a sunny day and some patience for a mess up your sleeve. Best part is, being all natural ingredients it all washes away with the rain or a hose! Sigh, Pinterest does it again! I've just started a new board called TeachMe with a few of these kinds of activities on it if you're interested in having a look...

**Something I should mention is that I made a much bigger batch than the recipe calls for. As soon as I looked at the recipe I knew it wouldn't keep them busy for long so I upped my quantities to 1 cup Cornflour, 2 cups Water and colouring. I recommend you go lighter on the water if you change the proportions. The more watery the mix the less visible it is when it's wet. Though once it dries - wow! Good luck! x

Make your own stamps for $0!

Via

I love this! For around $5 you can visit your local newsagents and pick up an eraser and a stamp pad, take a knife to the rubber to create a shape you like and start stamping! If erasers aren't your thing, try it with a potato or anything else you can find around the house that's hard enough to hold a shape but soft enough to cut... This isn't just a great craft activity to do with preschoolers, it's an inexpensive way to make your own party invites too! Google search silhouettes in images view for inspiration and tell me how you go with it!

Cranky pants cure for mummies losing patience

Do you find that some days you're just a bit of a cranky pants with the kiddos? I do. More days than I care to admit. But I may have found a cure! Here's how it works...

 Every time your kiddo says or does something funny/cute/heartwarming, grab the nearest scrap of paper (it can be an old envelope, post-it note or even a serviette if that's all you can find) jot down what they said or did and stash it in the jar. 

Then, every time they do/say something awful that sends you to the edge of despair, pull out a note and read it. Genius! I'm going to try this one for sure! Think it'll work? Hopefully I can get a few in there before I go looking for some to pull out huh?

Via

YOU are going love THIS!

Like it? I love it. Would you believe the boys did this? Ah yes, they're a talented pair! Let me tell you how... I found this idea over at Modern Parents Messy Kids. It's an oldie but a goodie and if you Google milk food colouring experiment you'll get millions of hits with You Tube tutorials and the like... However, you don't need any of that because you have me!

All you need is a baking tray, full cream milk (full cream works better than other varieties for some scientific reason I don't understand), food colouring, dishwashing liquid and toothpicks. Simply pour milk into your baking dish to a depth of a couple of centimetres, drip in a few drops of each colour food colouring you want to use around the dish, dip your toothpick in dishwashing liquid and start moving the toothpick through the milk. The dishsoap reacts with the colour and makes it radiate away from your toothpick creating these amazing marble patterns.

Now sadly I didn't realise this was going to be as awesome as it turned out to be and only had my iPhone on hand for a shot, but let me assure you that this is one activity that will be repeated at our place and next time I'll have the proper camera ready to get a good picture. Reason? Well, I think this will look amazing on my living room wall. Officeworks do huge prints for pretty reasonable prices and I'd like to mount a print of one of these onto board to hang on our wall. I figure it'll make me happy to have a lovely splash of colour to look at and it'll give the boys a kick to see their very own creation so big on display. I'll post a pic when it's up (but be patient, I'm not super quick at these things...).

By popular demand...

I've been caught out. A few friends of mine who read NooshLoves keenly spotted the fact that I cheated a little the other day and didn't show you the actual crayon masterpiece we created. Soooo, here is ours. It's made me want to do some kind of large scale colour piece with the boys for our living room. Perhaps with the crayola branding absent?

How to do THAT amazing crayon wall art!

This project has been all over Pinterest for weeks. I love it. But some of the suggestions of how to actually do it were a little worrying - there was no way I was going to be putting crayons inside my old pal "the glue gun"! Now there's an easy how to - check it out over at Whatever.... I'm off to buy us some crayons and a canvas!

The cheap activity that'll keep kidlets amused for hours

No, I'm not kidding! It's true! It's cheap. It's easy. It's actually pure genius. 

I came across this one over at Filth Wizardry. In a nutshell, take one disposable plastic tablecloth (found in your supermarket party section for around $2), some sticky tape, textas and a good dose of imagination and you're off and running. Hop over here for the full tutorial, and while you're there, take a look around. Lindsey is bursting with great ideas for preschoolers.

FREE! Snail mail

A few weeks ago, Hugh and Noah made some paintings and cards to send to their friends Millie and Phoebe who've moved interstate and they miss terribly. In the hustle and bustle of daily life I neglected to mention to my friend that there'd be artwork arriving for her girls and to keep an eye out for it. The result was that not only were the girls delighted to receive mail from the boys, but their mum got a kick out of it too! 

Sadly there isn't enough of the old school ways of letter writing and such simple pleasures anymore. With so many friends having moved away we have lots of people to make paintings for and send packages to, and when time and memory permits, I like to encourage the boys to keep up their friendships through the post. They love doing it too - the intention of giving a painting seems to bring more enjoyment to the activity, and, of course, they love to drop their parcel into the mailbox. Sometimes the favour is returned and they get to experience the joy of receiving a package as well.

Now it seems someone has taken the idea a leap further forward. Ivan Cash has launched "an interactive art project" called "Snail Mail My Email" and anyone anywhere can take part. It runs for one month from July 15 to August 15 and "seeks to both share the warm fuzzy feeling of receiving a personalised letter as well as inspire people to send their own snail mail". All you have to do is hop over here and send an email! Ivan and his crew will hand write your message (yes! Hand write) and pop it into a real postbox to be delivered anywhere in the world! But here's the best part. It's free!

Mine's already on it's way! I can't think of a reason not to take part - it's a great project! Well done Ivan!

Smart play in a bag

Another bit of genius to share with you today! Below are 2 simple games that I found on Pinterest. I tracked them back to their owner - here - and found a virtual treasure trove of educational activities you can make and do with your pre-schooler...

All of the games are designed to be stored in a ziplock bag keeping houses tidy and kidlets self-sufficient. I told you it was genius! Now I just need some free time to make a few....

This first one is great for colour learning. Trace around a plate and mark out however many segments you like - this one is based on 8 but you could easily add more or less segments to make the game harder or easier depending what stage your little ones are at...

And when you stumble across a good idea what do you do? Multiple applications! Same thing but number learning. .. It would also work for simple words with one missing letter and a picture - for instance, a pic of a cat and the letters "_at" on a segment with a "c" on one of your pegs... 

If you like these, make sure you hop over to Walking By The Way to check out the rest of her PreSchool Bags ideas...

Bring the tent indoors

Brrrrr it's cold in Sydney this morning! A perfect day for this idea...

I find my boys love things that aren't quite the way they're supposed to be. They find it riotously funny to wear odd socks, run backwards, eat ice cream from a cup - and pitching a tent in the living room falls quite safely into that category. With all the rain we've been having it actually seems to be a worthwhile idea...

Images via

Crayon cakes?

What to do with all those broken bits of crayon rolling around the playoom, under the couch, under my shoes?! Melt them into crayon cakes! That's what we did and it serves many purposes. Mr 4 learnt all about the properties of wax, recycling, cleaning up(!) and it kept them quiet for an hour between the finding the broken crayons, peeling the paper off, sorting the colours and then using the new crayon cakes... such an easy activity! All you need to do is break up your reject crayons into small enough pieces to fit into your cupcake tray, put the tray into a moderate oven for about 10 minutes or until each "cake" is melted, pull them out, give them a swirl with a toothpick for a good rainbow effect and allow them to cool and harden (which only took ours about another 10 minutes). Voila!

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If I was the tooth fairy...

...I'd have a kit just like this one from Papermash for all the kids I visited. It comes with a personalised certificate to keep track of teeth lost as well as an "official" envelope to hold the precious tooth, and it is all delivered in a gorgeous drawstring bag. Each certificate is hand-letterpressed and carries the Tooth Fairy Seal. Papermash do ship to Australia and these go for around $28 delivered to your door depending on the exchange rates on the day.

DIY: Ribbon Wands

These are a brilliant craft project to make with the kiddos. Super easy to do and hours of fun outside in the fresh air. I let the boys choose their colours and they even decorated the handles by wrapping them in ribbon to match! You'll need: dowel, ribbon and the ability to tie knots...

Via

Easter Craft: Easy Egg Dyeing

They look elaborate, but all of these designs were made with plain old masking tape. 

1. Simply cut the tape into strips to create stripes and plaids, use paper punches for letters or plant and animal shapes,and try craft scissors for the wavy bands at far right. 

2. Then apply the tape carefully to the shells of raw eggs, smoothing out any air bubbles, and tint according to the dye package’s instructions.

3. Once the shells dry, blow out the yolks and remove the tape to reveal your motifs.

Tip: Just hard boil your eggs before you decorate and dye them to avoid the torturous process of blowing eggs...

Via