One fish, two fish... Printable

In preparation for Boo's 2nd beach-themed birthday party, we made decorations. The kids are so funny.... they get so excited helping me organise a party, that I often wonder whether the actual event will be a disappointment. We were planning to hang blue streamers from the washing line as a water wall. I wanted lots of colourful fish to staple onto the streamers.

I drew up a fish template and used it to cut out fish shapes from paper card in various colours. Click here to download the fish template printable. I set the girls up with paint and glitter. They had a lovely time painting and decorating their paper fish.

Many, many fish were painted – I could barely keep up with the scissors. We added some googly eyes and ended up with a large set of friendly looking fish.

On the day, the weather was bad so I never did set up the streamer water wall. Instead I stuck our fish on the windows and doors.

I will re-use our fish template printable again one day, they are so simple and the kids can fill in the fishy details. For more ideas on art prompts have a look at this wonderful post from The Artful Parent.

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linked to tip-toe tuesday, Kids Get Crafty, It's Playtime and Tuesday Tots

Guest post at JDaniel4's Mom

Today I am thrilled to be guest posting over at JDaniel4's Mom as part of her wonderful Taking Time to Play series. If you have a moment pop on over and have a look.

I am taking a mini break from posting, I will be back sometime next week with some party posts and maybe some gardening.......

Cheers
Ali

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali

Big Construction Site... A Mom with a Lesson Plan

Today is the day Jillian posts her BIG construction site over at A Mom with a Lesson Plan. Go and have a look.... it is amazing! I really admire her creativity and I can't wait to try her idea in our backyard.

If you didn't see it, have a look at my LITTLE construction site, the girls loved it.

I hope you are enjoying our Big and Little series. It will be back next month with a brand new theme.

Cheers
Ali

Big and Little... Construction World

Welcome back to the third installment of BIG and LITTLE (read more about it here). This month's theme, construction, was chosen by Jillian's son. She is going to reveal her amazing BIG pretend play set-up tomorrow on A Mom with a Lesson Plan. But first, here is my LITTLE construction world.

I decided to set up construction world in our little wading pool. I made a large batch of cloud dough (8 cups of plain flour mixed with one cup of olive oil) and piled it in one corner. In the opposite corner, I placed a pile of blue garden pebbles. I popped our homemade crane between the two piles (click here for the instructions to make a crane).

I added some wooden blocks, people figurines, a toy truck, digger and excavator. While Boo was having her nap, Cakey got to have a play on her own. She spent her time using the crane to transfer the pebbles to the cloud dough, making a "building base". Cakey built a few walls, made a building and populated it with as many little people as she could find.

Moving the pebbles with the crane

Stacking up blocks on her pebble/cloud dough base

And then Boo woke up. Now, this is the absolute truth – I put Boo in construction world at 2.30pm and she did not get out until 4.30pm. Two hours of play!!! I sat next to her and crocheted a scarf that I started way back in 2010. Boo adored the cloud dough and enjoyed smushing everything she could find into it - blocks, rocks, people and her fingers.

Moving a block in the crane

Hours of fun.... literally!

I can't wait to see what A Mom with a Lesson Plan has for us tomorrow for the BIG. Did you check out Jillian's new ebook? It is awesome. I have already picked up some great ideas about organising our play areas and they are working well.

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linked to Tuesday Tots, Outdoor Play Party and Kids Co-op

Kids Get Arty – "strange" Magritte

Being an artist herself, my Mum got excited about the Kids Get Arty project when we joined in last time. She got the ball rolling with this one, introducing Cakey to Magritte (Belgian surrealist artist 1898-1967).

Mum showed Cakey some of Magritte's paintings. They talked about how he placed objects out of context and used scale to create surrealist or as Cakey phrased it, "strange" paintings. Cakey returned from a visit to my mum armed with a collage, an art book of Magritte's work and a stack of magazines. She giggled when she showed me her collage... pointing out how she had placed a large pair of slippered feet in a little ocean.

Le Chateau des Pyrennees by Rene Magritte

Cakey's first surrealist collage

The surrealist collages continued the following day, this time Boo got to join in. It was really very simple. I was on scissor duty cutting out requested images. Cakey and Boo, each with their own glue sticks, got to work putting together their collages.

Cakey wanted to make everything as silly as possible. There was definitely something about this project that appealed to her developing sense of humour. Cakey found it hilarious when she placed a girl on top of a rabbit and floated cupcakes in the sky.

Cakey stuck all her collages together, I am not sure which way is up

The details: Cakey told me that this is a stack of pancakes with a very small bottle of maple syrup (milk)

More details: A floating umbrella above a giant Princess Mary visiting a little Eiffel Tower

And, for the first time ever Boo actually glued paper to paper. It's an art miracle! Normally she just sits there and eats the glue.

Boo's collage

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linking up to Kids Get Arty

Making a crane

There is a construction site near our house with a huge crane – we like to watch it. I have been thinking about how we could make our own crane... and I finally came up with a solution.

I stored up two thick cardboard rolls (from cling wrap packs) – these are very sturdy and do not bend. I also found a narrow box from amazon which is made from thick, strong cardboard. I hunted around for another cardboard roll, this time it needed to be slightly wider (not longer) than the cling wrap rolls. The only thing I could find was a toilet paper roll, the width was perfect! I would have preferred something a little sturdier though (see design note at the end of this post).

The toilet paper roll needs to fit tightly in the box so I cut the hole slightly too small

Inside the box: I weighed the box down with rocks for stability

I cut a circle in the top of the box so that with a bit of pushing and squeezing, the toilet paper roll fit tightly into the hole. Because of the tight fit I didn't need to secure the roll to the floor of the box but you could apply a little sticky tape or use hot glue. I filled the box with rocks (to weigh it down) and sealed it up. Then I slipped one of my cling wrap rolls into the toilet paper roll and it rotated very nicely.

Folded down edges of the thick cardboard roll to create a nook

For extra strength I taped the rolls together

For the top of the crane I joined the two cling wrap rolls together. With a sharp knife I cut four shallow incisions at the top of the vertical roll. This enabled me to push down the edges and create a little nook for the horizontal roll to sit in it. It also gave me more surface area to apply glue. I used my hot glue gun to apply glue to the pushed down bits and then held the horizontal roll in place while the glue dried. For extra strength I also taped the rolls together with packaging tape.

Because one end is short and one long I decided to glue (with the hot glue gun) a rock into the short end to act as a counter balance.

The rock wasn't enough so I made some little weights using my little concrete blocks. I also made a bucket for the crane by skewering some holes into one of the kids stackable cups. I made a small cut in the top of the horizontal roll for the bucket's string to sit in..... and so, reduce the chance of the bucket flying off as the crane gets swung around.

The kids really like our toy crane... and I will show you how it got played with next week...

Design note: The toilet paper roll succumbed to the pressure of play so I have now replaced it with a paper towel roll instead – it is longer and thicker. I have hot glued the roll in place and I am going to add a layer of sticky tape too. I suspect that this area of the crane will need repair from time to time.

Repaired crane – I replaced the tp roll with a paper towel roll, it is held in place with hot glue.

The new paper towel roll was smaller than the tp roll so I used hot glue to plug the gaps

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linked to It's Playtime, The Sunday Showcase and The Kids Co-op

Planting agave pups

Finally a gardening update! We had to do a spot of emergency gardening. We all woke one morning to discover one of our huge agave plants had fallen over and its terracotta pot smashed over the path. This agave came with the house and we suspect it is well over 10 years old. Lo and behold, growing along its mother stem were a handful of agave pups...... these would make lovely Christmas presents.

Off to the garden centre to buy one enormous replacement pot and some little ones for the pups. Planting the pups now will give them time to get established so by Christmas they will have new growth and be looking lovely (hopefully).

Agaves are very hardy succulents and are easy to replant. There are many types of agave – we have agave attenuata which is native to Mexico. It is a spineless variety so it is perfect for kids and grows well in pots. They are expensive to buy in garden centres because they are slow growing. Once an agave is approximately 10 years old, pups will grow off the mother stem which can be cut from the plant and potted.

Agaves like good drainage so we lined the bottom of our pots with large pebbles. We also used a special potting mix specially designed for succulents which is available from garden centres.

The kids love to help with planting and got busy shoveling soil into pots. We re-planted more than 12 pups. We gave our little agave pups some water and Cakey placed pebbles in the top of the pots. Agaves like a sunny position so we found a good place for them in the garden and now we are awaiting the new growth.

A word of warning: agaves do not tolerate frost. If you are in an area not suitable for agaves but you would like to propagate plants with the kids I recommend trying geraniums or slow-growing japanese box. If you would like to know more have a look at these links:

• How to propagate geraniums from cuttings 
• Gardening Australia Fact sheet: Propagation
• How to propagate a buxus (japanese box and other hedge varieties)

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali



Linked to Fun Sparks

Cascading waterfalls

My kids are always up for some water play even in the dead of winter. I use warm water in winter so they don't get too cold too quickly! We thought it would be fun to create some cascading waterfalls in the backyard. 

I raided the kitchen cupboards and came back with a selection of plastic/metal bowls; plastic plates; a plastic chopping board; a metal colander; my trusty kitchen tray for the base and two plastic water jugs.

Cakey loves to build towers so she set to work on balancing the plates and bowls on top of each other. It took her a number of attempts (and some frustration) to create a stable tower. The flat plates/chopping board were really useful as they became stable bases on which to stack the upside down bowls.

Once we had a stable tower I gave each girl a jug of warm water coloured with food colouring. They poured the water on top of the tower over and over again.... until the tower was bumped and fell down. Cakey built many towers while I attempted to stop Boo from knocking them over.

Hmmmm, yellow was a good choice, don't you think? :)

The waterfalls were much more effective when the colander goes on last. Bowls tend to slip off the top during enthusiastic water pouring!

This one is is about to fall over!!

The food colouring made it easier to watch the water cascading down. We also got some great colour mixing happening.

This was a fun activity and definitely one we will be doing again in the warmer months.

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali

Hanging out the washing

There is always a basket of clean washing hanging around my house waiting to be put away. So when my girls were hanging around the house refusing to enjoy the sunshine outside I made a washing line inside. I tied two long pieces of string to the backs of a couple of chairs. I brought over the basket of dry, clean washing and the tub of pegs.

It didn't take long until Cakey was busy at work hanging up the washing. She completely filled both lines. Boo was not able to manipulate the pegs very well..... but she was extremely good at pulling the washing off the line and putting it back into the basket.

A simple, fun activity that filled in 15 minutes. Now I just need them to help with the dishes!

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali