Halloween Witches Brew

Halloween produces mixed reactions from the grown-ups here in Australia. There are those you who love a chance to dress up and then there are the others who turn off all the lights and pretend they are not home. I am yet to meet a kid who is not excited by the prospect of Halloween.

Having spent some of my childhood in Canada where I experienced the full North American Halloween extravaganza I have a soft spot for the holiday.

Plastic Halloween stuff has been in the shops for a few weeks and Cakey has been running an intensive campaign to buy buy buy. With a week and a bit to go I finally succumbed and bought a pile of creepies – spiders, skulls, eyeballs, rats and a severed hand. Awesome! These will probably be handed to friends in a game of spooky lucky dip.

In the meantime, I thought we should have a little fun with them so I set up a witches brew activity. It was simple. I supplied a cauldron (my casserole pot), jugs of water, blood (bowls of water mixed with red food colouring), eye droppers, spoons and assorted creepy crawlies and gross things.

The kids mixed up the brew, adding everything but the severed hand. The brew was well mixed and then ladled out into bowls. And then I sent them both to school with red stained hands... I am really hoping they don't call the stains 'blood'.

I hope you all have a super-fun Halloween. I have been busy with an exciting side-project but I hope to be back blogging with a little more regularity soon. Cheers Ali

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Peaceful Cloud Craft

I find clouds so peaceful. The girls and I like to look for animals and shapes in the clouds. Their dad likes to talk to them about the different cloud formations. I think we strike a good balance between imagination and science!

One morning our cloud talk translated into some cloud craft – all very simple... but lovely and peaceful. I lay out a couple of glue sticks, some light blue paper and a big bowl of soft cotton wool balls. As a kid I always thought that clouds would feel just like cotton wool!

The girls created their cloudy sky pictures with the cotton balls while I cut up strips of paper that I had painted with a watercolour wash (in a previous painting session with the kids). These were in soft hues of blue, pink, orange and yellow – perfect to decorate sunrise/sunset skies.

Cakey added a drawing of a rainbow. She also opened up the hole puncher and used the 'holes' as 'sun sparkles'. Boo kept it simple. She happily glued on her cotton wool balls and added a few favourite feltie pieces to her cloud picture.

And if you like clouds, you may also like The Cloud Appreciation Society. Their facebook page is regularly updated with some spectacular cloud photos.

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 TGIF, The Kids Co-op and Kids Get Crafty

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

A fairy craft

Early one morning the kids and I were watching Play School. The presenters were making fairies. These fairies had cute little wands that really appealed to me. While the kids were glued to the screen I snuck off and made a wand. I wrapped a matchstick in tin foil and taped it down with sticky tape. I cut out a star from gold glittery card and glued it to the top of the stick with superglue. I proudly showed my wand to the girls..... they were impressed and I had to make another one, fast, so that they could each have one.

Once the girls had their fairy wands they wanted to make fairies too. Here are the steps:

• Cover a toilet paper roll (or half a paper towel roll) with coloured paper and secure with sticky tape.
• Punch two holes (with a holepunch) at the top of the cardboard roll and thread a long pipecleaner all the way through for arms.
• Punch two holes at the bottom of the cardboard roll and thread a pipecleaner all the way through for legs.
• Cut a circle with a tab at the base for the face.
• Draw your fairy's face and then stick the tab inside the cardboard roll.
• For the wings, twist a rectangular piece of tissue paper in the middle and secure to the back of the cardboard roll with sticky tape.

Cover cardboard roll in coloured paper

Draw your fairy's face

Attach tissue paper wings to the back of the cardboard roll

This is a craft project where I was heavily involved. I made Boo's fairy for her, while Cakey made her own and I helped with the fiddly bits. Using sticky tape, I attached a piece of wool to the top of each fairy so that the girls could make them fly.

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 Sharing Saturday, The Kids Co-op and Kids Get Crafty

A miniature rock pool

Before we jump into our latest little world post I have an exciting announcement. Mom with a Lesson Plan and I are collaborating on a new series – BIG and LITTLE pretend play. Each month a theme is chosen, Jillian tackles the BIG and I tackle the LITTLE. It starts late next week with our small furry friends... dogs.

Now for our miniature rock pool... Cakey and I worked on this together when Boo was asleep. I couldn't cope with the bickering if both kids had been involved. Cakey is very interested in "what stings you at the beach" – creatures such as blue bottles, jelly fish, sea anemones and spiky urchins.

Adding sea creatures to our ceramic tart dish

Plasticine (or coloured modleling clay) is perfect to create rock pool life. It doesn't go instantly mucky in water like playdough.

Cakey made a blue bottle, sea grass and an octopus while I worked on the corals and an anemone. We used an old marine biology textbook for inspiration. Matchsticks and playdough stamps gave texture to our sea creatures, Cakey also added matchstick spikes to her sea urchin. Some small packets of coloured sand were emptied and water with a smidgen of blue food colouring was poured into the bottom of the dish.

Then we both ran around the house finding all sorts of things for our rock pool. I found an orange net, some plastic sharks and gold coins for treasure. Cakey came back with some shells from laneway garden, spanish moss to use as seaweed and her mermaid ponies.

I left Cakey to play with her rock pool. She took off her socks and stepped in it. Then she dumped heaps of "rubbish" (which were actually perfectly good plastic toys) into the water. I thought she might be on an environmental crusade but no.... she told me, "the rubbish is for the fish to play with, they like rubbish".

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

Rainbow party bags

To prepare for Cakey's rainbow-themed 4th birthday party I decided that the kids and I would make our own rainbow party bags... they were a lot of fun to make and look great.

This idea was inspired by these Valentine treat bags from Petite Elefant. Ours don't look quite so elegant but they are nice and colourful. We used cheap brown paper bags bought from the supermarket as the bade. To make the rainbow shape I simple cut round white doilies in half.

I portioned out the rainbow paint colours and Cakey, Boo and I got painting. Cakey painted one lovely, colour-correct rainbow and then decided to mix it up and put the colours out of order, paint dots and patterns.... no matter, they looked great anyway. Boo loaded her doily up with paint and then ripped it to shreds. I worked on my rainbows – Cakey was highly disappointed that I was sticking to the correct order of a rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and indigo. I will never get these colours wrong again!!

Once they were dry I slipped our rainbows between the pages of a heavy book to flatten out the curly edges. When the kids were asleep I glued the rainbows onto the paper bags and filled them with party treats.

With all the excitement half the children left without party bags as I totally forgot to hand them out until part way through the exodus. I am such a party novice.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Secret Garden – Part 4

Welcome to part 4 and the end of the Small Garden Spaces For Kids Series. If you are new to this series you can take a look here to see what it is all about.

Today I am featuring my favourite area of our garden – a little secret hideaway spot that we call dragonfly garden. It is a special kids only space that acts like a 'green' cubby house surrounded by trees and shrubs.

We created this secret spot within one of our garden beds. Chris cleared out a small area, flattened the soil and laid down some old pavers. We found two level sandstone blocks that the girls like to sit on. Dragonfly garden has evolved over time, there is now a path weaving through our garden bed leading to it.

Dragonfly garden changes with the seasons – it is green and well hidden in spring and summer and opens up to catch the sun when the leaves are lost in autumn and winter.

The two sandstones seats are to the right

The fairies have come to visit

Dragonfly garden is popular when friends come to visit and is a great place for the girls to take their afternoon tea.

The path winding through the garden bed leading to dragonfly garden

If you want to create a secret garden it doesn't have to be complicated, it could be as simple as:

1. A special rock tucked under a tree.
2. A small space created by positioning pot plants in a circle and allowing a child to get amongst them.
3. Boards nailed to a tree or rope ladder to allow access to lower branches. If you have carpentry skills and a strong tree you could create a platform too. (You are best at deciding where your risk vs safety balance lies).
4. Cut back a section of a shrub to allow an opening for a little one to climb in.

For a little inspiration I have included two book links:

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett – one of my favourites as a child.
• Rosy's Visitorsby Judy Hindley and illustrated by Helen Craig – Cakey's current favourite about a wonderful secret spot in an old tree trunk.

If you have a secret garden I would love to include it here. Please let me know via email, in the comments section or on my facebook page.

I hope you have enjoyed the Small Garden Spaces for Kids series. I plan to post updates on our garden as we make improvements and changes to the space.

Paper rainbows and a unicorn

Cakey really, really, really loves rainbows. One morning she wanted to make a rainbow... sadly I couldn't remember how many colours are in a rainbow, what they are or what order they go in. Jeez, that is not a good start. We looked them up –  
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, 7 colours in total.

Cakey drew a rainbow as I listed each colour. Cakey wanted to draw a unicorn at the end of her rainbow. She started drawing one in green and then got angry as she had wanted to draw it in pink. I encouraged her to draw another unicorn in pink and we cut it out and stuck it over the original.

I thought that would be the end of rainbow time but NO. The drawing did not take her mind off her original intention – to make a rainbow. So I cut out six strips of coloured paper (indigo and violet just became purple) and gave her six corresponding coloured paddle pop sticks. She busily sticky taped the paper to the sticks and then stuck them into plasticine to stand up. That was the easy part.

Next was the hard part – We grabbed her toy unicorn and Cakey tried to sticky tape the ends of the paper to the unicorn. The unicorn fell over, the paper got squashed, the sticky tape came off and tears started to fall.

To rectify our pending rainbow disaster I stabilized the unicorn in some plasticine and helped to sticky tape the paper to him. When we had finished, the paper did stand up in an arch... but it didn't stay that way!! Cakey could help touching it and the paper started to flop down, but it looked fabulous anyway. As a final touch Cakey placed a little figurine underneath the rainbow.

Cakey now wants a rainbow themed 4th birthday party – so look out for more rainbows coming your way. Critters and Crayons has recently written a great rainbow post with the most amazing rainbow cupcakes. Also, check out the amazing rainbow painting with a sponge from Hands on : as we grow.



Linked to It's Playtime, Kitchen Fun and Crafty Friday and Red Ted Art

Santa sleigh imaginary play

Cakey won't stop talking about Santa. Santa has now made an appearance in her imaginary play and she wanted to turn a large box left over from Christmas into his sleigh. We painted the box pink, purple and yellow because she refuses to toe the line about the traditional red and green Christmas colours (check out When Christmas craft goes wrong).

Once dry, I found the largest toy animal in the house and tied a ribbon around him to make the reins. Cakey added the deer antler headband to turn our toy dog 'Dingo' into a reindeer. I cut two vertical slits in the cardboard box to hold the ribbon in place. Lots of fun was had riding around in the sleigh delivering presents. Cakey was a little disappointed that she had to make the sleigh move in her imagination only as I refused to pull them around the yard.

You can find all our Christmas craft ideas here.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to Tuesday Tots