Monkeys Doodles: Recyling Nature

This weekend I needed to empty one of my vases which had been used for my birthday flowers but now they were looking a little dead. So I decided to save the petals for P to use for a craft doing the weekend.

I thought the petals would make a lovely collaging activity, maybe a secret garden or for butterfly/fairies wings. P was very excited to use a different media in her art. What I love about using petals is that if you don't use them all up you can always put them in a freezer bag and save them for another time.

Once I had set up the table we discussed what P could use them for in her picture. The first thing that came into P's head before I could even suggest my ideas was confetti. I love that P clearly remembers every part of our wedding and just is what she decided to make a picture of. I don't think it is too clear but she even gave daddy some flowers for in his pocket.

Please feel free to share all your great children's activity ideas below and help your self to a Monkeys Doodles badge.

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Monkey's Doodles: Free Drawing

Mickey Mouse

This week end has been another busy one for us and crafting and art of any kind have been at the back of our mind. So instead of sharing an activity we have done this week I have a drawing my daughter did at school lately.

P always surprises me with her drawing skill's, P will sit and draw for hours thinking up great ideas using her imagination and I think this has helped to develop her hand eye coordination and hand writing at school as well.

Encouraging your child to do drawing and allowing them to do it without being adult led is important  to let them express themselves and explore their imagination using marks and movements on paper. An easy way of making this more avaliable to your child is setting up an area where your child can go to through out the day when ever they like to sit and explore using a variety of drawing media and equipment.

Here are some examples of what you could include in this area, but make sure you judge the suitability according to your child's age: 

Pens, Pencils, ruler, rubbers, stencils, different size or patterned paper, chalk, crayons, stickers, labels, note pads, sticky notes, envelopes, stamps, hole punch, pencil sharpeners, scissors, prit stick, clip boards.

Dont forget to share your ideas below we would love to see what you have been up to this week and if your stick for ideas feel free to check out our blog for ideas or our sponsor Galt have a great variety of ideas HERE

Maths Through Play

Play is the natural way in which children learn. It is the process through which children explore, investigate, recreate and come to understand their world. Play is an activity in which everything that a child knows and can do is practised and new learning opportunties are best absorbed.

Shape sorters help children to recognise shapes at an early age.

To many adults, the words Maths and Play have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Maths is thought of as times tables and recording figures but in early years learning Maths can be found in games and childrens everyday enviroment. Through opening up opportunties for children to learn maths in the home setting they will begin to:

• know and understand early maths language of measurement, shapes, spaces, positions, early

numbers, order and patterns

• know the sequence of numbers

• begin to understand positional words, e.g. in, on, outside

• show an awareness of time

• be aware of shapes in their environment

• be aware of 1-to-1 correspondence

• acquire new vocabulary

• learn number rhymes and songs, e.g. one, two, buckle my shoe etc.

• be aware of conservation

Shapes collage

So what can you do at home? Well how about one of the following ideas:

Bath Time- instead of the usual sqeezy bath toys one evening swap them over with some pots and containers of different sizes and encourage them to measure the water from one jar into another. Discuss how full the container is and how many small pots of water more you will need to fill it up. Cutting up shapes in foam can make a great creative activity too as they should stick to the tiles in the bathroom.

Baking- This can be you of the easiest way to discuss maths through play. weighing out the ingredience and counting using scales will help children to recognise numbers and even count on further. Baking a cake or pizza can also open up chances to talk about shapes and simple fractions.

Laying the table- Getting your little ones to help lay the table is a great chance to talking about pairs of cutlery, counting how many cups or plates you need and adding on how many extra ou may need.

Planting- Now that the weather is getting nicer planting daffodils and sunflowers can be a fun way of counting seeds for how much soil you need and measuring using a tape measure.

Daily routine- Displaying a visual routine can help your children to begin to recognise and begin to understand the concept of time, as they get older you can introduce more use of a clock.

This is just a taster there are many more great activities you can do at home. I have blogged some on Monkeying Around here and Cathy from The Nurture Store has a great section dedicated to Maths here.  

Monkeys Doodles: Easter egg cards

This morning I thought we could get a head start on making some Easter egg cards for the family. Little man made some great simple egg shaped ones with hand painting. I love the way they turned out and we even got to try some other ideas which I will post tomorrow once they are finished.

Little man had great fun dapping on the card while getting use to the cold paint and soon had both hands in the paint waving them about and spreading them on the paper.

I allowed him to freely paint these cards with out trying to get him to make stripes or dots. I think that letting him express his self through his painting will always get the best results.



Here they are!! we may add some glitter or sticking pieces to them yet just to jazz them up a little.

So now its your turn, feel free to add your crafts below. We would love to see what you have been up to!



Moon Dough Competition

Earlier this month we were sent a fab Moon Dough Magic Zoo pack to play with and have a little fun reviewing for Spin Master. Much to our excitement they have offered us Moon Sand Construction Destruction pack to run a little competition to spread the word about our new facebook page and their products! So if you would like to be in with a chance of winning a Moon sand pack simply pop over to our face book page, like us and leave us a comment under the Magic Zoo Picture.

The competiton will finish on 31st March and is only open to UK readers.

Banging And Crashing Pot Play

This week little man has been awfully ill with croup and has struggled to eat and sleep but nearly a week later he has started to feel more him self and has started to want to play again yippie!! So I thought that the best thing to do would be to get thing out with he could do at his own pace and play as much or little with as he would like so pots and pans it was.

Little man's eyes couldnt get any wider when he saw me bringing piles and piles of kitchen equipment out and placing them on the floor infront of him.

To start with he unpacked the pans and bowls and looked at what he had infront out him.

Little man experimented seeing what would fit inside the larger items then lifting them up to tip everything back out again. Good fun! You can do this activity at home using any items from the kitchen and bathroom with are safe to use and this activity can be great for stimulating younger childrens sensory development. With older children the activity can encourage discussion of size and shapes.

Here are some examples: pots, pans, sieves, funnels, spoons, whisks 

Dolly pegs, egg cups, curtain rings, coasters, piece of flannel, pine cone, wooden spoon, shaving foam brush, loofah, ribbon,  pebbles, drift wood, coconut shell, pumice stone, avocado stone and shells.

Pancake Recipe

We love making Pancakes so tomorrow I will be up bright and early cooking and flipping some rainbow pancakes like the ones in the picture above. Incase you dont have a pancake recipe at home I have added ours below.

1 cup of plain flour
1 egg
1 cup of milk

and thats it!!! have fun and I will post some of our fun pictures tomorrow.

Monkeys Doodles: Lady P's Smile

This week end has not been too successful. Little man came down with croup on Friday and we have been in and out of the doctors and hospital most of the weekend so unfortunatley we have not got round to any special crafts with the children.

Instead I thought I would share with you a favourite painting of mine, its a self portrait of Lady P. You may have noticed that I do not include pictures of the children on the blog which can make things a little difficult but I thought you might like to see a painting of her. 

I love self portraits and try to get P to do one every 6 months because they really show a progression in childrens drawing. The older children get the detail and features children add and they make such a fantasic keep sake.

We would love to see some of your little ones play activities old or new, please feel free to add them below

Rice Play - our first vlog!!

So here it is our first vlog post. I hope you enjoy. Rice Play is a great activity for sorting, weighing and pouring activities. My two loved this activity and the only thing I would do different is maybe give them separate trays to stop the arguing!

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