Tower of Pisa

On Friday L and I spent time looking at the Tower of Pisa in this book 13 Buildings Children Should Know and found a couple of you tube clips to watch. She was fascinated by this one, which is people walking up all the stairs and then seeing the amazing view from the top but it gave her an idea of how high it was. I then suggested she try and draw the tower, which she thought was a great idea.

We then headed out to the sand pit to have a go at some tower building, first things first, needed to add a lot of water and mix well as the sand was very dry.

Once the sand was the right consistency for sandcastles, L set about filling her bucket to make the first part of out tower.

We talked about how difficult it would be to build a tower that leaned and why and that if we used containers that got smaller and smaller like the stacking cups do it might be easier, we did have some collapsed towers which she found amusing, especially when they buried her toes!

We did mange to build a couple of successful towers,

Then L had fun squashing them all back down and starting again.

Cornflour Gloop

We have had a loads of fun over the last couple of weeks with cornflour gloop, they mixed up their own gloop and spent time exploring it's properties.

Spreading it out over our tuff spot, making different patterns with their hands.

We went in for lunch and when we came back out the cornflour gloop had dried out, the children were really curious as to why this had happened, so I explained about evaporation and how puddles dry out and this is what had happened to out mixture. I suggested they try and make patterns in it. They spent ages making patterns in it, breaking it up and getting very dusty.

L enjoyed breaking up the larger pieces of dried gloop with her finger.

They then got the spray bottles back out and started to spray they tray.

They were amazed to see it change from the dry gloop back to runny gloop, L has added more cornflour, seen what happened and then added more water until she had the consistency. Over the week the gloop has been left to dry, broken up, more water added again and again.

Papa Piccolo

The children and I are thoroughly enjoying Papa Piccolo, the illustrations are lovely, there's lots to talk and think about, we have read the story several times. I put together a story basket for the children, L saw it this morning and said "Wow, Mummy you've made a gondola" sigh of relief from me that she recognised it, as my husband wan't so impressed last night with creative abilities!

 So this morning we reread the story again, played with the story basket, then we headed out to the garden to do some painting, we have had some new furniture for the girl's bedroom and I thought we could use the boxes to make their own play mat for Papa Piccolo, Marco and Polo to explore.

They painted a river, green sunflowers and a shop that sells shoes all in their shoe boxes .

Papa Piccolo and kittens spent time in the Gondola

as well as exploring the flowers and shops, 

they were then all very tired so they had a rest in the sun.

 Last week I made a large gondola for them to paint and play in, when I asked them where they were going one answered "We are going to Thailand to lie on the warm sunny beaches" another was of to the carnival.

On a slightly different theme but making the most of the cardboard boxes, I had originally thought we could build a house with the rest in the garden but it is rather too windy today. Then thinking of one little one who loves to throw balls etc,thought why not cut one up to make a cardboard target for them. Decided on different shape holes and then to paint different colours around the edge, to make it a bit more fun for those learning their shapes and or colours.

There were so many giggles as they missed the target completely and the bean bags landed on the slide and slid down it, then the excitement of actually getting the bean bags through a shape.

Italy

After seeing the enjoyment and interest the children had when we looked at China, I had thought of looking at another country. They had shown some interest in France and Egypt, so had thought we would head there but then the other day we were looking through Maps book and Italy caught their attention, especially the pictures of the Venice carnival, so that is where we are going.

Today we have read about the Venice and the carnival and watched some clips about the carnival on you tube here and here and then they enjoyed making lots of masks and dressing up.

Some they decorated with feathers

and others not.

Later on they asked for some more masks as they wanted to colour in some more.

Some useful sites etc :-
I found an interesting selection of nursery rhymes and songs from Italy here
Vivaldi's Four Seasons for us to listen too
Opera an audio about opera more for M than the little ones
Famous Landmarks of Italy worksheet
Other thoughts for older children would be to look at the explorer Marco Polo and ancient Rome, myths and legends.

Ladybirds, Allotment and Crafts

The joy of finding the first ladybird of the year, we spent ages watching it crawl around the grass

and then up an arm, they were fascinated.

Then at the weekend we discovered lots of ladybirds up the allotment.

We have also made the most of the sunshine when it has appeared and weeded a large amount of the allotment and attempted some creative planting, it is supposed to look like the tub has tipped over and the plants are now growing where they have fallen. L wasn't too impressed as the plants weren't in the pot and they are supposed to be in the pot!

I couldn't resist this small embroidery, thoroughly enjoyed making it as the words mean so much to me on so many different levels, now just need to decide where it is going to go!

Have also had the joy of being able to knit new baby gifts for a family member and a friend, it's great to be able to make something that knits up so quickly, now onto a bigger project, a jumper for M. The tank top is this Sirdar pattern and have now bought enough wool to make the jumper as a birthday gift for another little boy.

This cardigan is another Sirdar pattern, now discontinued but the pattern number is 1816.

Linked with Frontier dreams

Gingerbread and Beans

The children thoroughly enjoyed the story of The Gingerbread Man, they made and shaped their own gingerbread man, as well as a dog and a bed for the dog.

I put together a story basket and as per normal they spent time acting out the story and then retelling it again adding new characters to the story.

We made our own pigs out of paper plates to act out the story of the Three Little Pigs, then they tried to build three houses for them, with varying degrees of success. They also enjoyed watching some clips of piglets on you tube.

We have planted some bean seeds in a ziploc bag that I have now stuck to the patio door, so over the next few weeks we can see the beans develop their roots as well as their leaves.

My older little ones love making patterns and pictures with the large hama beads and so I put the 2D shapes for them to explore, they had a wonderful time making different patterns and they decided to add some of the coloured buttons to them.

L loves to count how many jumps, hops etc she has done, so I wrote out numbers one to ten on the patio for her to jump on and count, she enjoyed trying to work out what the different numbers were, she can recognise numbers one and two so far.