Ice Chalks

At last we were finally been successful with our ice chalk recipe. It has been a bit of a trial and error, the first lot separated and we were left with a watery layer on top of the cornflour, second lot went lumpy, third lot too thick,  so on our fifth lot we got it just right :)

So to make these beautiful chalks, you need to boil some water first (you need hot, not boiling water as you'll get the wrong consistency).

In a jug add 7 heaped tea spoons of cornflour and blend with some cold water to a very thick paste.

Then make up to 200ml with the hot water and stir, you should have a lovely thick white mixture, that doesn't separate or goes like cornflour gloop.

Pour in an ice cube tray and mix in your food colouring.

Place in the freezer, when frozen, pop out of tray and have some fun. Please note for some reason unlike the ice paints and home made finger paints this will stain fingers.

The ice chalks will slowly melt, so some patience is needed to begin with and when they have finished and the water has evaporated you are left with lovely chalk pictures. The children were really interested in the different textures you felt as the ice chalks slowly melted. Another lovely creative, cooling activity for a hot day and all ages enjoyed.

We did discover that to get the best from the chalks, it's best to use them when the patio is hot, as the chalks melt better as you can see from the different pictures.

Bunting

Well M and I have had a lovely couple of days sewing, having sorted out the fabric scraps for the patches on the tent the other day, I decided we could use some of the fabric to make some bunting, something I've wanted to do for a while. So today we did and we are very happy with the results.

My triangles were 20cm wide by 22cm high, that seemed a nice size once you have sewn the seams. We made just over 3 metres of bunting.

We spent a while deciding which fabric and in which order they would use, which took a while as L  liked to take pieces of fabric to play with.

We then cut out 2 triangles in each fabric

and sewed them together along the long edges, don't sew across the base as you need to turn them inside out.

M busy sewing, she really has got the hang of sewing nice straight lines.

We then pressed each triangle and then pinned them to some bias binding,we used some that was 25mm wide and spaced the triangles 3cm apart.

Edible Finger Paint

My littlest ones has discovered the joys of mark making but also likes too put everything in their mouth, so this is a very simple home made paint that is ok if they eat some of it!

                                                    Edible Finger Paint

                                                    1/4 cup or 40g cornflour
                                                    1 cup of water or 280ml
                                                    food colouring

Place cornflour and water in a pan and heat, it will start to thicken, go slightly translucent and come away from the side of the pan, as soon as the translucent streaks appear, turn of the heat,  just remember to keep on stirring and it will thicken.
Then pour into your paint container and add food colouring

Ice Painting

Ice painting a perfect creative activity for a very hot day :) Mind you when I picked up the minded children from school and they asked "What are we doing today", they looked at me a bit funny when I answered with ice cube painting but there were smiles as well.

The night before I prepared an ice cube tray filled with water and mixed in different food colourings, it was then put in the freezer.

After 30 minutes they were beginning to freeze and after an hour most were ready to have an ice pop stick put into them and it would stay up.

When they first started  they only got a scrapping of colour

but as the ice slowly melted the colours began to flow

 to produce some lovely pictures, the children really liked the way the paint merged and spread out across the paper.

I loved the muted colours

Pirates and Treasure

We had fun in the garden, making use of our tuff spot, sand and water to create a treasure island, complete with pirates and treasure chest.

They the decided, it needed a castle too, so out came the sand castle moulds

but it wasn't long before the discovered how much fun could be had by rearranging everything

and creating a new scene

then they discovered that really wet sand is great to go walking in!

treasure island is no more but lots of fun had.

Father's day

For Fathers day this year, I decided on a very simple card but hand prints usually go down well. This was easy then to do even with the babies.

 

but rather than just adding happy fathers day to the inside I found some poems about Dads and printed out some, then the children choose which one they wanted to put in their card. They enjoyed listening to the different poems (there were several) and trying to decide which ones their Dads would like best.

Sensory Bottles

We had one very wet afternoon during half term, so I decided this was a good time to make our sensory bottles for the littleones. The children had a lovely time deciding what they were going to put in the bottles, liquid or dry, quiet or noisy ect and also thinking about what the babies might like.

The shredded colour paper bottle had some rice added to it so it makes  a lovely sound.

Found a good use for those seeds that are past there use by date, the children said they didn't want to add too many as they were worried it would be too heavy for the babies to lift, which was a really sweet thought :)

Then we had mixture of bottles, bottle 1 glitter and water, bottle 2 glitter water and baby oil and bottle 3 glitter, baby oil, water and food colouring.