Rain In A Jar

Yesterday I thought I would try to create rain in a jar. We filled a large jar with water and sprayed some shaving foam in the top part as our cloud.

We used pipettes to add some blue coloured water to our cloud

and watched it rain.

While doing this activity I talked about how clouds are made of water/moisture and when they get too full, we get rain.

Then we used the rest of the shaving foam in our tuff spot, they loved squirting the foam.

Then they spent ages exploring the texture of it and drawing patterns.

They then decided to make hand prints on the patio

and foot prints.

Later on they wanted to do some more pictures on the patio this time with chalks.

We enjoyed watching anther episode of Come Outside this time The Rainy Day

Wind Spinners

We've been thinking and talking about the wind today, from gentle breeze to strong gales/storms, we've enjoyed reading the Usborne book The Windy Day and Percy the Park Keeper After The Storm. I read through Christina Rossetti's poem Who Has Seen The Wind?

Who Has Seen The Wind?

by Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

I love the poem and I asked the children if they can see the wind? If they were inside how would they know if the wind was blowing and how would they know if it was a gentle wind or a strong wind?

We made some paper plate wind spinners, they were given the choice of pencils, felt pens or paints, they chose pens and pencils. Looking at them later and fact that some of my artists are very young, bright paints would of been more effective but that's just my personal opinion.

So they set about decorating their plates.

When they had finished, I cut them out and attached a bit of string to the middle to hang it up with.

When they were finished, I pegged them out onto the washing line and we watched them gently spin in the wind, luckily the wind was only a gentle breeze. They kept coming back to them and if they weren't spinning, trying to make them move by making a breeze themselves, either by blowing on them or waving their arms.

I remembered watching and enjoying Come Outside, with my other two children, do have video but no longer have a working video player but thanks to you tube found this episode, Come Outside - A Windy Day. The children really enjoyed it, the episode starts with the poem I had already read to them and she tells the story of The North Wind and The Sun, one to add to my weather planning, had completely forgotten about this story.

Sweet Chicken Curry

This is a favourite of mine and most of the children, only my own littlest one doesn't like this. I promised one of my Mum's a while ago that I would share the recipe, so here it is. The little ones helped to cut up the sweet potatoes and carrots.

Sweet Chicken Curry

4 chicken breasts, cut into cubes

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, sliced

3 sweet potatoes, cut into chunks

250ml orange juice

200ml coconut milk

10ml mild curry powder

2.5ml ground ginger

2.5ml ground coriander

2.5ml ground cumin

15ml tomato puree

olive oil

Heat some olive oil in a large saucepan and fry the chicken, for a couple of minutes, then add the onion and spices, mix well until the spices coat the meat.

Add the vegetables and fry on a low heat for 5 minutes.

Add the orange juice, coconut milk and tomato puree, bring to the boil, reduce heat and cover, leave to cook on a low heat for 30 to 35 minutes, until vegetables are tender.

You can add more coconut milk if you wish but I do it this way as you only use half a tin of milk and I then freeze the other half for the next time I make this.

For a veggie version, just follow the above recipe and use a bag of quorn chunks instead.

                

                   

Sun Sun-Catchers

Our plan for this week is to start our weather project, now according to the weather forecast when I looked yesterday, it said today was going to be some sun and cloud, so decided we would start this week with the sun! So today's weather has been overcast and lots of showers, so much for planning, note to self, it would of been better to of sorted out a rain craft as well as a sun craft. We've enjoyed a walk in a gentle shower, finding lots of puddles to jump in, then home to do some crafts.

Yesterday I cut on some sun shapes out of yellow card and some circles in tissue paper for the middle part and loads of pieces of kite paper, to make a collage with.

More Brown Bear Activities

Today we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? the children are really remembering the story and are joining in regularly as I read to them. We then made our own colour book based on the colours in the story, I used some stencils I already had but had to make some up for the frog, bear and duck. I read the page out from the book as we painted each animal.

When they were dry I wrote out each animal plus their colour and stapled the book together.

When the books were finished the little ones enjoyed sitting and reading their stories, making up various events as they went. Later on I used their books for a movement activity, as we read each page I asked the children how they thought that animal would move, to say there was lots of giggles was an understatement as they tried to decide how to move. There was some debate as to whether a dog and cat moved in the same way as not. They then decided to go through the book again this time adding the animal noise as they moved like the animal.

A favourite activity with my little ones is playing with my pots of coloured buttons, sometimes, making patterns, other times using our coloured bowls to sort colours. Today they did some colour sorting and counting.

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The Brown Bear story has been a big hit with the children. This morning, I had one little one, sitting with the book, turning each page and telling the story from memory. Last night when I put my own littlest to bed, I was asked to make a brown bear song instead of our normal bedtime song. it went something like this.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear 

What do you see

I see Mummy Bear

putting on L's music

Mummy Bear Mummy Bear

What do you see

I see Little L

all ready for Bed

Little L little L

what do you see

I see my cot waiting for me

Bread Making

I love to make bread either by myself or with the little ones, there is something very relaxing and enjoyable about the whole process, especially the yummy bread at the end. Having been chatting with a few people who said they would like to make bread but wouldn't know where to start, I thought I would attempt to put together a bread making tutorial, I hope it's helpful. This is my basic, quick bread rolls and makes 8 rolls.

Ingredients

500g strong flour

10ml (2tsp) sugar

2.5ml (1/2tsp)salt

5ml (1tsp) yeast

260ml water

30ml (2tbsp) olive oil

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

 Add the water and oil, I just use water straight out the tap, you don't need to worry about it being warm enough or too warm, the bread will rise.

Mix 

and turn out onto a clean worktop, yes it can look rather crumbly at this stage but don't worry it will all come together ok.

Knead well, takes about 10 minutes

It should something like this and when you gently press you finger into it, it should feel spring/spongy!

It could now be shaped into one loaf but we love rolls, so I divide it in half, then half again repeating

until I have 8 pieces of dough, now in the past we have shaped rolls into, rabbits, hedgehogs, teddy bear faces and dinosaurs as well as basic roll shapes

Arrange them on your baking tray and cover, I use a clean tea towel, now leave them to rise, now this depends on many factors so could take anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple of hours, so don't panic if you peek at an hour and they still look very small, they will rise eventually.

After they have risen.

 When they have roughly doubled in size, bake at Gas Mark 7 for 10 minutes, then turn down temperature and cook for a further 10 minutes at Gas Mark 4, if you tap the bottom of the rolls or loaf it should sound hollow.

Forgot to take a photo as they came out of the oven but remembered  just in time before they were all eaten.