Sticky wall

The girls love this craft and it's a good way to use up all of those odds and ends you might have lying around from past craft activities.

All you need is some contact (preferably clear, but atleast transparent!), Blutak, scissors and an assortment of craft items (cotton balls, buttons, sequins, paper cut outs, pom poms, feathers, paddle pop sticks, etc)

   

Cut the contact into large squares, and Blutak it (sticky side out) to the wall within your child's reach. Peel off the paper backing and let them decorate it with the odds and ends you have available.

I always talk to the girls and ask them questions about what sort of items they're using (for example "What colour is the circle?", "The feather feels soft", "Can you find a triangle?") and I really find this sort of interaction helps out in other situations too. Ladybug is very descriptive and relates things she encounters with things she has experienced before - during this particular activity she learnt what a 'love heart' was and now points them out to us all the time!

       

   
Once your child has finished place another square of contact on top of the masterpiece to preserve all the little pieces and to keep everything else sticking to it!

 

 

Ladybug and Petal enjoy this activity which seems to be different every time depending on what we have handy around the house. Interestingly, Petal (4) uses this activity to make a picture whereas Ladybug (23mnths) uses this activity to match up the similar items she can find in the container.

     

When the weather is nice we sometimes do this activity on the other the outside of the house and the girls find things in the backyard to stick on the contact (leaves, twigs, grass, dirt, seeds, etc - they like to see what will stick) rather than ones I provide.

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Worms!

One of our latest projects in the Ladybug household is our worm farm. In preparation for the greenhouse we will soon be getting we wanted to prep our current plants and soil and a worm farm seemed like the best option for us.

We got our set up from Bunnings, but I have also seen tutorials on how to make your own from old bath tubs or styrofoam boxes. The farms are so simple to start up and maintain and Ladybug REALLY enjoys being involved.

     

Her first worm experience was when we added the 2000 compost worms to the farm and now she asks about them every few days. We also hired a book 'Worms: The Mechanic of Organics' from the library to help her understand. She loves reading and wanted to read it again and again again!

      

We have a bin in our kitchen purely for kitchen scraps now and Ladybug knows that bin is for her beloved "woms" and comes with us whenever we take a bowl out to feed them. Worms will happily eat fruit and veggie scraps, egg shells, cardboard and cotton. They don't like meat, dairy, onion, garlic, chilli or citrus.

   

So, why have a worm farm?

Worm 'wee' and poop is one of the best things you can use to fertilise your garden and keep your soil full of nutrients. Every week our worms gives us a bucket of liquid fertiliser and every few months we'll get a tray of solids which can be used to mix through the soil. Mr Ladybug and I like to grow as much of our own fruit, veggies and herbs as we can so aren't really keen on covering our plants with chemicals. Now hopefully, with the help of our worms we can say bye, bye to synthetic fertilisers!

     

How to find out more?

Here in Sydney, Australia some councils offer free worm farms or compost bins as a part of The Compost Revolution <--- Click here to find out if your council is involved

There is a lot of worm information out there if you do a Google or YouTube search. If you're interested try one of these websites: Worm Farmer , Tumbleweed

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Watching the tides

Ladybug is 17 months old so a bit young to understand this activity but she still listened to all we had to say and proudly exclaimed words when she saw or heard something she knew ;-)

We drove down to the local ferry warf and caught a boat over to the Royal National Park for lunch and to have a play and explore. Not one to let a learning opportunity escape us I decided to do a little comparison with the tides. I wasn't sure how much the kids might already know so as we were waiting on the warf for the ferry to arrive I suggested that we take a photo of the water level and see if it's any different when we come back. No one mentioned 'tides' so I left things as they were, we snapped some pics of the water around the warf and hopped on the ferry to go. We took a few more photos of the warf at our destination and then ran off to play...

When we returned to the warf to go home the kids couldn't remember where the water level was before so we decided to take some photos anyway and compare them all when we get home. A few more photos as we got off and back home we went.

When we sat down to compare the photos the kids noticed that the water levels were slightly different and asked why (we were only at the park for an hour so the difference wasn't staggering, but still noticeable!) so on to Google we went...

First we watched this great video:

The good thing about this was that we could pause and repeat any parts the kids found confusing, but I found the representation he used to be a good example.

After this we looked up a tide chart online.

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