Sweet Valentines Day craft for littlies

Need something sweet for Valentines day but your little one is a it too young for 'craft'? Then keep reading cause we have an easy and super sweet (literally) activity...

  

We made some nice and glossy fingerpaints by mixing food colouring with liquid sweetened condensed milk (I just use the cheap stuff) we don't eat sugar here so I discourage the Ladybug from tasting it, but atleast I know if she did, then it's not so bad!

This is a very messy activity, but pretty easy to clean up with a washer and water.

 

Hang paintings to dry, cut into preferred shapes - we did hearts - write a message on the back and run through the laminator to preserve your little cherubs creation. You could easily add glitter to the painting before laminating it.

We made one for Dad and each set of grandparents.

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'Weading Wednesday' (on Thursday, oops!) - Moon Cow

This is a beautiful book featuring the night sky and different phases of the moon.

Moon Cow by Kyle Mewburn is about a cow, Milly, befriending the moon despite what her fellow cows think. Milly discovers the mysterious changes of the moon and finds her place in the world around her.

Ladybug loves the pictures in this book and likes to point out Milly and the moon to us while we read it.

 We used this book to talk about how the moon changes and then one day, while playing outside Ladybug pointed up in the sky shouting "Moon! Moon!" And she was right, there it was. We have since shown her the moon at night too. Definitely one of her favourites! 

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Simple posting activity

This activity is quick, easy & cheap!

And all you need is some postal tubes, sticky tape, scissors and something to 'post' - this could be anything (well, anything that fits through the hole!) We used pom poms, plastic reptiles and fake gemstones. Ladybug liked the gems the most as they made the most noise when they landed!

Pop the ends off the postal tube and use the sticky tape to attach it to a door frame. Give your child something to post and away you go!

   

Many kids love to 'post' and these activities are good for developing fine motor skills and can also be used as counting and grouping activities. It's a great example of cause and effect and gravity ...and also a simple way for you to grab those extra 10 minutes to get things done!

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Homemade gummi vitamins

We did something a little bit different today. The Ladybug and I made some gummi vitamins which turned out really well and were actually pretty easy.

Recently our naturopath has given Ladybug some liquid herbs to take to help her overcome a chesty cough she's had since Christmas. Unfortunately she is NOT a fan. By the second day she would clamp her mouth shut if I so much as came near her with the stuff (I tried some myself and they are a bit of a nasty shock to the taste buds!) there had to be a way I could get some of these into her each day...

Homemade gummi vitamins were the perfect solution! The original idea is not my own, it comes from The Wellness Mama, who has some fantastic DIY recipes on her blog. Her recipe can be found here.

I tweaked the original so it was more suitable for us and the end results were great! (Recipe below)

All you need is some fruit juice, gelatine (grass fed beef gelatin is best if you want the extras of protein, collagen, no added sugar/flavourings/chemicals/etc - I used the Bernard Jenson brand seen here), rice malt syrup (you could use honey), silicone molds and herbs or vitamins of your choice (you could use liquid herb extracts like we did or powdered probiotics or vitamin c or even cod liver oil depending on the flavour)

 

Ladybug enjoyed helping with the measuring, pouring and mixing (and tasting) until I had to move everything onto the stove top where she watched from a distance.

Stir on a low heat until the gelatin has dissolved then pour into a jug. As it was cooling down I added the liquid herb extracts and mixed them all through. I gave the silicone molds a quick spray with some coconut oil then poured the mixture in then popped them in the freezer for 10-15mins.

Gently push them out and viola, our very own gummi vitamins (and lots of them too! - we put triple the amount of everything)

The real test was seeing if Ladybug would actually eat them - which, as you can see here was no problem at all. She actually ate 3 of them and was still asking for "more, more?"

Such a difficult task of getting Ladybug's herbs into her has suddenly become so much easier! *phew!*

 

 Recipe:

1/2 cup juice (we used cranberry)

2 tbs rice malt syrup (you could use honey)

8 tsp powdered gelatin (preferably grass fed beef gelatin)

Vitamins of your choice (herbal extracts, probiotics, cod liver oil, vitamin c)

• Mix the juice, rice malt syrup and gelatin together in a saucepan
• Whisk over a low heat just until the gelatin has dissolved
• Remove from heat and whisk in the herbs/vitamins while cool (esp important if you're using probiotics!)
• Carefully pour into silicone molds or silicone ice cube trays 
• Place in the freezer for 10 - 15 minutes

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'Weading Wednesday' - Advance Australia Fair

Having just had our Australia Day celebrations I thought this book was a suitable pick for this weeks review.


As the title suggests, this book, by P.D McCormick is Australia's National Anthem in story book form. It was Ladybugs favourite for awhile and she was bringing it to us daily to be read! She loves the colourful bright pictures even if she doesn't quiet understand the meaning yet.

Having an ex - Army dad, we're pretty patriotic here. Teaching Ladybug about the country she lives in is important to us, not just in the sense of National Anthems and so forth, but also about our culture, lifestyle, native animals, environment, etc. I love the country we live in and can't wait to help her discover and learn about it too.

The book has BOTH verses, which Mr Ladybug and I are now pretty competent in (making us look super, super patriotic whenever this fact is found out!)

It even has the music - totally lost on us unfortunately but may be useful to some!

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Mini handheld masks

We've been bailed up inside lately due to the continuous downpour of rain going on in Sydney (and just about everywhere else in Australia too!) so for something new I made Ladybug some mini handheld masks.

All you need is some old magazines, scissors, laminator, paddle pop sticks and sticky tape.

I cut out an assortment of eyes, noses, mouths and faces. I ran them through the laminator (if you don't have a laminator you could stick the cut outs onto some cardboard to stiffen them up) then sticky taped paddle pop sticks onto the back of them so they can held in place like masks.

Ladybug thought it was hilarious if I held up some eyes over my own or a funny mouth. We played around looking at all of the different features and talking about what they all are. She is pretty down pat with naming different parts of the face so we were able to go a bit further and talk about the emotions behind the picture (e.g: "this smile makes me look happy!", "this frown makes me look sad" and so on) and when she began lifting the masks to her own face it helped her become more aware of where all of her own features are on herself.

We used the iPad's reverse camera to take photos and laugh at ourselves.

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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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