Category Archives: Playing

A Pink and Purple Tea Party

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This morning we started on the preparations for the messy play we had planned for this afternoon.  Rabbit and Tiddler and I made raspberry and blackcurrant jellies, and then I made some strawberry blancmange.  I put some pink, white and yellow sweets in some of the jellies, and added some mini marshmallows to the blancmange.  After lunch, Owl and Monkey joined in and we all made fairy cakes together, and then I made a heart-shaped cake with the leftover cake mixture.  (I always have leftover mixture because I can never pass up the opportunity to do a quick Maths lesson in doubling quantities!)

pink and purple 1

Next, I made some butter icing, and divided it into three bowls.  I coloured some of it pink and some puple, leaving the rest white. And finally, I made up a quick batch of raspberry Angel Delight.  When everything was ready, we set up the Tuff Spots with all the cakes and puddings, and added hundreds and thousands, edible pink glitter, pink and white flower decorations, and mini and micro marshmallows.  I also put out some pink wafers, strawberry milk and pink rolling icing, plus lots of cutters, rolling pins, spoons and other utensils.  The children also set out a blanket with some cushions, a wooden chocolate cake, and lots of cuddly toys ready to enjoy the tea party.

pink and purple 2     pink and purple 3

We decorated cakes, rolled out pink icing and cut out some hearts and circles, poured out pink milk and spooned pudding into bowls.  After making sure the dolls and cuddly toys had enough, the children ate rather a lot themselves.  As usual, I nearly let them ruin their appetites but remembered just in time, and got them to eat some beans on toast before letting them get back to their tea party which lasted for over an hour.

pink and purple 4    pink and purple 5

This post was written for Jennie‘s Messy Play for Matilda Mae linky which has a pink and purple theme this week.  Please also take a look at the Matilda Mae Memorial auction and bid for some lovely things to raise money for the Lullaby Trust.

Paint, glitter glue and bug hunting

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On Wednesday, we had home education group at our house again.  I was anxiously watching the weather, as I had planned a messy painting activity and was hoping to be able to do it in the garden.  Jennie asked earlier in the week if people could do some pink and purple messy play in the week leading up to Matilda Mae’s Mile in Memory walk which is taking place tomorrow, so I stocked up on pink and purple art and craft materials, as well as a multicoloured selection to give the children plenty of choice.  It was cloudy and wet in the morning, but by lunchtime the sun was out, and by the time everyone arrived it was warm enough to be in the garden.  There were five families this time, and a total of fourteen children ranging in age from four weeks to nearly nine years old.

I set up the pink and purple materials in one Tuff Spot and the multicoloured ones in the other.  We had glitter glue, paint, paper, feathers, foam hearts, fabric stars, pipe cleaners, water beads and a few other random bits and pieces.  I also had a big table with an assortment of boxes, cardboard tubes and glue for model-making, and a small table with finger paint and sponges for painting directly on the table as well as on paper.  And inside, I had pencils and paper on the dining room table for anyone who wanted a quiet place to sit and draw.

paint glitter bugs 1

It was a lovely afternoon, the children were busy and happy, the adults had time to chat, the artistic creations were wonderful and there was, as always, a good satisfying mess.  As well as painting and drawing, the children enjoyed climbing and swinging, scooting and riding bikes, and the inevitable bug hunting.  The children were also very excited to find a nest with four eggs in, right inside the “talking bush.”  This is a bush at the bottom of the garden which the children love to play in, and they think it is funny that from the outside we can’t see them so the bush appears to be talking.  By the end of the afternoon, the model-making had become quite elaborate and there is now an extensive and luxurious Matilda Mae Bug Hotel in our garden!  We will always remember Matilda Mae here, even if we show it in unusual ways.

paint glitter bugs 2   paint glitter bugs 3

paint glitter bugs 4  paint glitter bugs 5

paint glitter bugs 6

We are also showing our support for Jennie and her family by walking a Mile in Memory for Matilda Mae tomorrow at the Rare Breeds Centre in Kent.  If you would like to help, you can donate here to support the work of the Lullaby Trust, and you can buy something lovely in the Matilda Mae Memorial Auction which will be launched tomorrow.  Sharing this post, and any of the posts I have linked to, would also help, so please do that too as much as you can.  Thank you.

 

 

Our Bank Holiday Weekend

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Last Friday, after a morning of violin lessons and Musicbox, we had a quiet afternoon at home, mostly spent in the garden.  Rabbit wanted me to watch her doing “gymnastics” on the climbing frame, and we had a lovely time together while the boys were otherwise occupied.  Then Tiddler came and joined in and they played together for a while.  I really enjoyed spending time with them outside, making the most of the sunshine (which has since disappeared) and the garden (which is a bit of a mess but has some nice bits).  There is blossom on the pear tree.

pear blossom

There may or may not be pears.  Probably not, but for now it is doing a good job of making the garden look better.  There is also blossom on both the apple trees (much bigger and more established than the pear tree) and they look amazing, but I haven’t photographed them yet.  After climbing and hanging from monkey bars for a while, the little ones wanted me to push them on the swings so we did that for a while, and then we decided to dig and weed the vegetable patch.  This is a very small raised bed which has been abandoned since last summer, and it was completely overgrown with weeds.  I should have taken a proper “before” picture but it didn’t occur to me until about half way through.  Anyway, after about 45 minutes of really hard work by me and Rabbit (and some “help” from Tiddler) it looked like this.

weeds

We carried on for another 45 minutes, and more or less cleared it but hadn’t got all the roots out when we had to abandon the project because daddy had arrived with pizza for supper.  The children asked for angel delight for pudding, and of course it had to be in the Tuff Spot so we had an impromptu messy play session.  I made some strawberry angel delight and quickly found a few other things for them to play with/ eat: oats, rice pops, raisins and icing sugar.  They had a wonderful messy time, while we sat in the garden drinking wine and getting in the bank holiday mood.

messy pudding 2a    messy pudding 2b

Saturday was mostly spent on children’s activities (dramabuds, choir and playing at home), housework, more digging and weeding, and also sorting out some of our clutter which has been sitting in a life-laundry style tent in our garden for ages.  We decided that bank holiday weekend was a good time to deal with it properly, as we’d had enough of looking at the tent taking up space in the garden.  On Sunday, daddy took the children to church while I did yet more housework, and we did another stint of clutter sorting after lunch.  Rabbit, Tiddler and I planted some pumpkin seeds in the vegetable patch.

veg patch

So this is our “after” photo for now, though I hope to be able to add photos of pumpkins growing in due course!  We then went round to Granny’s house, where our friends from 3 kids and a gluestick joined us.  The children played, the mummies supervised, and the daddies attempted to sort out tools, clutter and cars(!) in Granny’s garage.  I think the sorting was only moderately productive, but the children had a lovely time and we had the first barbecue of the season.

On Monday, we had planned to go to Morden Hall Park, but I decided we couldn’t go until the tent was down, as I was starting to think it would become a permanent fixture in our garden.  So we had a final push and sorted out the rest of the stuff, setting aside some to give away or sell, returning a few useful items to the house, and making a satisfyingly huge pile of stuff to go to the dump.  Once we had done this, it was lunch time, so we abandoned our picnic plans and had lunch in the garden.  Three glasses of wine later (in my case as I was not driving), we did actually manage to get the children rounded up and out to Morden Hall.  I will blog this separately, as I am going to try and make the most of our National Trust membership this year, and write individual blog posts about each place that we visit.  We have signed up to the 50 things campaign which has just been relaunched, and I am determined to do more with it than we did last year.

So that was our Bank Holiday, busy and productive, but also fun, though not exactly restful.  I feel like I need a holiday to recover!

Bubbles and a Trifle Smash for Matilda Mae

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Yesterday was a special day.  It should have been a day of celebration for Jennie and her family as their baby girl Matilda Mae toddled around the farm on a holiday specially planned for her first birthday.  But, as many of you know, baby Tilda died three months ago from SIDS.  Since then both her parents have been amazingly strong, supporting each other, grieving but also celebrating the life of their baby girl and raising awareness of the Lullaby Trust.  They have also been carrying on as much as possible with their everyday activities, outings and treats, and wonderful messy play at home for their toddler twins.  Like many others, I have been impressed by the way they have put the twins’ needs first, whilst at the same time doing everything they can to honour the memory of Matilda Mae and trying to find the space they need to grieve.

And so they made the decision to continue with the holiday they had planned, and to make the 2nd May a celebration, a positive day in as much as it could be and a happy day for the twins.  And then in the evening, when the twins were in bed, they said their own goodbyes to Tilda.  You can read their story here.

Like many other bloggers and tweeters, I was thinking of Jennie all day yesterday in everything we did.  We wore pink and purple and stars for Matilda Mae, as Jennie had asked people to do on the day of her funeral.  In the morning we made jelly, ready for our messy play in the afternoon.  I had been planning to do a Trifle Smash for a while, having been inspired by Susanne, and it felt like the right thing to do it Tilda’s birthday.  I took Tiddler for his swimming lesson (he wore his star swimming shorts) and then came home for lunch.  Next we went out for an ice cream, and then we came back to blow bubbles in the garden for baby Tilda.  The children were worried they weren’t going high enough in the sky, until Owl decided that when bubbles pop they reappear in heaven.

Bubbles

Later in the afternoon, I set up both Tuff Spots outside, cleaned them thoroughly with help from Rabbit and Tiddler, and got everything we needed for our trifle smash: the jellies we made earlier, custard, trifle sponges, butterscotch angel delight, bananas, sprinkles, snowflakes (leftover from Christmas but I decided they looked quite like stars!) and lots of bowls, plates, cake cases, spoons and assorted utensils.  All the children joined in enthusiastically and played, ate and made a wonderful mess.  They decided trifle sponges were too hard so we soaked them in fruit juice, which made them too mushy so they didn’t eat many of them, but everything else was very popular.  They played for a long time, and I suddenly noticed that it should have been supper time but of course they were too full to eat anything else.  Later, while Owl was at Cubs, I gave the little ones toast and peanut butter, cheese and milk, but when Owl came back I forgot to give him any.  I remembered at midnight that he hadn’t had any supper.  Spectacular mummy fail!  However, he didn’t seem too bothered when I pointed out to him this morning that he hadn’t had supper last night.  I have always said that of all my children Owl would be the one who would forget to eat because he is too busy playing.  I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten to feed him before though.  Rabbit has asked to play with Angel Delight again this afternoon, but this time I think I will give them their supper first!

trifle smash 1  trifle smash 2

trifle smash 3  trifle smash 4

Jennie, we will always remember Matilda Mae xx

candle for MM

Pink pudding and gloop!

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Today we had home education group at our house again.  It was a sunny day, hot enough for sunhats and suncream, and the children played in the garden all afternoon.  It was really good to see our friends, including some who hadn’t been for a while.  It was nice to have the old crowd back together (with the addition a very lovely baby boy who was born two weeks ago!) and the children had a brilliant time.    We made the most of having two tuff spots, and set up one with pink pudding (strawberry angel delight) and one with gloop (cornflour and water), and an assortments of bowls, cups and utensils.  I also added cake cases this time, and some of the children enjoyed making angel delight cakes.  Between the two tuff spots and the play sink, the children were very happy and busy all afternoon.

More messy play in the sunshine

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Sometimes the best things in life are unplanned.  This is certainly true of the best opportunities to play.  This afternoon it started with the arrival of our second tuff spot – one just wasn’t enough for four children (and all their visiting friends!)   As soon as it arrived, the children were very keen to unwrap it and take it into the garden.  We put it next to the other one and started to discuss what we might play with, but it was time for the big three to go to Dramabuds so I told them they would have to wait until after supper.  While they were out, Tiddler wanted to sit in it, but the plastic had got too hot so I put some water in.  He really enjoyed sitting in it and just splashing with his legs, and for a while he didn’t really need anything else.  When he seemed to have had enough of that, I suggested he added some rocks from our collection, and he split them between the two tuff spots to make two beaches.  We collected some boats from the bath and I gave him some pots and bowls for tipping and pouring.  He played with them for a while, then went inside to look for something else to add.  He returned with a bowl of lettuce which he had found in the fridge, which was rather cheeky, but funny, so I let him have it and we decided it was seaweed!

When he had finished playing with his beaches, we combined the two into one tuff spot, and he and Supergirl played with playdough in the other one while I got the supper ready.  When the others came back from Dramabuds we had supper, then I gave them a big bowl of strawberry angel delight in one of the tuff spots, with lots of spoons and other kitchen utensils.  They had fun playing with it, making patterns, writing letters, drawing pictures and eating it!  I think the big boys may have eaten most of it, so I gave them all a yoghurt afterwards to make sure they had enough pudding.  Anyway, angel delight is a big hit and I’m sure we’ll be playing with it – and eating it again.  I just won’t look too closely at the list of ingredients.  After years of serving up organic fruit and yoghurt for pudding, with the occasional home-made apple crumble, it is a bit of a U-turn to be giving them angel delight.  But they love it, and it certainly makes a good satisfying mess!

Painting stones

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On Saturday, I read Jennie’s post about a brilliant messy art session, which started off with a plan to paint some stones and led to some glorious toddler body art as the twins decided it would be more interesting to paint themselves.  I tweeted Jennie saying “I love this! Wonderful how E and W took it in the direction they wanted to and you let them. Child led play is the best!”

I was thinking about this on Sunday, when I gave Rabbit and Tiddler some paint in the garden while the big boys were at choir.  I suggested that they might paint on the garage doors to start them off, and then waited to see what they would come up with next.  They enjoyed painting the doors, and even painted the handle with black paint.  (Unfortunately I forgot to warn daddy!)  After a few minutes, Rabbit asked if she could paint some stones.  We have quite a good collection of stones, rocks and shells, and they spent a lot of time painting them, and Tiddler also painted a piece of wood.  Monkey joined in when he got back from choir, and then Owl had a go later in the evening.  It didn’t lead to any total body art this time, although Rabbit did paint her hand and made a lovely gold handprint on the table!

Playing with water beads and ice

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On Friday afternoon, we played with our new water beads.  They arrived on Thursday and I soaked three packs overnight in two plastic tubs of water – red in the red tub, pink in the pink tub, and clear beads split between the two tubs.  I had been going to add food colouring until I remembered we didn’t have any, so instead I added some peppermint essence which made the water smell lovely.  I also made peppermint-scented ice cubes (hearts and fish.)  When we were ready to play, I put the tubs with the water beads on to the Tuff Spot which was out in the garden, and the children helped me to add the ice cubes.  They spent a little while exploring the textures of the beads and the ice in the tubs, before deciding to tip them all into the Tuff Spot.  This made it easier for all four children to play with them at once.  Tiddler spent quite a long time concentrating on carefully placing the water beads in the empty fish ice cube tray, and Rabbit did the same thing with the heart tray.  Monkey was wearing his new tool belt, so used his hammer to explore and play with the beads.  Luckily, he did this very gently as it is a real hammer.  Tiddler then went to get his toy hammer and bashed the ice and beads as hard as he could!  Owl made a picture of a helicopter by placing the beads on the studs of a Lego Duplo base board.  After a while, Rabbit and Tiddler couldn’t resist getting into the Tuff Spot so I added quite a lot more (warm) water and this extended the play for a while longer.  I enjoyed watching them play, some of the time together and some of the time alongside each other, and I think they all found it quite absorbing and calming.  It’s a good addition to our water (and ice) play, which we do quite a lot, and I’m sure we’ll be getting the water beads out again very soon.

Playing with oats

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Yesterday our friends from The Adequate Parent and 3 Kids and a Gluestick came over and I decided it would be a good opportunity to get going on our Farm topic with some more messy play in the Tuff Spot.  Owl spent a long time carefully setting up the farm animals and fences, and then I added two large bags of oats, and a few shredded wheat.  Some of the children helped to crumble the shredded wheat up; Tiddler particularly enjoyed this, and was happily occupied eating it for quite a while.

I set out some farm-themed books on the table to provide an alternative activity.  I knew we had rather a lot of farm books, as it is something we all love, but even I was a little surprised at the size of our collection.  In fact I think we probably have even more, as I only spent about 5 minutes looking and we have books in nearly every room of our house.  It was fun to gather them all together anyway, and we will be using them for inspiration over the next few weeks.  Monkey and Rabbit rediscovered some rather nice little stencil books and drew pictures of horses and farm animals.  Rabbit also drew a rather lovely picture of a horse for one of her friends.

The children played with the farm scene nicely for a while, and then a few of them decided it would be more fun to throw the oats.  So we moved the Tuff Spot outside!  This meant that the children spread out a bit and found other things to do.  They decided to fill up the play sink with water, and then inevitably decided to add some oats.  They made a lovely mess and it kept them busy all afternoon.  You can read another version of events here.

Messy play in the sunshine

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On Sunday it was so sunny and warm that we spent the whole afternoon in the garden.  I was probably most excited about being able to hang the washing outside, but the children enjoyed the chance to play with all their garden toys, and to swing, climb and ride their bikes and scooters.  It was also a good opportunity to take our messy play outside, using the Tuff Spot and our empty plastic sand pit.

I started by filling the sand pit with the leftover rice and split peas which I had been saving since before we went on holiday.  I added playmobil people and some stones and shells which the children had been using to set up a miniature camp.  In the Tuff Spot I placed a tray of flour, also saved from a previous play session, and surrounded it with shaving foam.  The children had fun helping me to spray the foam, and enjoyed watching the shapes it made as it came out.  Rabbit, Monkey and I had a go at writing in the foam, which was fun, but we couldn’t do it for very long because Tiddler was impatient to get stuck in.

Soon the three of them had taken all their clothes off and were in and out of the Tuff Spot and the sand pit, and covered in an interesting mixture of shaving foam and rice.  Owl didn’t want to get right in but enjoyed playing with the rice from the edge and then standing in it.  What he really wanted to do was get into the paddling pool, but the others were so messy that I decided we needed an intermediate stage of washing first.  I got out the three flexible plastic tubs I recently bought for messy play (I wish we had four, but there were only three in the shop at the time) and filled them with warm water.  Tiddler easily got right inside his tub, and Rabbit squeezed into hers.  Not to be outdone, Monkey just about managed to get into his, but it was rather a tight fit.  Owl was quite jealous – I really must find another one – but was pleased to be able to play in the rice quietly without the others, and asked me to help him bury his feet in it.

The children then had fun pretending the three tubs were the carriages of a train, and Owl was the driver.  We soon added our train-shaped paddling pool and filled it up, and they spent the rest of the afternoon splashing in and out of it in the sunshine.  They also enjoyed mixing the rice, split peas, flour and shaving foam into one big sticky mess, though I was glad that they didn’t actually get in it as by this point it was rather late in the day.  It was a really good fun afternoon of play, and we’ll definitely be getting the shaving foam out again, especially now we can do it in the garden.