It has taken me a little while to sit down and document the events of Easter Sunday. I have been in recovery...from the shame. Yep, Little Miss decided to strut, or rather scream, her stuff once more. I have been somewhat remiss in my church attendance of late and so, being Easter Sunday, I decided to accompany my parents and the kids to mass. Not just any mass, Easter Sunday mass, the highlight of the Catholic year. It's kind of a big deal. Now I know that an hour can be a long time to expect the smalls to sit still and behave but my mother assured me that with some ...
Attack of the Toddleager
The toddler is recently displaying some worryingly teenage behaviour. As he is learning to express himself and test his boundaries, and our willpower, more and more we are noticing frequent acts of defiance. Playgroup is a nightmare. Hoards of similar toddleagers expected to play with a limited number of toys and, heaven forbid, SHARE them. It would appear a fierce territorial steak is rife in the average toddleager . Cries and wails of "Mine Mummy mine!" can be heard reverberating from every wall. Here are things the boy has recently declared to be HIS: My makeup My hair ...
Cooking With Your Toddler: Tasty Tuna Fishcakes
As W is getting bigger he is enjoying helping out in the kitchen more and more and is becoming more confident the more we make things together. This week we had fun making these quick and simple tasty tuna fishcakes. For this you will need: One tin of tuna. One spring onion One slice of bread. Few sprigs of parsley Black pepper One tbsp ketchup Half tbsp mayonnaise Olive oil First place your tuna in a mixing bowl. W had great fun spooning it from a smaller bowl into the larger mixing bowl which is good gross motor practice and gave me time to trim and chop up the ...
Teach Your Toddler Numbers With Beads and Pipe-Cleaners
I came across this wonderful post by Anna over at The Imagination Tree a few weeks ago. The nexy day the boy woke up at some truly ungodly hour and after breakfast we had a great time playing this until the rest of the world woke up. It was so quick to set up and there are hardly any supplies required. The Imagination Tree is chock-a-block full of great play-based learning posts so if you are ever stuck for inspiration I strongly advise you to pay this blog a visit. For this activity this was all we needed: Five small pieces of card, folded. Five different coloured ...
Teach Your Toddler Numbers With The Hungry Caterpillar!
Following the success of learning shapes using peg monsters, I devised a very similar game for learning numbers with the boy. Although he seems pretty good at counting I am not sure how much he recognises actual numerals yet so I think this might help. This time however we made a very hungry caterpillar. This we constructed in exactly the same way as the peg monster. Here is how to do it. First paint a wooden clothes peg green and allow to dry. Stick two googley eyes to a red pom pom to form the head. When the peg is dry coat one side with glue and stick on your head and some smaller ...
Toilet Roll Craft: Farm Animals
W and I love to visit our local city farm and in spring and summer we head there usually at least once a week. With all the cold and wet weather recently though we have not been able to visit for a while. To keep ourselves amused whilst stuck indoors we decided to have a go at making some of the animals that we visit from old toilet paper roll tubes. Our first attempt was a pig. Here is how we did it. Toilet Roll Pig: First we painted a toilet roll tube with Mod Podge glue and then stuck on small scraps of pink tissue paper until fully covered, painting down any rough edges with more ...
Colour Matching for Toddlers
W is now pretty happy identifying most colours and one of the games which I found helped with this is as simple as can be. He just loves to play with OXO cubes! Once he has finished eating I will often grab the boxes from the cupboard, red, yellow and green, and place them in front of him. We will then tip them all out, his favourite part... ...and I will encourage him to put them back into the right coloured box. He is quite happy to to do this over and over, tipping them out, and re-sorting into appropriate boxes... ...even building towers with them. This also allows me time ...
Cooking With Your Toddler: Vegetable Samosas
This is another quick and simple recipe that we discovered watching the C-Beebies programme I Can Cook. It is a great one to make with your toddler or even older children. For these vegetable samosas you will need: 1 carrot, precooked 1 spring onion 3 small new potatoes, peeled and cooked 1 large tablespoon of peas 6 sheets of filo pastry 1 large tablespoon of curry paste, we used tikka masala paste 2 tablespoons of vegetable or olive oil Firstly on a chopping board chop the carrot and potatoes into approximately 1cm size chunks using a table-knife. Place these in a ...
Product Review: 360 Toddler Anywayup cup
Last month W was very kindly sent the 360 toddler cup to try out from www.anywayup.com. We have spent a good few weeks putting it through it's paces and to be honest I have mixed feelings about it. I should state however that W LOVES it. He really does. It is always the first beaker he reaches for from the cupboard and whether this is down to it's aesthetic appeal, it is very bright and colourful, or down to the sipping action required I am not quite sure. The 360 toddler cup has been designed with a circular-valve system allowing your child, with a gentle sipping action, to drink ...
When one door shuts another one slams…
...and another, ...and another. Barely two minutes pass in this house at present without the sound of a door slamming shut. The boy is obsessed. He is no longer able to sit in a room, any room, if a door is open. This is not just at home either. We had to make our excuses and leave a friend's house earlier today as he insisted on continually slamming shut their kitchen door, thus rendering it impossible for the host to hear any further guests arriving, and despite repeated warnings from me that if it continued we would have to leave. It continued. We left. Only for the ...