Homemade Christmas Presents Part 2: Family photo pairs game

My second homemade Christmas gift for Daniel is now complete!  Again, this had been 80% finished for quite a while but I hadn't found a suitable box/container to store it.  So once again, the sewing machine came to the rescue to make a bag :)

This game is a personalised pairs game using photos of members of our immediate family.  I've made it so there are two ways of playing this game: one is the standard pairs game - there are 2 matching photos for each person and it will be a simple turn them over and match them up game.  Or secondly we could just use one set and Daniel will have to match up who lives with who - Grandma with Pops, Grumps with Nanny, Auntie Carley with Uncle Matthew and so on.

Here it is...

I'm looking forward to playing with these come Christmas!

Nikki x

Holiday!

Hey :)

I've been quiet on here recently as we've been on holiday!  We went to Riviere Sands Holiday Park in Hayle, Cornwall and had a lovely but tiring week.  Daniel had an awesome time exploring Cornwall while Ben slept through most of it (he even slept while Mummy had a go on a bumpy slide!).  We went to the beach, to Paradise Park, Land's End, The Minack Theatre, St. Michael's Mount, One2Eleven play centre and Healey's Cyder Farm, as well as going for walks, playing mini golf,  finding swings and slides in every town we went to, chilling in the caravan and going out to eat - it was a very busy 4 and a half days!

I wanted to keep a record of the holiday for Daniel even though he is still to young to do a diary/journal so I decided to make him a photo experience book of his holiday.  I just captioned some of my favourite photos from the trip, printed them off, laminated them then joined them together with a ring. I was really annoyed that I couldn't find my hole punch so I used my flower punch instead.  I'm sure it will be a little less robust but at least it looks pretty!  Here are a couple of pages from it...

Hope he likes it!  I may do a few of these experience books for different trips/holidays/outings until he is old enough to keep a diary or journal for himself.  It will be something nice to look back on in years to come :)

Nikki x

Ahoy me hearties! Playing Pirates: Part 3

Ahoy there!

More pirate antics have ensued this weekend so here's what we've been getting up to...

Digging for treasure!  One washing up bowl of sand, a toy spade and a rake, a handful of charity shop beads and necklaces and a few chocolate coins makes for a messy but fun game...

Once again, Daniel wasn't so fond of the feel of sand on his fingers, but once he got the idea he could eat the chocolate when he dug it up, he dove straight in there!  Thank goodness we've got a good hoover as the sand got thrown around quite a bit!  If we do this again, we'll do it in nice weather so we can play outside :)

Next up was a sea-themed snack, not exactly pirates but as piratey as I could do :)  Meet Captain Crab Apple!

Then we decided to make some telescopes.  Nothing too fancy, just a toilet roll tube decorated with tin foil and star stickers.  Daniel didn't quite get the idea of looking through it with one eye, he had it balanced on his nose!  Nevertheless he had great fun :)

And finally, I made a treasure chest colour sorting game from an old egg box, coloured paints and pom poms :)

Daniel did surprisingly well at this - I thought it was possibly a bit too advanced for him but he proved me wrong!  We will have to do more colour sorting activities with a few more colours :)

Other than this we've watched a few episodes of Swashbuckle on Cbeebies, and we're planning on watching Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid this week. I've got a couple more pirate activities in the pipeline which should see us through until we go away next week.

Nikki

Ahoy me hearties! Playing Pirates: Part 2

Ahoy!

We've been having great fun with our pirate theme this week and here is a few more snippets of what we've been getting up to over the last couple of days...

Firstly, I made some sailing boats out of washing up sponges, lollipop sticks and green paper and we sailed them on the great washing up bowl sea!  We also went searching for sunken treasure (charity shop bead necklaces broken up) at the bottom of the sea  :)

While we were playing boats, I talked to Daniel about things that float (the sponges) and things that sink (the treasure) but I think it all went a bit over his head as he was having too much fun splashing in the water!  He wasn't too sure about retrieving the treasure from the bottom of the sea, but once I semi lifted a couple of them out he was well away.  We were having great fun, then all of a sudden a great white beast came to drink from the sea... :)

Next up we decided to make some parrot paintings.  We used red, yellow and blue paint to make handprints to stick on the parrot to look like his feathers...

Daniel also had great fun painting a picture using the parrot coloured paints...

And finally, we realised that Daniel actually has a pirate ship in the house that we had forgotten about!  It's one of his bath toys!  So we've been playing pirates in the tub of an evening too.

I think that's all for now, but I've still got some pirate themed games and activities planned for the coming week, as well as watching Peter Pan.  I think we are all going to be pirated out by the time we actually get to Penzance!!

Nikki x

Ahoy me hearties! Playing Pirates: Part 1

Ahoy there!

In a couple of weeks time our little family is off on holiday to Hayle in Cornwall so I started talking to the boys about going to the seaside and the theme of pirates came up.  So until we go away, we are going to be playing pirates!  Here's what we've been getting up to so far...

On Sunday we went to visit Kate, Ethan and Tanya up in North Devon and we took a trip into Westward Ho! for dinner.  Daniel played on the pirate ship play equipment and we found a pirate outside the sweet shop!

On Monday we went for a walk up to Stoke Village and raided the charity shops for treasure!  We came home with a selection of plastic bead necklaces and bangles, which we will use later in the week, but for now Daniel has been having great fun dressing up in them...

We also went to the library and found a selection of pirate themed picture books to read at bedtime.  Daddy does story time when he's not on a late shift and I think he approves of the choice of books...

Today we've been walking the plank!  I used a cardboard box to make a plank and some crocodiles then added Daniel's stuffed shark and Nemo.  Nemo was there to save him from the shark and crocs if he fell in!  Excuse the half naked toddler and the blurry photos - he was too excited to play this morning to bother with clothes!

Then whilst Daniel was napping, I went shopping with his Grannie Annie and we found some dressing up clothes in the Halloween aisle.  Grannie Annie treated Daniel to a pirate costume!  So this afternoon once Daniel was home from Little Kicks we did more walking the plank dressed up!

So that's where we're up to so far, but there are more pirate adventures to come :)

Nikki x

Homemade Christmas Presents Part 1: Rainbow peg matching game

I like to make homemade gifts for people and Christmas is no exception.  I can't show you all what I'm making for family and friends as that would ruin the surprise, but I can post the toys and games I'm making for the boys.  I've finally completely finished my first Christmas gift for Daniel - a rainbow peg matching game, made simply from some wooden pegs and some sample paint charts from Homebase!  This has been 80% finished for quite a while now but I needed a box or a bag to store it in and after not finding a suitable box amongst my recycling, I opted to sew a patchwork bag using some of my fabric scraps.  You will have to excuse the wonkiness as I cut the pieces out whilst watching a very dramatic episode of Casualty with a glass of wine... I was a little distracted!  I'm sure Daniel won't mind the wonkiness though :)  So here it is...

Fingers crossed Daniel likes it when he opens it on Christmas day!

Nikki x

Playing Farmers! Exploring the theme of Harvest

I said I would update with what we've been doing recently, so here we go.  Now we are in Autumn I've been talking to Daniel about Harvest and we've made some games and activities to go along with the theme.

The first thing we did was to make a vegetable patch that Daniel could play with...

This was a complete spur of the moment idea as I was about to throw away an empty stir fry vegetable container.  As I said earlier, I hate throwing things out if I think I can reuse them for something!  I cleaned it out, filled it with some pumpkin seeds we had in the cupboard to make the soil, then added some of Daniel's wooden toy vegetables to it (these ones are from the Tidlo range on Amazon).  Daniel had great fun putting the vegetables in and out of the 'soil' and we dug the 'soil' with our hands to help Daniel to work on overcoming some of his sensory issues.

Next up I made a harvest vegetable matching game...

These were made simply by googling some images of fruit and vegetables, printing them off and laminating them.  We played a matching game, and then I tried to teach Daniel the names of the vegetables, but that's going to need a bit of work as whatever I asked for he gave me a pumpkin... :D

Next up we did some harvest painting...

I had planned that we would paint using a carrot and an apple to do printing, but due to Daniel's sensory issues he was having none of it.  I showed him how to print using the carrot, but still he didn't trust it, so we got some paint brushes out and he had great fun.  We'll keep working on the sensory problems and hopefully we will try this activity again in the future.

And finally, we've been playing a lot with Daniel's Toot Toot Tractor that his Auntie Carley bought him.  We've been playing and talking about how tractors help farmers in their job.  I am now getting a little bit sick of its annoying little song though!

Right, I think I've rambled on enough for one night, time for bed!

Nikki x