One of Me, Three of You

I've been thinking about how to make things flow more easily between Instagram and my blog. It is quick and easy to post on Instagram so I do it more often but I suspect in future I will be less likely to go back and look at my posts. One of the reasons I started blogging was to help me remember these early years - my memory for that sort of thing is rubbish and it all blurs into one in my head - so I want to be able to look back on the things we got up to on here as well. So I'm going to start a monthly round up of our #tufftraytuesday efforts. So far this month we have had a tufftraythursday and sunday too so it's going well - I might need to bank a few over the next couple of months so I feel less bad when it all goes out the window with a tiny baby thrown into the mix! Our first #tufftraytuesday wasn't actually on the tuff tray but on our new DIY light table, taken from this post on The Imagination Tree. Our growing love of wooden toys means we don't hav...

I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions (or New Year itself if I'm honest, although not really sure why!) but December was a bit mad this year so I have found myself calming down and taking stock in January. Alongside wanting to dedicate a bit more time to my blog, I have been thinking about our time at home. My aim is to be more inspired and organised with our play and activities in 2019. My preference is to be out and about all the time but with the constraints of school runs, toddler naps and a growing baby bump we are going to continue to spend a fair amount of time at home this year. None of us are very good at coming up with lots of imaginative play ideas on the hoof so this is partly about having more ideas up my sleeve and more resources to hand when a prompt is required. If all goes to plan and I am spending the summer pinned to the sofa feeding a tiny baby then anything that helps to entertain the boys is going to be useful. And I am also hoping that ha...

After a couple of weeks off, we started Tuff Tray Tuesday again yesterday with a counting tray. T is into counting everything at the moment so thought he would appreciate it, and W seems to be loving his maths at school. I have been setting them up with the older two in mind but now that A is up and walking he really enjoyed it yesterday and I think might be an easier target audience! He had a great time pottering around containers full of pom poms and various spoons. And the older two were pretty occupied by it after school - I think the break might have rekindled their interest in the tray.

All three boys helped me make rainbow pasta after school today - lucky me! It was going pretty well until the bag of yellow pasta that W was shaking (whilst sat on the dining room table) came open and yellow pasta and paint went all over the chair and the floor. Luckily our Crayola washable paints lived up to their name and came off very easily!

I've been posting our tuff tray efforts on my Instagram page but thought I would do a round-up of the recent ones here. It's fair to say we haven't found another one as universally successful as the playdough cupcakes (and we ended up going back to that one earlier this week when T had a friend over) but they have all been played with to some extent. A is definitely enjoying being able to reach the tray and get hold of everything. As I have no plans to send him to nursery as I'm not going back to work this time I feel it's good to make a bit more effort with his sensory play! Our 'tuff tray Tuesday' a couple of weeks ago involved making little sailing boats from washing up sponges, skewers and paper sails. This one went down well although I hadn't thought through the felt tip decoration on the sails and it washed off as soon as the boats fell over on the tray! Coloured ice cubes always go down well - pink lego men, red puzzle pieces and blue fis...

We've had a productive day - before getting on to play dough we made a catapult! I've had enough of magazines with rubbish plastic toys so bought the boys a National Geo Junior magazine to try. It is a bit beyond them but W is enjoying carrying it around and it includes instructions for building a catapult, so we gave that a go. It turns out that 5 and 3 is too young to twist rubber bands around sticks so I ended up doing all the building! They then spent a while pinging things across the table with it and exploring what went the furthest (googly eyes did quite well!).

We had our first go at making play dough today. Up until now I couldn't see the point of making my own, but our shop-bought play dough has turned into one hard, murky brown lump and I really don't like the smell of it. The playgroup we've started going to provides its own sparkly play dough so I decided it was worth a shot. Apart from the colour (we put in red food colouring but it is still pastry coloured!), it turned out really well. I think the boys were influenced by the fact we made it in the kitchen and mostly cut it up with pastry cutters or turned it into pretend sausages rolls. A even joined in although, after hitting it a few times with a plastic knife, he spent the rest of the time throwing the play dough accessories on the floor.

We've had the water beads (or Orbies as W keeps calling them) out this week. They don't really fit with my attempts to use less plastic but we had them already and W keeps asking to play with them so we gave them a go. We waited until A had gone down for a nap and the first attempt lasted about 5 minutes, during which time W mostly berated T about not getting them on the grass (obviously hammered that point home a little much when we were setting up!). Later on, we found more things to add into the mix and it held their interest for much longer. They spent ages rolling them down a piece of guttering - W allocated the beads different countries (he's been really interested in countries since the World Cup) and gave a running commentary as they went, T found a tractor that would fit down and scooped some into the bucket on the front. I did spend a large chunk of the afternoon crawling round trying to pick them out the grass while keeping a close eye on A to check he didn...

I finally got around to making my own bubble mixture (thanks to the recipe on Red Ted Art ) and it worked! Most things I try like this don't go quite to plan but after adding a bit more glycerin and leaving it for a couple of days it is producing really good bubbles. I might have to invest in a big litre bottle of glycerin now...

T and I tried a counting activity this afternoon - he can count to ten out loud but isn't so good at recognising what the numbers look like (or at least pretends he isn't). We got out the Ikea numbers I painted a while ago and the threading beads and lined them up in order and with the right number of beads. Despite missing a few beads we had just the right number. (It slightly bothered me that the colours of the beads and the numbers didn't match up but you can't have everything!) After doing the beads, T got out the Paw Patrol pups and added them to the line-up - every activity benefits from a bit of Paw Patrol action!

We 'acquired' a couple of big pine cones from a very nice garden we frequent and finally got round to trying pom pom pine cones. The first time I got it out it led to hours of play for the boys. I gave them some tongs with the pom poms and pine cones as I had read about playing with tongs to help with fine motor skills and strengthening their muscles ready for writing. The tongs weren't so popular (I think they were a bit stiff to be fair) but once they had filled the pine cones with their hands they moved on to colour sorting with our Grimms rainbow boxes and then cooking and weighing on their wooden balancing scales. I had to get them to do the pine cones again the other day so I could take a photo!