Outdoor Number Hunt & Other Fun!

Last week I started my mission to have outdoor playtime every day, you can read more about that here.  So, this is week two, the weather was pretty rubbish again so we pulled on our wellies and got stuck in!

Monday 14th May - I herded the boys outside for a bit of leaf painting.  On our walk home from pre-school we picked up a few leaves and took them out into the garden.  We painted onto the back of them then pressed them on to paper.  The results were pretty, but short lived, I went to take the paper inside to save it from the wind and rainy drizzle only to find the boys had painted themselves and the table - sigh!  I turned it into hand printing then herded them back inside, not too messy, so we'll have to try again another day, hopefully with more leaf than table painting this time!

Tuesday - Another drizzly day and I REALLY didn't want to go outside, but I checked the post and there was a parcel from Auntie B.  The boys opened it to find an outdoor number hunt game!  My genius sister had put foam numbers onto those little garden label sticks.

Bud and I went off to hide the numbers in the garden.

Then Champ came out to find them.

He then lined them all up on the steps.  Then the two of them ordered them correctly.  We did this a couple of times and they really enjoyed hiding them for each other.

Here they are smiling at the camera as a 'Thank You' to Auntie B!

Wednesday - On Wednesday's Champ goes swimming with Hubby, so Bud and I have some time to do some fun stuff.  This week we made explosions!  We did the classic volcano (great post from A Mom with a Lesson Plan) by burying a bottle with baking powder and red food colouring in it then adding vinegar.

We tried, but failed to do the baking powder and vinegar exploding zip lock bag experiment (see a successful post at All Things Beautiful).  When the bag didn't burst I told Bud to jump on it and it made a great 'bang', so we pumped up a few more bags with the balloon pump and jumped on them too - great fun!

Thursday & Friday - We were all a bit tired on both of these days so some chilled out play was called for.  I wanted to read some books, so thought 'why don't we take it outside?'.  Reading outside was so successful on the Thursday we did it again on the Friday!

Saturday - Hubby took the boys off into town for the morning, so that always involves lots of running around outside!

Sunday - I confess we didn't actually make it outside today.  We went to Church in the morning, then Hubby and I actually went on a date WITH NO KIDS!!!  So, I let myself off and the boys had a marvellous afternoon (inside) with their grandparents

There were definitely moments this week that I didn't want to go outside, but we're starting to create more of a habit.  Plus, its getting a bit more usual to do things we'd normally do inside outside instead - like reading.  But, what will week three hold????