Things to do with salt and kids

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Today we have the next instalment in our 'Things to do with' series where we take a common item and see what ways we can play with it, this time it's salt.  Just your regular table salt hopefully in your cupboard already and waiting for some play opportunities!

1 - Salt Scoop and Pour

I coloured some salt with food colouring by placing them together in a plastic sandwich bag and giving it all a good shake.  Then I set up a few pots and spoons for Champ to play with.

He enjoyed scooping out the salt and pouring it in to various pots then pouring it all out again.  It always amazes me how long this type of play can keep him entertained.

But, perhaps next time I should use a bit less food colouring - he had blue stained hands for two days, whoops!

2 - Salt Writing

Once he was bored with pouring and scooping we poured all the salt into the tray and he used a chopstick to make marks, write his name and draw pictures.

3 - Salt Painting

I wrote about our salt painting recently, you can check out how we made our salt pictures here.  It was a fun activity and the results were pretty and our first attempt with watercolours.

4 - Salt & Ice Sensory Play

I enjoyed watching all three boys engage with this sensory play.  I'd frozen some water coloured with food colouring in various pots and put them on the tray then I gave the boys some salt to watch the ice melt.  We'd done this once before, but last time I'd 'trapped' plastic bugs inside for them to free.

The ice was soon melted and the boys enjoyed creating holes in the ice blocks.

5 - Homemade Puffy Paint

We made this puffy paint a while ago and the two ingredients are salt and self raising flour.  It makes for quite a different type of painting as it raises up after cooking in the microwave.

6 - Salt Dough

Salt dough is like play dough except that you can dry it out, paint it and make ornaments etc out of it.  We've made salt dough before (like when we made crosses for Easter), normally we air dry it, but this time we followed Rainy Day Mum's recipe and dried it out in the microwave, much, much quicker, but with slight air bubbles - great for kids as they're ready straight away, but I'd air dry it if we were making presents.

Here's our hearts and dinosaurs all ready for painting.

I found lots more salt play ideas pinned on my Salt Pinterest Board, but I'd love to hear your salt play ideas.

If you're looking for more 'Things to do with' ideas you can check out Things to do with foil, plastic bags, wrapping paper, spaghetti, pumpkin, pinecones, acorns, odd socks, chestnuts and carrots.

Things to do with spaghetti and kids

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So next up in our series of posts on 'Things to do with...' is spaghetti!  These are all easy to do activities for you and your kids with stuff you'll likely have around the house.  First up......

1 - Spaghetti Structures

The original idea for this came from Pinterest, but the link was spam and so I don't know the original source (apologies), but the idea is that you get dried spaghetti and playdough and make 3D structures from it.  This is how I set it up for Champ, he was not impressed and the results turned out much more like......

2 - Spaghetti and playdough creations

This was something we got up to last year and yep, you've guessed it it's spaghetti in playdough you can check out the post here

3 - Cooked Spaghetti Sensory Play

This is a great activity as it's cooked spaghetti it's completely edible and so baby friendly.  There's heaps of similar posts around, but if you're looking for something different try this flavoured version from The Imagination Tree or this coloured version from Creatively Blooming.

I gave the boys tongs and pots and a few small lids that I hid under the spaghetti.

It soon got messy, they pulled off their socks and wriggled their toes in it, then poured it on their heads.  I stopped things soon after as they were starting to descend into chaos, but it didn't take long to tidy as it was all on a tarpaulin. 

And yes, they did eat it too!

4 - Threading on spaghetti

The idea for this is based on threading Cheerios onto a strand of dried spaghetti like the ones I found on Sugar and Spice, but when I went to the cupboard I realised we'd run out of Cheerios!  So instead we threaded rainbow puffs onto dried spaghetti.  This was tricky so Hubby made holes in the puffs first.

5 - Spaghetti Painting

Possibly my favourite post of 2012 and also possibly one of the messiest!  The boys loved spaghetti painting and I did too!  You can read how we painted with spaghetti here.

6 - Spaghetti and Sausages

Now I don't normally encourage the boys to play with their food, but this was great fun.  I found this on Plum Pudding, it's super simple, you get hot dogs (we used mini ones) and you thread the spaghetti through it.

Even Little Dude gave this a go, whilst Bud made some crazy creations!

And, the boys enjoyed tucking in!

I hope you enjoyed this post!  If you liked this you might like to check out some of our other Things to do with..... How about foil, wrapping paper, pumpkin, pinecones, plastic bags, chestnuts, more chestnuts, acorns, more acorns, carrots and odd socks.

Come back soon and make sure you don't miss a thing by subscribing or checking us out on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and of course Pinterest.

Things to do with wrapping paper and kids

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If your house is anything like ours there is an abundance of wrapping paper about at the moment!  Once all the present wrapping is done this is a great crafting resource, here are a few ideas of things to do with kids and wrapping paper....

1 - Collage

I snipped up a small piece of wrapping paper and gave Champ a sheet of paper and glue stick and this is what he came up with.

2 - Create Patterns

Our wrapping paper had large and small snowflakes on it so I snipped a few up and created some simple patterns with blanks at the end.  Champ finished off the patterns with some more snowflakes.

3 - Giant Paper Drawings

This time we turned the paper over and got out the crayons for some drawing.  Aided now by Little Dude who's just starting to scribble.

Things then went a little crazy as when they got bored they tag teamed me and tore up the paper!

4 - Counting

Again using the patterns on the wrapping paper I cut out the paper in groups so that Champ could identify how many snowflakes there were on the different pieces and match them to the number.

5 - Paper Chains

A classic!  Looping strips of paper together we made paper chains, not very many as Champ got a bit bored as he found this a bit tricky doing it on his own, one to try again next year!

6 - Laminate

I laminated some different wrapping paper and we used it for a playdough mat.  You could also use this with dry erase pens.

7 - Contact Paper Collage

We used cut up cards for this contact paper collage, but you could use wrapping paper bits instead.

8 - Free Creation!

Champ has a bit of a thing for scissors and junk creations so why not add wrapping paper into the mix!  I gave him scissors, pens, scellotape, yarn, junk and let him get on with it.  This is what he created a kind of crane thing that he wound backwards and forwards to get the wrapping paper to go up and down - pretty clever I thought! 

9 - Wrap presents

If stuck for more things to do, you could always get the kids to work and wrap some presents!

I hope you've enjoyed this post, still looking for more things to do then check out my wrapping paper and baubles Pinterest board.  Or, keep up to date with posts by subscribing, liking facebook or hooking up on Google+ or Twitter.

Playdough - Baby Play

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Little Dude is now 9 months old and loves to play with everything his brothers have.  So, a little while ago inspired by this post from Rainy Day Mum, when the older boys were playing with playdough I let him try it out too, and he loved it!

I supervised him the whole time as he is totally at the putting everything in his mouth stage and the play didn't last long.

But, he really enjoyed giving the playdough a good old squidge.  Plus it's inspired me to start trying out some more sensory and messy play with him.  If you're not sure how to make playdough check out my post here.  Or, if you want a few more baby play ideas check out my baby play pinboard.

Spray Paint - Our Week Outdoors

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Another week, another lot of fun outside!  Everyday we try to get outside and have some playtime fun, here's what we got up to last week.....

Monday 18th June - The water table had filled up with rain water so the boys added some leaves to create a pond for their bugs, oh and they added some of my pegs (joy! decided it wasn't worth taking issue with!)

They also enjoyed playing with some bits of elastic I gave them.  They looped them round the bar on the trampoline then pinged them into the garden like mini catapults!

Tuesday - We took the playdough outside, which I thought was a brilliant idea at the time, until they decided to mix it with water and splat the soggy gloop on my patio.  Oh well, maybe we won't do that one again!

Then when Hubby got home they grabbed the sponge bombs (sponge strips tied together, I used the tutorial at One Charming Party) and used him for target practice!

Wednesday - The boys are a bit crazy for Batman at the moment so they built their Batmen a Batcave.

Here they are delighted with their handiwork!

Thursday - More water fun, this time I filled up some spray bottles with coloured water (yep, I got out the food colouring again!) and hung up an old towel on the washing line.  I told them this was their painting canvas and they needed to cover as much as possible.

They enjoyed spraying and seeing if the water would go through to the other side and if they could spray up high or down low.  Good fun and the bottles have stayed outside and been used all over the garden, on themselves and for water fights!

Friday - Champ's half birthday party!  As his birthday is very close to Christmas we celebrate his half birthday instead and this year he chose a Pink Dinosaur party!  More on that another time, but it involved some more outdoor play and our first sand play.

Saturday - The boys had fun first with hubby and then later with a visit from Great Uncle M who was very accommodating playing soldiers and trapping monsters all over the garden!

Sunday - An awesome two hour trip to the park with friends!

Another fun week outdoors!  I hope you've had some outdoor play to, what did you get up to?