Our 3 Little Pigs Day!

Its B1's inset day, the weather is freezing and M1 is full of a cold so our daily activities are limited to the house.

At school the term time topic for B1 is Fairy Tales with each week having a dedicated story - this week its the 3 little pigs so I thought I'd try a couple of activities at home with that topic.

First we started off with bacon and egg however I didn't explain where bacon came from! Then I scoured the bookshelves for the story - could I find it - NOPE! So off to Google I went to print it.

We all sat down for the short story of the 3 little pigs. Afterwards B1 and I looked at the main words and he practiced reading and spelling them using the phonemes hes learning at school in his homework book...

We did some basic colouring, I found fab printable's online and the boys set too in colouring in a set of pigs each and other sheets with the wolf and housing.

Printables: 3 Little Pig Printables

Then after some careful cutting out of the pigs it was off to the tuff spot for some building material experiments based on the story. I got some straw, sticks and blocks, and in order, got the boys to construct a house for their pigs..... Then after a countdown they had to pretend to be big bad wolves and blow them down!

Now it was snack time as they'd been very good and worked very hard  .... 

3 Little Pigs Snack

Straw chip sticks, salami wood sticks and brick chocolate buttons, together with Big Bad Wolf Juice (Chocolate milk) and a curly piggy tail straw!

So after a break we decided to look into force and motion on a very basic 4 year old level - coming from the force of wind used upon the houses in the story. I used the lid of their toy box, an old towel and the blocks again to make 3 different surfaces. Then they both picked some cars and they raced them down the ramp. OK so it wasn't 100% scientific but the car on the smoothest surface won as predicted which B1 found it very interesting explaining to me why he thought that car won :D 

Inspiration drawn from: Force and Motion Experiment

The activities hopefully drew on topics including physics, art, creativity, reading, observation, role-play and team work! Dinnertime may consist of sausages :P

x

Decoupaging My Wedding Shoes - Star Wars Stylee

How To Make Your Star Wars Shoes

Decoupaging with Comics

Here is a little background info into my shoes & Star Wars wedding theme bringing us fittingly to what I am about to do to them! My Wedding Shoes - The Next Episode!

What you will need:

• Your Shoes!
• Mod Podge
• Small paint brush
• Old Comics & Magazines in desired theme
• Piece of cardboard to protect work surface
• Kitchen towel (for wiping fingers as you go)

Mod Podge is a special craft glue that also acts as a sealant, glue and finish. I purchased the 236ml Matte version but there are other types such as Gloss, Glitter, Pearlescent etc etc. It cost me about £5 on line (Hobbycraft (UK) no longer stocked it). It is safe, low odour and just peels off fingers like PVA glue :)

The comics and mags I purchased via Ebay were an old 1978 Star Wars comic and a set of special publication magazines from when Episode 1 first came out in the cinemas. This was a little bit of sacrilege and I shed a tear as I took the scissors to them  (I will withhold my address for fear of reprisals from hard core SW comics collectors! :P)

Episode 1

Prepare the shoes by taking off any diamanté like I had on mine. As these shoes were satin and pleated they were possibly the worst sort of shoes to do this too, I sealed them fully, heels and all with 2 coats of the Mod Podge. Mod Podge goes on white like PVA glue but drys clear so don't worry :D
Go through the mags and comics and cut out anything you may need - speech bubbles, characters, special words, pictures - if its interesting cut it out! Keep some good images and speech bubbles etc for adding last for extra effect.

Episode 2

I started with the wedges and the heels, for this I picked out blue/black space background and stuck this all over, making sure to cover the whole area and making sure the edges are neat as you go, this saves having to sort any issues later as when it dries it dries solid! Then I did the edge around the top of the shoe as this was a prominent seam that needed covering neatly. Be careful what the inside of the shoe looks like - keep it a neat edge if you can, some people also stuff the inside of the shoe with newspaper to protect but I didn't find this necessary.

To apply the piece you want: Paint the Mod Podge onto the shoe in the area you want it, place the image and now put some more Podge on top, smoothing with brush and finger as you go. It will start to go 'off' in about 3 minutes which allows you to press down any sticking up edges (I had alot in the creases of the pleats of my shoes). After about 6 minutes give it another press, you can place other images down during this time - just keep going back and pressing it down. The whole thing should set in about 20 minutes. In general I found comics easier to stick than magazines which were thicker and took some holding.

Episode 3

Next I went around the inside edge of the shoe with other background snippets (namely Tatooine sand, Death Star and Millennium Falcon!) This left the middle section of the shoe now bare which I then filled with other back ground scraps from Padme's throne robe, more Tatooine, more space sky, some R2D2 and general comic bits. This gave a background in which to now add the main images and pictures ....

Episode 4

Now split the nice images and speech bubbles you have kept back in half roughly so you can evenly place these between the two shoes. I worked going from shoe to shoe, checking the spacing, colouring etc. as I went, this way you can keep on track of it easier. At the end of this you will have covered your shoes in fantastic images!

Episode 5

I covered the shoes in 3 fairly thick layers of Mod Podge allowing each layer to dry completely which take approx 1 hour to set. Some people have also sprayed a sealant onto theirs however the Podge is also a sealant and personally I don't plan to jump in any puddles wearing them :) I only used about 1/3 of the Podge container and therefore have loads left over for other projects. If you only plan on doing one pair of shoes perhaps buy the smaller size bottle which you can get also :)

Final coats of Mod Podge

Episode 6

Wipe the sole and the inside of the shoes with a damp cloth to remove finger marks, dust etc and Voila!!!!!

Episode 7 

COMING SOON! ..... Wearing them out possibly at Premiere in 2015!

My Wedding Shoes - The Next Episode!

On the 18th May 2013 I married the true love of my life, the father of my children and my sole mate in a small ceremony at a country house in Staffordshire. However there was a slight twist to this wedding ... the theme was STAR WARS!!

To cut a long story short we met at university and played alot of on line computer games and notably a Star Wars game called Star Wars Galaxies ....  so what a perfect theme to go with. Obviously given the venue it was a little watered down but there was alot of key elements in there to keep the guests on their toes :D

The Shoes:

Soooo here's the main deal ... On the day they were a beautiful platform ivory satin peep-toe from Belle with a RRP of £99 but I only paid £10 off Ebay (worn once before for 4 hours) - BARGAIN!

Here is a collage of the shoes taken by my wonderful wedding photographer Catherine Pound Photography

However after the big day they looked a little more like this .......

Some of the rhinestones were missing, they were mud stained and dirty in the toe area, they would not have come up totally clean by the dry cleaners and I could have dyed them black or something but that would be boring! So in keeping of my wedding thing there was only one thing to do ........

I decided to decoupage them! with Star Wars snippets none the less to keep the theme of my big day going :D I had seen various shoes done with different comics and magazines in different themes and 'professional' done ones are an arm and a leg in costs. I thought I'll give it a go seen as I'm at a little bit of a loose end craft wise now the wedding is done and dusted!

Searching the web high and low, looking at other blogs, video clips etc etc I got a good idea of how to go about it ...

Heres How I Turned My Wedding Shoes Into Star Wars Heels!

Exploring Autumn Nature

So today whilst walking home from the school run I had an idea to keep the monsters busy whilst I sorted tea..... trying to avoid the 'Muuummmmm Im hungry' moan for an idea we started looking for things on our way home we could use. I asked B1 to see any leaves or anything interesting he could find. We got lots of stuff including pine cones, a conker, lots of different types of leaves etc...

I then quickly wrote some signs, grabbed a couple apples from our tree and seeds from the bird feeder and set it up for them:

B1 is starting all his phonics learning at school and letter recognition so we spent a little time seeing what letters he knew, their sounds, the actions and the rhymes and if he knew what the word might sound like. M1 also joined in the fun, repeating after B1 :D

I then got out the crayons and some paper and we all had ago at leaf rubbing, they had fun deciding what leaf to use and the finding out which is tricky (holly!) Meanwhile tea is in the oven cooking nicely!

The last thing we did was to open the conker we had found. Its not quite conker time but we managed to get one and mummy sliced it open and gave it to B1 to discover what was inside. Had a little discussion about what it is and what it grows into before they then ran off to play whist mummy plated the food :)

Great activity to fill in the time between school and teatime to keep them occupied!

x

Moon Dough Construction Chaos!

Its the last day of the holidays before B1 starts big school tomorrow so out came the tuff spot! So I thought we'd get the construction toys & moon dough together and see what the little monsters can make (other than a mess!) This is Moon Dough. 

The texture of moon dough is quite odd - its soft, squidgy, a cross between sand and play dough! I had a few colours that have been both presents and stuff that I picked up from our local bargain shop. The boys loved mixing it up, filling the diggers, getting the men to work, making roads and bricks and stones!

Inevitably it got very mixed up and messy although luckily it just brushes off without too much hassle and odd bits can hoover. M1 ended up with no top on at one stage and they both sat in it playing happily and getting it everywhere! This gave mummy the chance to sew the rest of the name tags in B1 new school uniform!

They loved playing with the dough and the diggers literally for hours! A great mornings activity to keep the little ones amused!

x