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

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

Building our Volcano ....

We started by using the left over paper from our Alphabet Adventure B1 sculpted a volcano shape around an old plastic bottle stuck to a sweet tin lid, we then left it to dry in the greenhouse. This took some time as it was quite sodden!

B1 and I then did a couple of layers of proper paper mache to cover the volcano and give a good painting base... some more drying time later .... We took it outside and painted it after looking at pictures on Google and discussing what colours to do. Mummy found some moss for added effect!

Then we used it in our Prehistoric Play and made it erupt using warm water, food colouring, bicarbonate of soda, washing up liquid and vinegar!!

In a jug mix: warm water (enough to fill 3/4 of volcano bottle) and add food colouring and a few drops of washing up liquid. Next mix in a couple spoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda ...then pour the liquid mixture into the bottle in the volcano ...then when you are ready pour in some vinegar and watch it 'erupt'!!!!

Fab fun for little monkeys!!!

Prehistoric Play!

Following on from the last tuff spot we made a volcano!! ... Building our Volcano! and what is best with messy volcanoes?? 

Dinosaurs!!!

This idea was inspired from the blog of an old friend Mrs Tutey's Blog and I just had to try it as my boys aren't quite into dinosaurs etc so thought some extra learning may help! Mummy gathered bits and bobs and made the scene for the dinos (it was raining outside so quicker for mummy to do the hunter gatherer!) and then surprised the boys with it...

We talked about when we thought dinosaurs existed (next week apparently!), where they are now (they aren't here yet!) and what the planet looked like when they were alive (jungle!). We have a large garden ornament fossil and we discussed what they think fossils are, the boys had some Happyland cave men figurines and we talked about humans and their clothes and how they might have lived ... ok for all the fellow nerds out there I know there issues in exact timelines here but for B1 & M1's sake go with it :P

We then had roaring competitions on who could roar the loudest - B1 won!

Next came the volcano eruption: So here is a link on how to do it DIY Volcano Eruption 

This wowed the boys, and mummy too because mummy wasn't quite expecting it to work! (daddy however was depressed there wasn't an actual explosion :P) Then we had a little talk about lava, where it comes from and do they think it is hot or cold ... great all round experiment and fun for the monkeys!

After some more free play it was then time for a wash and of course the dinos came into the bath for their wash too (saves mummy a job!) Good fun was had on a rainy afternoon in August and hopefully a little bit of history & chemistry learnt along the way :)

Alphabet Adventure

B1 starts school in September (Arghhhh!) and he is very good at his alphabet however I wanted to just help with distinguishing been a capital letter and its little form to see how he copes ... It is also an opportunity to introduce M1 a bit more to the alphabet and help with his pronunciation. M1 doesn't say too much atm and I'm hoping some practise saying sounds can help ....

So I got some shredded paper from our shredder and placed in the tuff spot, I then got the magnetic letters out and hid them in the paper. We went and found the letter blocks, an alphabet animal jigsaw, the easel and chalks and the Leapfrog Alphabet Caterpillar.

I let the boys rummage through the paper finding a letter, when they found one I let them tell me the sounds, we then pressed the caterpillar to make sure we were right. We looked at the jigsaw and found what animal began with that sound and compared the letter to the easel letters. Luckily the jigsaw had capitals and little letters on for them to compare. B1 was more interested than M1 but he still liked to look through and sing the alphabet song and have ago at the different sounds.

After this I then had a load of shredded paper (everywhere!) so I made up a paper mache solution and B1 mixed it all together. I had an old drinks bottle I stuck to a tin lid and we formed a volcano! After some more paper mache and some painting when its dry this will be used in our next tuff spot adventure!

Snow & Ice Tuff Spot Play

So today we have had the first play with the new Tuff Spot, so we kept it simple!

Mummy had some fake squiggly snow solution and made a big bucket of that to pour into it, the night before she froze a big dish with water and pearls and also one with glitter so there were shiny icebergs! Along with icecubes and cotton wool balls we then went on a hunt around the house to find animals that live in and around the snow ... a polar bear, a penguin, a man wrapped up warm and M1 choose a goose! (well its white!).

They were then set loose on it and it kept them amused for ages! Squishing, exploring etc... we discussed what happens when ice melts and how it melts. B1 understood this more when the main iceberg started to melt and the pearls started to loosen... We talked about whether the ice & snow is hot or cold and where they thought it came from....

Great fun was had by all, so after a wash down with a hosepipe - munchkins and all! we tidied it all away. The only issue which arose then was M1 deciding to stand on a bumble bee in which the bumble bee won! Silly child but he learnt to be kind to animals next time!

Mummy is now busy thinking of what we can do next time with our tuff spot  .... ice cream play, dinosaurs, autumn fun, buried treasure, chocolate soil ....

x