Weeding is FUN!

I have been meaning to get round to weeding our garden for quite some time now, but with it being a bit on the colder side and with so much else (thats more exciting) to do, it just wasn't on my high priorities list. But, while I was out hanging the laundry today Ashton asked me, "I dig?" I was delighted that he was asking to do a messy play activity, (since he never does) and quickly set him up with some tools and a hole to dig in and we were away!

While sitting digging with him though, the sight of weeds kept popping into vision and distracting me. While contemplating when I would actually get round to pulling them, as if on cue, Ashton jumped up and pulled some weeds from the retaining wall and put them in his mud mix!!! Fabulous! From this point on Ashton and I shuttled backwards and forwards taking turns pulling the weeds and then adding them to our mud pie mixes! He thought it was great fun and I ended up with a reasonably weed free garden while playing with my boy!

Lets Dig!

Ashton and I have found ourselves with a number of days where nothing was planned and we just got to stay at home! I KNOW! That doesn't happen very often. . . at all! So, with it still being rather wintery, but we were lucky to have a sunny day, I was trying to think of something we could do that would get us out of the house for a while. We decided to DIG!

One of Ashton's favourite Polkadots songs is "Lets Dig" so I thought I would see if he really knew what it meant 'to dig'. We got a big spade and just dug out a little square block in the back yard and turned it out to see what we could find.

Ashton wanted to try everything I was doing, so he had a go at digging with the big spade.

As soon as we opened up the hole Aston spotted heaps of worms wiggling around, he was extremely excited!

Car meet worm... worm meet car!

Doing a bit of mixing and stirring with our digging.

Novelty Painting

You may have read before on my blog that my son doesn't really have a strong desire to engage in arty activities! This is a big challenge for me to accept because I LOVE doing arty things and I think that being exposed to the arts helps develop a well rounded child. I don't expect Ashton to be an artist, nor do I want to force him to do things he doesn't enjoy. But I'm not going to give up providing opportunities for him to give it a go and bit by bit help him to feel more comfortable around these activities and materials.

So, each day we try and do something a little arty, even if its only for a couple of minutes. I do want Ashton to enjoy the activities so I try and think of the things he is interested in and then bring the art to the interest! So today we did ball rolling painting and car rolling painting!!! And we managed to stick with it for about 10 minutes each painting!!! Thats pretty good I think!

Ashton doesn't like getting dirty so he enjoyed this activity, as he was able to just hold the box and watch the balls roll around and do the painting for him! We talked about the colours mixing and changing. Then also talked about the pattern the golf ball left behind too!

Ashton particularly enjoyed the car painting and making the cars turn corners and watching the trail appear behind the car.

Although, it wasn't long before he realized his beloved cars were covered in paint and he promptly took them off to the kitchen to clean them off with the tea towel!!! haha!

What can you do with a SPONGE?

We were in Briscoes the other day and spotted a packet of 6 large sponges for $4 and I couldn't resist! Sponges provide so many endless possibilities of fun! Here are a few of the possibilities we came up with.

1 - Build towers with the sponges and boof them down!

2 - Sit on the sponge tower and feel them go flat under your weight... then have them pop out the back! (Ashton thought that was hilarious!)

3 - Cut the sponges into different shapes. Play "spot the shape".

4 - Do sponge painting.

5 - Sponge water play. See how much water you can squeeze into one container.

6 - Sponge war! Throw the sponges at each other and have a good laugh!

This piece of art is amazing to me... cause Ashton doesn't like doing art! But I don't give up... and although this painting was done in a matter of minutes, it was minutes more than doing nothing... which he normally prefers to do!

He does on the other hand LOVE water play, so putting the sponges into the water was right up his alley! And this activity is fantastic for fine motor development, as they squeeze the sponge to empty out the water.

Productive Water Play

We still love to do dancing dishes on a regular basis, but for Ashton it has become more of a time for water play! He gets so fixated on pouring and filling, and as I clean a dish, he takes it for his water collection. I can now not do the dishes without him wanting to help out.

What I love most about Ashton's busy water play is, he can't help but have a little boogie while he tips and pours! Too cute!

I love this photo, you can really see how much water goes EVERYWHERE!

It's tough work cleaning or playing with dishes... got to stop for a drink!

The best play dough recipe EVER!

It was time for a new batch of play dough today so Ashton, Laela and I got to work mixing and stirring! We read our recipe out and found all of the ingredients. As I called out each item the two of them would repeat after me in a parrot like fashion and have a little giggle.

We had to take turns doing each step as they were both extremely eager to help out and get in on the action. Their ability to get the ingredients in the bowl on the first try is getting better each time we cook, its great to see their co-ordination and skills developing.

Our recipe goes a little something like this. . .

3 cups of flour

1 1/2 cups of salt

3 TBSP of oil

1 pot or bag of cream of tartar

(just don't spill it all over your child like I did! ) whops!

3 Cups of boiling water

Then mix it all together.

Once its all pretty much combined turn it out onto the table and knead it all together and add the food colouring you want.

To make our play dough a little more fancy we will often add some essential oils to the mix. If we can we relate the smell to the colour of the play dough. So, raspberry oil to pink, lemon to yellow etc. It adds a whole other dimension and greats points of discussion for playing with the play dough.

WATER PLAY FUN!

Nothing is more relaxing, yet at the same time more exciting than playing with water... for a child under 5! Well this is the case for my child anyway. Ashton has discovered his love for water, you can see the excitement take over his body whenever he hears the shower turn on, or when we walk into the pool area, or even just fill the sink for he dishes.

So, lately have been filling up a big mixing bowl full of water, (sometimes warm, sometimes cold... just to mix it up and keep things interesting.) I add a few of his toys for him to play with and he is occupied for the next half an hour!

Ashton loves catching the water and letting it pour over his hands, so I put in little cups that have holes in the bottom of them that can let the water run out in a shower effect. (If you don't already have a container like this, get an old tupperware container and hammer some holes in the bottom. Works a treat!)

He has also been enjoying having objects in the water that float. He thinks it's very funny trying to catch them as they bob away from him each time he tries to pick the floating objects up.

But most of all he just loves to splash and kick as big as he possibly can! I actually think he

loves the sensation of the water jumping up to splash him in th

e face. He loves getting frights so maybe this is the equivalent of a self indued fright!

AUTUMNAL ADVENTURE

Ashton had a sleepover with his cousins last night and you can't have sleepover at Aunty Carly's house without going on an adventure!

During our drive home from picking up Delta and Anika, Delta pointed out to us that all of the leaves on the trees were changing colour, and that this meant it was now Autumn. We decided while we were driving that this would be the focus of our adventure . . . we would go on a Autumn leaves hunt and collect up as many different coloured leaves as we could find.

So we set off in Grandma's new Radio Flyer wagon! (her dream of owning one finally come true!) and kept our eyes peeled for leaves of red, yellow, orange and sometimes brown! We found a row of trees that were all of the above and quickly jumped in amoungst the fallen leaves to have a play. As we jumped around on them the leaves crunched and crackled under our feet. This was very entertaining, especially to Ashton, who got so excited by the leaves that, surprise, surprise, he wanted to EAT them! He also loved scrunching them in his hands and as the girls and I threw them up in the air around us, he would watch them all land with a bit of a giggle!

Once we were finished having a play, we started finding the leaves of different colours and shapes that we could use in our Autumn paintings. There were so many to choose from and all such beautiful colours! Then we headed over to the grove of Oak trees at the back of the pond to set up our painting stalls.

It was so much fun painting underneath the Oak trees with the fallen autumn leaves all around us to inspire our paintings. Using glue we stuck leaves onto our paintings, and Ashton even dipped the leaves in the paint and painted with the leaves. It was also nice to get out and enjoy the change of the seasons!

Oh, did I mention that Ashton wanted to eat the paint too! (Note: All the paint, is non-toxic!)

PAPER FUN!

Art was on the days plan today! I love art so I have been trying to figure out art activities that I could do with Ashton. With the lack of sleep I had last night the best I could come up with was crayons drawings! Sad, I know... with 13 years+ early childhood experience, all I cam up with was crayon drawings! But we had never done it before so I thought we would give it a go.

I stuck a piece of paper down on Ashton's high chair tray and put the crayon down in front of him. We talked about what colour it was and when he seemed unsure what to do with it, (other than put it in his mouth) I placed it in his hand and showed him how it could make a picture.

I showed him how he could go round and round in circles, (he thought this was funny, he liked holding on to my hand while drew circles all over the page.) We also went up and down on the page, and from side to side as well. After I had demonstrated the possibilities I put the crayon down to let him explore.

This is where the activity took a turn . . . Ashton decided that the paper on his tray was more interesting that the crayons. In his efforts to eat the paper, he ended up ripping it off the tray, which created a lovely ripping noise that he seemed to rather enjoy the sound of. He grabbed the other corner of the paper and ripped it up again. Once he had all the paper ripped off the tray the activity then took on the focus of scrunching the paper up and throwing it around! He was having a great time!

So where I thought I was providing an art activity (all plain as it may have seemed). I actually ended up providing resources for Ashton to formulate his very own exploration of sound and the qualities of paper! ha ha. Unusual but fun and valuable none the less!

Once he had destroyed one piece of paper I placed a fresh new piece on and he went through the same process again, ripping, scrunching, throwing!

IS IT WORTH THE MESS?

It was mine and Ashton's turn to do an adventure video for this week and as I was thinking about what to do, I couldn't stop thinking of painting. I hesitated at first, thinking how it might scare more parents from doing a painting activity than it would inspire them! As everyone well knows, painting with children (especially babies) is never a clean project. And as you will see after watching our adventure video . . . we made a mess!

Which brought me to ask the question afterwards "Was that worth the mess?" and I have to say, I 100% think it was . . . So today I want to blog my case and try and convince those out there who shy away from doing painting projects with their kids, to at least give it a try.

During our 'Tempo Painting' activity, Ashton and I ran into countless learning moments which totally justified the mess at the end. . . we got to physically experience different speeds of fast and slow. . . we sang "The wheels on the bus" and did the actions in the paint as we sang. . . we explored different shapes. . . we mixed colours and talked about the new colours as they evolved. . . we got to feel the texture and talk about how it felt on our hands. . . and, oh the fun when we got in the shower! We got to watch the water change colour all around us, another fantastic talking point!

Those are just a few of the wonderful learning moments we encountered and would have missed if I hadn't been daring enough to take the plunge and get messy for half an hour! (Let me mention that we did go in prepared! We wore our painting clothes, we had a tarpaulin down and a cloth to wipe off excess paint afterwards! - If you prepare well, its not as scary and the more you do it... the better you will both get at it!)