Teddy on the Shelf

Have you heard about or seen the elf on the shelf  ideas all over the web? I saw the little elf for the first time last year and think it's a really sweet idea - having a mysterious little elf arrive in your home and him getting up to all sorts of antics while the children are asleep. And he is really cute.

Anyway, we had an old Santa toy that broke last year - you know, those NOISY, dancing Santa dolls - I'm thinking that maybe it was broken on purpose by the Dad person - hehehe. Well, I couldn't let a good Santa suit be thrown away, so I found myself dressing up one of Little One's teddies in it. That's when the idea of a Teddy on the Shelf came to mind - our cute substitute. 

 

 

Our little teddy was named "Nicholas" by Big One and has been getting up to all sorts of mischief. Little One has had me giggling - he has really not been impressed with this teddy. He has told me that he will "kick him out of the house" (harsh words from a four year old!) and I have found Nicholas "locked up" in a cardboard box - apparently this was him in jail. It appears that there are some serious consequences for getting up to mischief in our house :). 

 
To see lots of elf on the shelf ideas and fun...here are a few links:

lilsugar

Complicated Mama

SheKnows Parenting 

Till next time. 

Christmas Treasure Hunt

Usually in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I have a few small surprises for the children. Last year one of them was a Christmas Treasure Hunt to look for some small gifts in the garden. I ran out of time to write about it, so I thought to share it with you this year.

I found these wonderful Christmas cones over at Mr Printables and used them to create a fun and fairly simple treasure hunt. Little One was only three and a bit at the time, so it had to be easy to follow. The kiddos loved it.

First up was a boy cone, who had a note saying:
Find a tree
Find a tree
Hee hee hee

Next up, a Christmas tree, with a note saying:
Where can Rudolf be?

Rudolf has a note too:
The Easter Bunny is here!
Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear

I decided to call the snow bunny, the Easter bunny, to get a few smiles. His note said:
I love Christmas, 
I can't help myself.
Such yummy treats.
Now can you find an elf? 

The elf's note says:
Santa's got a surprise for you!
Just find him. 
That's all you need to do.

Santa has the gifts and a note saying:
Ho Ho Ho
Way to go! 

This was so easy to put together. If you click on the Mr Printable's link above, it takes you to the post where you can download and print out these cuties. Simply cut them out and stick them together. If you don't know the Mr Printables website, well then, consider this information a small Christmas gift from me to you ;). It is a wonderful site, full of incredible freebies to print out. Have fun!

What Christmas surprises do you get up to during the festive season?

Christmas Crafts @ Love and Lollipops

I love this time of the year, don't you? So on the eve of December 1st (YAY!), I thought I'd dig into the archives and share these with you. Just to get you in the mood ;).

Milk Bottle Santas

Imagine a Santa Ten Pin bowling game with these...

Christmas Cards

It sure is special receiving a homemade Christmas Card. I didn't last year, but I really do want to make some this year.

Bottle Top Snowmen 

Have some fun making bottle top snow people.

Teddy Bear Ornament

Make a teddy bear ornament from two pipe cleaners. I have included a nice tutorial in the post. 

Coffee Filter Christmas Trees

Pretty for some Christmas art work or cards. 

Christmas Tree (Tennis) Biscuits

Easy to make and yummy to eat...mmm

Sock Snowmen

These make for sweet little gifts that the children can make for their friends.

Matchbox Advent Calender

You have one night left to make this :)

A Christmas Sensory Box 

A sensory box filled with Christmassy goodness. 

Christmas Eye-Spy Bottle

I never posted about the bottle seen here, but if you go to the link, I share how I made another Eye-Spy Bottle. This is great fun for the really little ones.

Little Town of Bethlehem Craft (from toilet rolls!)

My favourite Christmas craft of all...this precious little town of Bethlehem. I love how this one turned out...who would have thought that toilet rolls could be turned into something so special?

Have fun preparing for the BIG DAY, but remember it's a season...Enjoy it all :)

Bottle Top Turkey

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

...to all my friends and family in the US :)

Cloud Dough

I've seen around the net that this is called "Cloud Dough", but I actually think that this is closer to the real store-bought Moon Sand than the recipe I shared here.  Either way, you can't go wrong. It's a whole lot of fun.

This "dough" isn't really doughy at all. It's fluffy and light and mold-able. Little One enjoys playing with it with spoons and small containers. It does make quite a mess, so I prefer that we only play with this outdoors.

So the recipe is simple:

8 cups of flour

1 cup of oil (baby oil or vegetable oil)
Please note: Baby oil shouldn't be eaten, so supervise if you use the baby oil option :)

Mix it all up and P L A Y !

I cannot recall where I saw this super recipe for the first time, but there's a nice post with some extra links to what other Mommy's have done with Cloud Dough at Learn with Play at home.com.

Till next time...

Lego catalogue ideas {and a Giveaway winner}

Lego catalogues... they are loved in my home. They are read and re-read until they completely fall apart, but you dare not throw them away.

Big One has always loved lego.  Little One has been playing with the bigger lego blocks since he was very young, but it was about a month before his fourth birthday that the "mini lego switch" went on in his brain. He now plays with the mini-figurines day in and day out. I have felt quite sorry for the cars and construction vehicles that have been so loved up until now. It reminds me to enjoy every stage and phase - it doesn't last forever.

So seeing all these poor falling apart lego catalogues, I decided to give myself a whole lot of work and make longer lasting lego books. To make, I used nice A4 sized coloured cardboard and Flip Files. I cut down the double lego pages and pasted it onto the card and popped it into the book. Now hopefully these special catalogues can last for a bit longer.

After I had made these, I realised the wonderful opportunity that this book provides for language enrichment. Any lego-loving child, who struggles with language, would enjoy looking at these action-packed pages, and it then provides a nice tool for speech therapists to use to engage a child and talk about the picture. You can also use the different scenes to "find things" on the pages. 

And one more idea... I have also converted some of the pictures into puzzles. 

I wonder what else I could do with a lego catalogue?

One last exciting thing before I leave you - I recently had a giveaway and I do have a winner for you! Thank you to my international readers who try as they might couldn't access the Little People's Products Facebook page. I gave you the extra entry for your effort. And the winner...Briana Richardson :). Congrats Briana...I'll be in touch with you shortly. 

Till next time...have fun.

S is for Spiders {and a Giveaway}

Where have I been this month of October you are wondering?

Well, I have had two tummy bugs - really awful!

Both boys have had it too - more of the awful.

Not a great month in the healthy department, but we have all survived and are better. And now, speaking of bugs...

S is for Spiders... and Spooky and Scary and... Sensory box! 

When I saw these plastic glow-in-the dark spiders in the store, I knew a sensory box was to be made - a scary spider sensory box. I dyed some rice with red and blue food colouring, added the spiders and presented it to the boys in the dark - before bedtime - I know, it doesn't sound right? Well thankfully, they loved it. I think the only one who was "scared" was me - I actually jumped (and gave a squeamish yelp) when one of the spiders landed on my hand. Really. Big One's response to the sensory box was "It's brilliant" - to get that reaction from a ten year old is pretty cool I think.

A few days later I took the box out again - in daylight this time. I added some string (pretend web), snakes and the letter "s" from my alphabet set. It was great to see the boys enjoying the box again. I also added tweezers and a magnifying glass. We compared sizes; we counted; we took the string and made "s" shapes - all in all a great activity :). 

 

Oh yeah, would you like to win a fabulous 26 piece lowercase alphabet (like the one I used here)? This fantastic product is South African born and bred and made by Little People's Products.

If you would like to win, this is what you must do: Please head on over to their website and come back and tell me which product you really like. For a second entry, pop on on over to their Facebook page and "like" them and then come back here and tell me you did. And for a third entry, share this competition on your Facebook page if you have one. Please leave a separate comment for each entry and some contact details. The competition is open world wide and the closing date is Monday the 5th of November. Good luck!

O is for Ostrich

Little One has been introduced to the alphabet via the Letterland program at his school this year - a super program that I like very much. I, on the other hand, haven't focused much on alphabet activities at home, but recently decided that we should. Added to that, Big One gets homework every day and Little One also wants to have homework, just like big brother. So I thought I'd prepare some things for him to do in the afternoon while Big One is busy. 

The first letter I chose to focus on was "o" - it's so easy to identify and it's a great first sound. 

Just by the way, here in South Africa we teach lower case letters first and we teach the phonetic sounds (as in "a" is for apple, not ape). 

I chose ostrich as our first "o" activity and we started with identifying the letter using our fantastic magnetic alphabet. (Available from Little People's Products)

I added some ostrich handouts from Carisa's  Tot School Printables @ 1+1+1+1. (If you don't know this site - it's amazing!) 

We did some colour recognition and colouring in.

Little one then cut out each ostrich (Each ostrich is in a square, which makes this a nice cutting activity).  He helped me staple all the little squares together to make a small book - a nice reminder of the activity.  I also added in some maths language, by asking him which picture he wanted in the book first, second, third, etc, as I put the small pages together, before we stapled it. 

I also made a copy of the "shapes" page and asked him to "show me the ostrich in the oval, triangle etc." He used his dot markers for this one. These were very kindly sent to us awhile back by Donette from The Journey. They are a favourite during homework time. These ostriches can also be cut out to make a book... or flash cards.

There are lots more ostrich pages available from 1+1+1=1. 

And a  bottle top ostrich craft...

The boys and I visited the National Geographic website to get some extra information about the ostrich and we watched a You Tube video of an ostrich running - something they do rather well. (We actually ran around like ostriches - using our "wings" to steer and make sharp turns - this got some giggles). And we learned that an ostrich can cover up to 5 metres in a single stride - that got us measuring and estimating - it's about the length of our kitchen!

Little One calls it "fun homework". This must mean I'm doing something right ;). 

Till next time - happy learning :)  

PS. Little One is 4.2 years.
PPS. Sharing this at It's Playtime.

Squeezy Art {A repost}

I have never done a repost of an old post on Love and Lollipops before, but after 2 and a half years of blogging, I know that there are some oldies, but goodies, in my archives. So for those of you who happen to remember this post - firstly, thank you for still reading (!) -  and secondly, I hope you won't mind the repeat. With a short spring break coming up here in South Africa, this struck me as a super way to spend a rainy afternoon - spring may be here, but it's still raining  :).

This art activity has been one of Big One's favourites for a long time.

To do this activity, you need some squeezy bottles filled with different paint colours. I found these bottles at my local plastic shop and filled them with acrylic paint, using a vaccine syringe. It is a bit time-consuming, but well worth the effort.

 

Once done, all that is required is some squeezing , folding and fun! First squeeze and then squeeze some more. Use as many colours as you please. Fold your page in half and then carefully open your page to reveal a colour surprise!  My son enjoys this process so much, that getting him to stop is usually the only problem.

We are always left with a great number of these interesting paint surprises, so I decided to use them to make some greeting cards. To create these, I cut them into small squares and arranged them onto pre-cut coloured cardstock. I really like the end result.

Have fun :)

PS. Shared at the Weekly Kid's Co-op.