Today's activities were play dough and table tennis, well I left the later to Robin, but I was very keen on the first as it is one of my favourite things to do.
WARNING - there are a lot of photos as I am loving the iOS 7 camera on my phone!
Recipe
Making play dough is so easy and satisfying. This is a magic recipe that is even more exciting.
you need:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup baking soda
3/4 cup salt
2 tbsp cream of tartar
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 cups water
food colouring
(no cream of tartar in pic!)
You put all the ingredients into a saucepan and then stir over a medium heat. Eventually it all starts to come together into a big ball of dough. You then need to put it on a board and kneed it - it is VERY hot so not for children to touch straight away.
The boys will play with play dough for ages. They love making spaghetti:
Today they also to make cupcakes which looked great!
We then decided to see how magic the cup cakes were and we injected them with vinegar. Due to the magic ingredient of baking soda the cupcakes all fizzed. The boys loved it, especially flattening them out and seeing little eruptions happen as the vinegar reacts to the dough.
You cannot use the play dough again as it is all wet!
If you substitute the baking soda for more flour, this mix keeps for ages in an air tight container.
Table tennis
Not sure what to say about this - they played table tennis!
The boys got very excited and have already picked out the next activity and are very excited as its one of their (and mine!) favourites - "Experiments"! So watch this space!
Not just painting
Olly got to choose from the activity bowl today as Thomas is ill so lying on the sofa! He picked out "painting" - his first reaction was that it was a boring activity. Neither boy is very interested in "just painting" so we made it a bit more fun.
Firstly Olly wanted to do "Big Painting" with his feet, so we went outside and had a go -
It was quite fun, but very messy and over very quickly!
After a quick bath we decided to do some leaf painting - I really enjoyed this too. We basically printed with leaves.
This is my attempt - I'm quite pleased with it!
Olly made a great effort and made and "A" for Andersen!
We then used some of our acorn collection to make some interesting little things
The end result was pretty cool - a couple of toadstools and a strawberry! (these ideas came from Twig and Toadstool)
Olly loved making these toadstools and insists on collecting all acorns and cups that we come across to make more.
So all in all the painting was really good fun and not at all boring!
Thank you for getting this far!
Autumn is Here
I love Autumn, I can't decided between Spring and Autumn, but they are both my favourite months. I love Autumn because its the start of all things new and I love the changing of colours and the crisp mornings and crunchy walks. As a family one of our favourites things about Autumn is CONKERS!
The boys obsession with conkers began when Robin used to bring them some home every day after work - not getting conkers used to be a consequence for bad behaviour!
They don't do anything with their conkers, just collect them and put them in a big pot. Collecting them is the best bit!
After school today we decided to go and fill up out pockets.
We actually found that we still had a good week or so to wait before most of the conkers were down, but we were lucky with a few. The boys favourite bit is throwing sticks at the conkers still on the tree to "help" them down!
They then bash and bash until the shiny conker pops out of its cosy warm bed - prematurely!
We also collected LOTS of acorns and tomorrow we are going to make some acorn toadstools that I found in this great blog Twig and Toadstool
Now I just need to do some research into crafts with conkers!
We have completed the Summer List so what next....
The boys love doing activities (I love doing activities with the boys!) so I have compiled another list but have cut it up and put each activity in a pot so that the boys can pull out an activity when we have time and away we go!
Today was the first day that we have had no plans after school so we began. Olly pulled out the first activity -
Making a Den
If you read my last blog about building a fort (Building a Fort) you will know that this is not my favourite activity so I was pleased to get it over and done with!
We did go for a very similar den as before with all the sofa cushions then we decided to get draw the curtains and snuggle up with torches to read some stories.
This was all going swimmingly until the dog got in and caused havoc! He totally destroyed the den and ended up sitting on top of us all!
We did manage to get back to the stories and all was well! The boys love building a den - mainly because they usually get to eat tea in it!
Looking forward to our next activities - I hope its one of my favourites next time!
School is Back
The boys have been back at school for a week now and I honestly thought I would have more time now they are back. The absolute opposite is true! The fact that I have more free time literally means I have less free time as that free time is booked up in a matter of minutes! Its taken me a week to find time to write this which is the last blog for the Bucket List.
Build a Fort
We only had a few ticks left, the first one we did was to build a fort. This was an item on the list that I had been putting off. Its silly really as its a clean activity, and relatively easy and hassle free, however I hate having cushions everywhere - its ridiculous I know, so quick to tidy up and something the children LOVE! So I gave in and we built a fort, in the living room no less! We even had a picnic tea in there in front of the TV - serious parent points awarded!
I cannot tell you how much the boys love doing this - They think its naughty to throw the cushions everywhere so its even more fun!
The finished fort - it was very comfy - I even had a little snooze! How happy are those boys?
Ice Sculptures
The last thing that we ticked off the list was making ice sculptures. This needs a bit of preparation as you need to make a bock of ice first! We did this a few weeks ago using a balloon
This is a bit more fun if you colour the water before freezing, but I forgot this time! We then put the frozen balloon in the bath and the boys get in.
We fill squirty bottles with hot water and the start melting the ice. Their favourite thing it to make holes in it and hopefully tunnels. It is cool watching the water flow through the holes and tunnels.
In the end we had a pretty work or art!
The boys then get the sculpture to play with in the bath until it has melted (not long!)
They really enjoy this and it is something I will be doing more often - you always need a frozen balloon in the freezer for a rainy day!
Completed List - Yeah!
I have decided the list has now been completed - the only things we didn't tick off were going to the driving range and making an obstacle course, both things we will do anyway.
The End? What's Next?
The boys and I have loved going through this list so it seems sad to stop. Our plan now is to make a list and put all activities in a box so that on days when we have no after school plans we can pull an activity out from the box.
I have enjoyed writing this blog (for my benefit!) so have decided that I will continue to blog about the activities we do.
Thank you so much for reading, you are welcome to continue to join us on our activity journey!
Save the best till last
We have had a really amazing day together today and I am almost sad that tomorrow I'm sending them back to school. Yesterday I would have had no problem at all!
The week started off with a brilliant day down on the coast with friends, we visited the aquarium where they have otters which was my best bit. The best bit for the boys was the hurricane machine that we had to pay for (!) at the end! Great results though!
We also had some time on the beach which my boys love - I have to drag them away!
Monday evening I was persuaded to spend the night under canvas with the boys - it did seem like a lovely idea. Needless to say we did not get a lot of sleep and suffered very badly the next day with camping hangover!
We did have some jobs to do to get ready for school, then we watched a film (I named uniform!), but we did make some slush puppies or snow cones to watch the film with which was very easy, you just whizz up some ice and add syrup, or we added a melted ice pop!
Today was the last day of the holidays and I was determined to be in a good mood and enjoy the time with the boys without worrying too much about ticking things off the list (I can get a bit obsessed with the ticks!). As it happened we ticked off a few things whilst still having a very relaxed day.
We started with washing the car - the boys absolutely insisted on this! This was really good fun and as it was such a lovely day we did all get very wet and had a sponge fight and got soap everywhere (not so much on the car though!)
We then made a tin foil river. We had to try a few methods - first we tried down the slope which was OK, but didn't seem that fun, so then we tried on the flat - not fun! (This brown patch is where our paddling pool killed the grass!)
Then we tried down the steps, this was quite fun,
However, we all decided that it was best down the slope so we put it back there and the boys had lots of races with leaves and then balls!
We then made baked cotton wool balls. I had been wanting to try this all summer, but now having done it, it was more suited for younger children. Having said that, we still had fun, we mixed flour and water and then coloured it before dipping in cotton wool and baking it.
The left over mix of flour and water was then turned into slime and the boys got really messy and played for ages with it - this was the best fun!
After the balls were baked we with smashed them with sticks, the boys did like this! Anything that involved sticks and smashing ticks all the boxes in their eyes! Its a bit like smashing egg shells, which is very satisfactory!
After an active morning we decided to spend the afternoon at the beach on Hayling Island and it was lovely, Granny and Baba joined us and me, Thomas and Granny all went for a proper swim which was fun. Thomas and Baba also had fun skimming stones. Olly loved just digging and covering things in stones when he wasn't eating!
This was a brilliant end to a wonderful Summer, only made better by this list!
We do have about 4 things left and are planning on doing them at the weekend, so this blog hasn't finished just yet - just in case you were hoping this was it!
A few more ticks
After an amazing 4 days without the boys we are back to reality. The boys had so much fun on their seaside holiday with grand parents - lots of fun at the beach and days out. We went down to get them and spent a lovely day yesterday (if you ignore the fact the dog was sick all day!).
They are now exhausted hence the need for a quiet day!
Painting rocks - Tick
This morning we had about an hour to spare and so what better way to spend it than painting the stones we found on the beach yesterday. Even Robin got involved, and he hates messy crafty things!
We lay all the stones out and looked up lots of ideas on the internet to boost our imagination and then painting begun.
None of us are brilliantly patient so we got the hair dryer out to speed up the drying process in order to be able to get on with the detailing!
I think the outcomes are brilliant - now to find a place for them!
Fruit dipped in Chocolate - Tick
This evening we had a very luxurious chocolate fondu for pudding, luxurious but very cheap! The chocolate was left over from Grandma's party in March (!), the cherries were a gift and the strawberries were 24p - I had to get loads of packs obviously to make up for the price! Chocolate fondu for 4 = 6p each!
Robin thought he needed to advise the boys as to how to finish the chocolate, little did he realise he was talking to the masters of chocolate eating!
We all had lots of laughs and got chocolate everywhere but I think this pictures says it all!
Only 3 more days of the Summer holidays and 15 things left to tick off (not including a few days out that we will do in the coming months!)
thank you for reading!
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