Colour play: Week 1: Yellow.

I sincerely apologise for the quality of photos . My Nikon broke (again) so had to use my phone.

Yellow

I know I dress all dark and gothic, but I actually really love colour.

Charlie's doing well with his, he recognises pink, (sometimes red) and orange straight away, but struggles with others.

So I decided to focus on one colour a week.

Every day this week we highlighted the colour yellow.

1. On Monday we went to the park and explored the yellow sunflowers
2. We came back and painted them (breakthrough with messy play, yay!)
3. On Tuesday we planted some yellow sunflowers in little pots.
4.  On Wednesday we went to the park again and found some different yellow flowers.

1. Snack time: Yellow banana crisps.

2. Yellow beads on the abacus

3. He (eventually) found the yellow key on his xylophone!

4. We matched a yellow lemon to the lemon in his colour book.

                                         
                                                           "Yeh-whoa yeh-wan" (Cuuute!)

(Funky punky yellow bandana)

My new little painter!

This is really good fun now that Charlie loves painting.

We painted one yellow coloured object a day.

1. Monday: Yellow banana
2. Tuesday: Yellow chick
(Apologies for my appalling drawing - at least Charlie could somehow tell what they were!)



1. Thursday: Yellow sun
2. Friday: Yellow duckling (daddy's efforts!)

I was dead set on making some yellow coloured rice - but life got in the way a bit. So instead I'm going to make different bags of one colour (for each colour week) and a bag of rainbow rice for him to have some rainbow play with.

We also attempted a yellow dinosaur swamp... but it went green - which is kind of more realistic I suppose! I'm going to do a separate post on that because it was a great activity.

Charlie has actually started saying 'Yeh-whoa' now, which is more than he was doing before so I'm going to deem this colour-week-idea-thing successful! Go me! And go Charlie! :).

Bring on Green week next week! :)

Some fun activities and a lot of 'firsts' for Charlie :)

We've been having lots of fun in the last few days trying out new play ideas that mammy found through her new uber-obsession with instagram and pinterest! -I love my new first ever smart phone :D.

These are some of the things we've tried:

                                    Play-dough

 

There's recipes for play-dough all over the internet but I used:
1 cup of plain flour
1/4 cup of water
1/3 cup sea salt
1 table spoon of oil
Orange & Yellow food colouring

This was Charlie's first time with a 'squidgy' texture and his (what we call) 'danger danger!' barriers came up. He was extremely cautious around it. He didn't want to touch it with his fingers at all and it took about 10 minutes to persuade him to stab it, and stick sticks and coloured pegs into it. He made a lot of "Eww" faces at it!

Daddy stuck all the coloured pegs into it to make a dough ball "hedgehog", and he enjoyed pulling them all out again, counting them and saying the colours.

I kept my dough-ball in the fridge and whopped it on Charlie's tray a couple of days later. He amused himself by sticking the wooden spoon into it and then watching it fall over.

Fun with Blocks

It's not a new idea but it's a classic one and it's just brilliant.
Charlie has an absolute ton of blocks and they're so versatile for learning and play.
The tuff tray is a great quick-and-easy flat surface for them too. He doesn't yet understand the concept of building. Well he probably does, but he's not interested in doing it! He likes to pick them up, feel & say the shapes, say the colours, count them, put them in out of various containers, and push them around the tray. His favourite thing is to push down towers that mammy & daddy build as quickly as possible!

Pipe cleaners & a colander
Such a simple idea but it really works! Charlie was squealing with excitement and shouting "Ooo! Oooo!" as soon as he saw this in his tuff tray.

 

At first he started feeling them and twanging them.

Then he started pulling them out and showing us.

Cleo thought it was an epic cat toy, which Charlie found hilarious.

Pulling them all out and collecting them.

Stashing them in his truck.

Tipping the colander upside down and shaking it to get them all out!

Got them!

I sorted them all into different colours and asked Charlie to help me! Which he did, for about two of them!

But really he just wanted to stash them in his truck :)

Orange play slime

I originally bought borax to make flubbery judder jelly - but when it arrived, there were warnings written all over it "AVOID EXPOSURE"--avoid exposure?!... .. so, since mine & Charlie's radiation suits are at the dry cleaners, I substituted borax for 100g of corn flour.

I mixed half a cup of baby shampoo & a few drops of food colouring together, then added it to the full bowl of cornflour.

I TOTALLY overdid it with the water. I poured a whole cup in when I should have been table-spooning it in slowly. Big oops. However, I got quite an interesting orange goo! It smelled SO good because of the baby shampoo. Like Charlie smells after a bath. One of the best smells ever - that lovely fresh, clean baby smell.

I was also pretty fascinated with the consistency. It was like dry and rubbery on it's own, but when picked up it 'magically' turned to goo! My inner child was pretty thrilled about that. Charlie,  not yet two years old, was extremely cautious of it. He looked at his tuff tray and said 'Oh dear' like something had been spilled in it. He enjoyed watching me pick it up and seeing it slime off my fingers and he touched it and had a little squeal and a smile.
I do think this is an activity that an older child would enjoy. I'll be trying it with a larger batch when Charlie's over two in three months. I think he'd enjoy some playdough or sand more at the moment.

(Please note - those are his 'messy clothes' I'd never dress him like that in public!)

Review: Why Charlie loves Bath time fun with Tomy aqua fun turtles.

Tomy Aqua Fun turtles £.14.99

We've been through a few bath time toys, but this one is a super hit with Charlie.

Ten simple & brilliant reasons why Charlie LOVES this toy:

1. He loves the colour green.
2. He discovered a new animal and now loves turtles.
3. There's a "Mammy turtle" and "Baby turtles" he can role play with.
4. The baby turtles are different colours and he calls them "Blue turtle" etc.
5. Mammy turtle has coloured shapes for legs - he likes saying the shapes & sorting them.
6. He can stick the baby turtles to the bath, his bucket, or on mammy turtles back.
7. He can pour water from mammy turtles shell.
8. He can squirt water from the baby turtles at mammy & daddy!
9. Mammy turtles leg-shapes make rain sprinkles when you "scoop" with them.
10. The "scoop" action is the same as he's learning to use with his spoons & forks.

He decided that baby turtles live in the bucket!

Sticking them, unstickig them, saying the colours and counting them!

Why does mammy love this toy? Because there's SO MUCH educational value as well as imaginative play packed into it!

I can imagine the turtles going on little bath adventures when he's older.

10/10 on every scale!