Sun Catchers

So, with some lovely sunny weather the past week I though I would share with you a lovely little craft perfect for the summer time!

Suncatchers! We made these a while back but they are easy peasy, Penguin and Pickle both loved the activity and both were able to join in nicely. Penguin even managed to find a rouge googly eye which she added to her suncatcher. See if you can spot it in the picture!

So these are super simple, cut a cardboard frame, add some sticky back plastic then cover the 'window' with bits of cut up tissue paper! I hope you guys have a try!

Until next time.....

Fossil Hunting

So.....one of the things we did recently was go on a very special trip! Pickle wanted to go fossil hunting, he is totally dinosaur crazy and kept asking to go Fossil hunting and it was hard to explain to a 3 year old why he is unlikely to find fossils in Hertfordshire.

So we went on a lovely little mini holiday to the Isle of Wight and it was AMAZING. We had the best time and we found real fossils on our two fossil hunting trips. Pickle and Penguin had a lovely time and Pickle is so proud of his dinosaur bone finds.

So these are pieces of hipsolophodon bone, Iguanodon bone and the big lump is a piece of theropod thigh bone.

Pickle found the thigh bone and I could tell it was a good find when the paleontologists jaw hit the floor. She asked if he had just picked it up and scrabbled for her camera to take a photo. Later when we visited the fossil museum another paleontologist took some more photos of the bone and showed us some marks on the surface which he explained were tooth marks. Eeek, exciting.

We saw the footprint casts on the beach and were told a lot of information about the rocks and the food prints. I remember bits and I have to say I found it quite fascinating. Our guides were fantastic and we all had a great time.

Before Pickle was into dinosaurs I knew just a few, I have learnt so much from him and from his interests. We have really thrown ourselves into the dinosaur things as a whole family and I love it. I really love the dinosaur thing, it is amazing, truly amazing.

We visited Dinosaur Isle museum and Dinosaur Farm, both are really interesting places with a lot of information about discoveries on the island. Pickle particularly liked the models set out to play with a Dinosaur Farm and Penguin loved the tooth sieving activity they had there. I must have a look at setting something up similar at home...

Dinosaur Isle has a lot of interesting displays of fossils as they were found in situ and Pickle was particularly enamored by the animatronic dinosaur demonstration. Both are well worth a visit for the dino enthusiast!

Until next time.....

Nests

Pickle has lately had a fascination with nests. He likes to build nests and look at nests. He talks about birds and their nests.

We recently set up an activity building a nest himself. We collected nest building materials from the garden and then made some salt dough as a base.

Pickle and Penguin love collecting sticks, grass and moss from around the place and Pickle really enjoyed putting them together with the salt dough to make a little nest.

We made the salt dough brown by adding some coco powder, and watched a video of a robin building a nest for some top tips. Pickle took it into preschool as a present for the preschool leader because he said she likes nests too. So sweet.

Until next time.....