Pumpkins

So it has been a little while! We have been busy in our house. With Pickle and Penguin both having a birthday with a joint party in the middle and then half term with all the madness that brings.

We have been having fun with pumpkins in our house! We visited a pumpkin farm over half term and picked up a few beauties. Yellow Bean and Pickle picked out classic carving pumpkins and Penguin and I chose edible ones. We also picked some cheap ones up from supermarkets.

So....what have we been doing?

First we did some scooping. But I failed to get a snap of that one...too much excitement and mess.

The kids had some great fun with the squidgy squishy innards of the pumpkin and did a pretty good job scooping it all out.

Then we washed the seeds. Pickle, Penguin and I loved the feel of the slippery seeds in the water. A great sensory activity!

We dried the seeds and picked a few to put aside for planting next year. The rest we mixed with a little oil, some brown sugar and mixed spice and roasted in a medium/hot oven for 15min. Yummy!

Pickle enjoyed carefully cutting the face he had drawn himself out of his pumpkin. We used a pumpkin carving kit we picked up in the supermarket. It was great, the blade is serrated but not sharp, totally suitable for my newly 4 year old boy.

Penguin is still a bit too little, she had a fabulous time drawing all over her pumpkin with sharpie pen.

For another pumpkin activity Penguin used a hammer to tap some golf tees into another pumpkin. He then wound black wool around the tees to make a pattern. He decided that this was like a spiders web so we have since added a black pompom and pipe cleaners to make a spider.

Not a bad little batch of activities that the small people certainly seemed to enjoy. I am looking forward to lighting them tomorrow evening!

Until next time....S xx

Fungi

I love Fungi. Don't you? Have you seen the amazing range of shapes and colours that you can find in an early autumnal wood? Have you ever noticed how magical the world of fungi can be?

A wonderful selection. x

Dinosaurs of China

Over the summer we visited the Dinosaurs of China exhibit in Nottingham. It was great, a beautifully laid out museum with wonderful information and clarity of purpose.

I loved learning about the links between birds and dinosaurs and so did Pickle and Penguin. The fossils they had were amazing and clearly showed the features of dinosaurs reflected in modern birds.

They also had a fantastic tent outside with perfectly pitched activities for the kids to extend their learning through playing with various resources.

All in all a wonderful day and learning experience. Did you take any interesting trips over the summer? I would love to hear about them. Until next time. x

Picking Blackberries

We have done a lot of blackberry picking over the last part of the summer. Pickle loves to pick the blackberries but won't eat them unless they are in a crumble. Penguin can't seem to stop eating them from the bushes as we wander through the woods.

We have had a few crumbles, made some jam and some blackberry gin. We have also had lots of purple fingers and a few purple faces too.

Wonderful outside time with my two. x

Painting Rocks

This summer many people in my local area have been painting rocks and leaving them in the woods for others to find. Rocks, paint, woods, outdoors, art. It sounded right up our alley.

So we decided to join in and give it a go. We started out by digging in the garden, finding rocks and giving them a good wash. This was a great activity and Pickle and Penguin dove into it with all the energy and excitement that small people seem to muster from nowhere. They found a lovely selection and were really keen to get started with the paint.

I covered them in PVA once they were dry and the next day we went out into the woods to hide them and search for others. We found a few and have been back a few times since to find more.

Pickle and penguin love to see the different designs others have chosen, to them every single one of them is beautiful and exciting. I love to see the world through their eyes. Some are amazingly creative, taking into account the shape of the rocks, others are very much toddler painted.

I would highly recommend getting involved in community projects such as this, it is really great to see so many families getting involved and enjoying the outdoors. I have seen a lot of posts about this on the facebook community so it would be worth looking to see if it is going on in your area.

Until next time. x

Heartwood Forest

During the holidays we took a trip to Heartwood Forest. It is an interesting site where they have a lot of new woodland planted with some teeny trees as well as some established woodland.

We had a wonderful long walk around, starting with the Magical Meander. It is a beautiful trail with lots of carved animals along the way.

There were a whole range of different creatures along the way.

Pickle and Penguin loved to run up to the different animals.

This archway was beautiful, the other side had pictures of leaves from different types of trees carved on. Pickle and Penguin loved to trace the lines with their fingers and point out all of the different things they could spot.

There were muddy puddles and horses too. Pickle and Penguin found an area of the more established woodland and wanted to explore more. I just love to look up....

I love trees in the sunshine, I like looking up at the sky between the leaves and I love the dappled shade of trees in the summer time.

We had a ball in the woods. The kids were rolling logs around, we found a rope swing and had a go, peered into a badger set and built a den. It was such great family time all together.
And to top it all off we got a bit lost after wandering off of our route and ended up getting caught in a lot of rain and finding lunch in a little village pub. A perfect day.

I would definitely recommend a visit. x

Summer

Wow, where has that time gone? Six wonderful weeks of worms and muddy puddles, drawing and painting, dinosaurs, blackberries, fungus and digging. We have had a great holiday, spending time at home and a few family visits with a lot of time outside. I will be posting more in the next week or so about some of the specific activities we did throughout the holidays.

Pickle has completed the local library reading challenge, telling the librarian all about his books. I am always surprised about how much he can recall about his books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was particularly keen on a book about sharks...he told the librarian all about the goblin shark, whale shark and basking shark among others...

Penguin has recently been showing more unique interests. We try to keep toys non-gender specific in our house and don't push them into stereotypes. Both kids have a dolls, cars and dinosaurs. Penguin has developed a strong attachment to her baby and likes to try and dress it and take care of it, one day this week she insisted on putting her baby in her bed and taking the monitor with her down to pick pickle up from Nursery. Her baby is an old doll of mine and I love to see her playing with it like I used to.

I have managed to fit in a little bit of crochet among the madness...more to follow on that soon I hope!

Dinos and Ice

Today we had an adventure with ice and dinosaurs. We looked at the water melting, we used salty water and put the ice in the sunshine. Pickle and Penguin watched the dinos emerge and the colours drip down in channels through an ice block.

The dinos were really easy to set up. I squeezed some small dinosaur toys we bought at a charity shop into a balloon, filled with water, tied them off and stuck them in the freezer.

We also put some food colouring on the surface of a large block of ice and watched how it melted. Pickle and Penguin watched the channels running through the middle of the block.

This is definitely an activity we will be repeating during the hot weather. We spoke about the salty water changing the freezing point of the water, the kids felt the ice melting and how the surface was smoothed over.

30 Days Wild - Day 30

So!! We made it. Today was a great day. We had a full morning out going wild. We went to a field nearby and were catching grasshoppers. Pickle even managed to catch one himself! We collected a few natural materials while we were out and then Pickle and Penguin both made clay butterflies with what they found.

What beautiful art, showcasing the world around us and a perfect end to our month of wild!

30 Days Wild - Day 29

Today Pickle was playing in the garden with a water squirter. He loves to spray the plants, his play house, anything really. Today he sprayed some water droplets on these wonderful leaves.

These leaves always catch and keep the most wonderful water droplets on their surface. They are beautiful. We watched them form and join and little fingers poke.

Until next time! x

30 Days Wild - Day 27

Today was a rainy day. It was a puddle splashing day. It was an opportunity day. We did the puddle splashing thing again of course. But we also started the day by putting to glasses of water outside on our garden lawn.

I hear you why on earth would you do that? How is that wild? Well today we were learning a bit about weather. We were learning about rainfall. I asked Penguin how much water he thought would be in the glass after all that rain and after seeing all those puddles. He understandably thought it would be full. Of course it wasn't. He was surprised and it sparked a little conversation about puddles and rain.

We left one glass outside to see how much more rain falls over night but this was our day rainfall...

Tomorrow I think we will find a ruler and do some measuring!

30 Days Wild - Day 26

So each weekend Penguin brings a book home from preschool to read. Last weekend he had one about bees. It was all about how they live and their life cycle. He loved it. He was really very interested in all the information and we read it a lot. On Saturday too, I guess that is another wild thing we did on the transport museum day...

Anyway, today we were watching some bees outside. They were visiting clover, we saw their pollen sacks and their fluffy bodies. We spoke about what the bees were doing and what they got from the plants and how. We talked about how bees were important and we should be kind to them because they help us. A lovely conversation and happily watching the bees.

30 Days Wild - Day 25

Today the afternoon was spent in a friends garden with a few other families. The kids played, there was tennis and swingball, bubbles, it was wonderful.

I had a little tour of their beautiful landscaped garden. They grow a lot there, courgettes, raspberries, tomatoes, cabbage, all sorts. As well as their flowers, it really puts my garden to shame. I couldn't believe how much further on their plants are than mine, they have big tomatoes on their 5ft tall tomato plants.....my tomato plants are only around 5 inches tall and are barely flowering yet! It is really inspiring to see such a wonderful garden and so much growing, it gives me an itch to grow more. I feel like an allotment is worth looking into for next year....hmmmm another idea for the list.

No photos today either, there were people everywhere and too much fun and laughter to be looking through a camera!

30 Days Wild - Day 24

Today we had a very busy day. We visited the London Transport museum which means most of the day was spent on trains and looking at trains and buses. But looking at public transport and changes to the ways we have traveled, including the changes in pollution I am going to count as a win.....

We had a nice train ride into London, looking out of the windows at gardens and hedges, trees and plants. It was a lovely ride and we saw plenty.

It is not quite wild wild but it is pretty modern wild and Pickle and Penguin had a total blast. If you haven't visited the London Transport Museum and you live in the vicinity, go. It is a great day out and perfect for our two, ages 3 and 1. They have things to look at, things to climb on and dress up in, things to drive and sit in. It is really great. Really.

30 Days Wild - Day 22

Today we spotted a squirrel in the garden nibbling at our strawberries!! We didn't manage to catch a picture before it scampered away but it did provoke an interesting conversation about wild animals and how they find food.

30 Days Wild- Day 21

Today we made some butterfly pictures in the garden. Pickle and Penguin put pieces of tissue paper onto butterfly shape cut outs and then sprayed it with water. It was a lovely cool activity for a very hot day!

After a little while we peeled off the tissue paper to reveal a beautifully patterned butterfly! It would be really lovely to make this with different shapes of tissue paper when they are a bit older and more thoughtful about design.

30 Days Wild - Day 20

Today we bought a bit of the outside in! We have a lovely rose plant hidden away at the bottom of our garden, today we cut some of the lovely white roses and bought them inside to sit on our windowsill. I love to have flowers in the house and Pickle is interested in looking at the flowers and describing them, he says they are pretty.

30 Days Wild - Day 19

Today we lay down on the roundabout at our local park and looked at the clouds. We looked at the wispy shapes and had a lovely talk. We listened to the sound of the wind and the birds in the trees. It was peaceful and tranquil. It was lovely.

30 Days Wild - Day 18

We have been reading a book we have borrowed from the library, it is called 'Where's the Starfish' by Barroux. It looks at the problems caused by ocean pollution in a way that is easy to understand for toddlers and young children.

We try to read a broad range of books and like to include those which deal with issues such as this. 'The Lorax' from Dr Seuss is another favourite of ours and we have also read 'Where's the Elephant', also by Barroux.

The books by Barroux have beautiful illustrations and leave a very powerful message in their wake. Pickle and Penguin love the game of finding the animals in each picture and have made thoughtful comments throughout the book. They are great for their ages of 1 and 3 but I expect the impact will be greater as we look at them again as Pickle in particular gets older and more observant. It is an important message that lies very close to our hearts.

30 Days Wild - Day 17

Today we went on a trip to ZSL Wipsnade Zoo. We had a fantastic day, we saw a lot of different animals. Pickle and Penguin love animals and were fantastic, it was a long day but they really had a wonderful time. I think the favourite was the giraffes, it was certainly one of my favourites.

It was a really hot and sunny day, a lot of the animals look like they were enjoying the sunny weather or sitting in the shade. It was lovely to see the African Hunting dogs, it is a new exhibit and I don't remember ever seeing them before.

The elephants were having a great time throwing dust and mud on themselves to keep themselves cool. This guy looks really happy with the grass he has to munch on. I was amazed by the dexterity of their trunk as this one picked the grass and put it into his mouth before wandering over to the pool, mixing water with the dust and squirting his belly with it.

I always get mixed feelings visiting the zoo. I know that the zoos do a lot of great work, I love the excitement of the children seeing all the different animals and I know that them seeing the animals ignites their interest and enthusiasm for the animals and I hope it will go onto inspire them. I love to watch the animals myself too but I do sometimes struggle with the size of some enclosures. The animals seem so big to fit into such marginal spaces. I think they are doing work on the Sea Lion exhibit at Wipsnade and I look forward to seeing it when completed, it doesn't seem like they have a lot of space. Wipsnade is better than a lot of zoos I have seen for enclosure space, it is a pleasure to visit. I look forward to our next visit!