Days 69-75 of Project 365
69: Which will win? (We went to Techniquest in Cardiff Bay for Mother's Day and had great fun exploring scientific concepts. Here The Boy is racing the bubbles through the thick gloop)
70: Going up! (When we were at Techniquestwe discovered a lovely little park in Cardiff Bay which seemed to be hardly used. We popped back on Monday to explore all the equipment and I was really impressed to see The Boy climb across a cargo net from one eight foot high tower to the other with minimal interaction. No photos of that because I was too busy watching him!)
71: Bump! (After a foul morning we went down to the local country parks for some outdoor play and to tick a few more things of our 50 Things list. We discovered that The Boy's outdoor play suit makes him zoom down the slide really fast!)
72: Special Delivery Service! (The Jenny Craig boxes are excellent for making cars!)
73: Mountaineer (Another day, another park, what can I say? Last Summer he wouldn't try this climbing wall at all)
74: Doing something funny (All dressed up in odd clothes for nursery, not too odd though or mummy's OCD can't handle it!)
75: What's your name? (We had to go into Cardiff to take my dead Samsung Galaxy S3 into the T-Mobile shop to be sent away for repair. While we were in there we wandered over to the Museum and looked at the sculptures in the nearby gardens.)
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How To Make A Pirate Island
A fortnight ago we took delivery of a new fridge-freezer and with that came a lot of packaging. I managed to rescue some of the cardboard packaging from Mr. TBaM before efficiency really kicked in, and as a result ended up with a large, square, shallow, cardboard box.
It took a while for its future use to come to mind, especially as The Boy kept sitting in it to play with beads or his letter formation tray, but eventually we decided to paint it and turn it into a role-play resource.
You'll need:
- cardboard box
- blue, white, green, yellow paint
- sand
- glitter
- a sponge
- glue, paintbrushes and scissors
- pictures of pirates, palm trees, parrots, pirate flag, and cocktail sticks
- Cut up the sponge roughly and glue it down in the middle of the box to create an island;
- Paint the inside of the box blue, we used a few different shades to add some definition;
- Create some swirly white lines all over the blue paint to give the impression of waves. We also sprinkled some silver glitter on to add some sparkle to the waves;
- Paint the island green, again we used a light and dark. We also created a sandy beach for the pirates to land on by painting a section yellow and sprinkling some sand on while it dried;
- We then added some pirate items using themed foam stickers and cocktail sticks. You could easily draw the figures and cut them out, or print them from the Internet, but when life's quite frankly too short for that I've used these*.
When the sponge has completel dried, the stick figures can be really easily moved around the island for imaginative play, especially if there's a mutiny and one is chasing the other for the treasure!We also enlisted the help of some other pirates who rowed alongside to help out Captain PegLeg to sort out his motley crew.
A great activity for art development, fine motor skills, imaginative play and developing oracy.
I was sent the item marked * to see what I'd do with it.
