Our Week

This week we started off not really following the scheduled theme by Play School - I decided to set up a few activities that were things I had just wanted to try and see how the boys took to it. I stuck some contact paper onto our windows in the boys toy room and let them do whatever they wanted. So both of them were loving looking out the window and making collages with all kinds of craft bits and pieces. Asher just kept asking 'what else can I put on mummy' so I kept digging in the craft draw and he was going for it for quite some time...he used popsicle sticks, pom poms, paper, glittery pieces and some animal stickers. Jet loves animals and was most fascinated by the animal stickers and the popsicle sticks - but he just loved sticking the pom poms and then tearing them all down again - but that was ok.

Another activity that we tried was from a science experiment kids book that I have - which has over 365 different experiments. The morning we tried this we woke up to rain so I decided to find something in the weather section of the book. I put some food colouring in cups and added droppers, placed a dish with paper on the bottom on the table and let asher do whatever he wanted. The idea from the experiment book was to mimic what rain drops look like, then you trace around the drop on the paper and then compare the different shapes they can make. Well it didn't really end up that way for us because asher just kept pouring and pouring and pouring from the dropper. But that was totally ok - he ended up coming up with his own ideas of what to do with it - ended up mixing the colours together and saying look mummy - look at the coloour it makes, then started making a 'storm' and more of his own raindrops. He really loves using those droppers as we have used them a bit in the past - i can see how good it is for his co-ordination as he really needs to use his thumb and index finger quite strongly for it to suck up the water. 

All this week asher has been emptying the kitchen cupboards and getting every single piece of kitchen ware out and coming up with lots of different things to play cook. He hasn't really touched the kitchen cupboards since we first institited time out when he was about 18 months old because it used to drive me crazy! But now that he is using his imagination and its all in the name of play I'm totally happy and ok with it. So with all this messing up of my kitchen - one afternoon i set up an outdoor kitchen for the boys to get messy in. The ingredients all came from the garden so there was grass, shrubs, dirt and lots of water. I said to asheake it qr can I please order something from your cafe and he corrected me and said no mummy this is a restaurant! So it had moved up a notch. He was loving it.

Another thing we tried this week that we had done in the past but haven't gone back to for a while, was spray painting using plastic spray bottles with food colouring and water. This activity really excites asher as it really is like shooting a water gun and then a cool effect comes out on paper. I had to keep reminding him to keep it on the paper but since we were outside there was no real way of him causing too much harm. Food colouring seems to be the only pain option I'm going for these days as its totally washable and very easy to wipe away if its done straight away, poster or acrylic paint is expensive to keep buying all the time and very hard to get out of clothes.

I have been feeling very tired and in quite a bit of pain in my pelvis and lower back. I did gymstick class at the gym this week and man does that push you...but i am feeling strong and hoping all this will pay off when the birth arrives.