Mini Maths – Weighing Animals

Many things we do are Luath led but I love it when she comes up with almost all of the activity we do.  Last week she was weighed by the health visitor. Last time we weighed her was about 6 months ago and she hasn’t seen the HV since she was 11 months, so it was quite a notable event.  One afternoon Luath was taking things out of her kitchen cupboard and saw this

and she said “oh scales”.  She then picked up one of her animals and weighed it. She played with the scales for a while.  I brought her the kitchen scales.  We had fun finding out the different weights and who was the lightest

and who was the heaviest.  Luckily the bull was near the bottom of the pile so we had plenty of animals becoming the heaviest and able to sing a song “I am the heaviest…..”.

As we did it I found animals weighing from 4-10, all numbers that Luath can usually recognise.  We reweighed them. Luath read the number (not always correctly) and then we (mostly me) lined them up lightest to heaviest.  If it hadn’t been such a spur of the moment activity then I would have had the numbers 4-10 lined up for Luath to place each animal on.

(Luath is 27 months)
Shared with Tuesday tots via Rainy Day mum

Helping with a fear of the vacuum cleaner

Luath has developed a fear of the vacuum cleaner.  She has never had any issues with it before and actually used to love helping me with it.  As it is difficult to know how long her fear will take to pass and we need to vacuum the living room floor most days we have tried a few ways to help but at the same time trying not to make a big deal of her fear.   These weren’t all done on the same day.

Vacuuming when she is elsewhere/occupied
One of us has taken her outside or to another room while the other vacuums.
Leaving the living room door open so she could leave the room, which she hasn’t chosen to do.
No matter how occupied she is she will stop when the vacuum appears.  I have brought the vacuum into the room and left it sitting without switching on so she doesn’t immediately start getting anxious when she sees it.
Acknowledging her fear
Saying that we know the vacuum makes her scared.  Her main concern seems to be it might hoover her up.
Asking how I could help.  Offering suggestions like she could hold my hand, hold the wire, push the vacuum.
Making it friendly
While we were at the leisure centre one of the attendants was about to vacuum.  Luath came over to me and asked to come up into my arms.  The vacuum was one of the ones with eyes and is quiet. Very quickly Luath came down from my arms and happily played as the vacuum went past her.  She even said “He’s (vacuum) friendly”.  I thought we would try giving our vacuum a more friendly look.  We looked through a sticker book of monster faces to choose which type of eyes, nose and mouth Luath wanted.

Luath placed each part and then helped tape them onto the vacuum.

Our now friendly looking vacuum.  When we were done she asked for it to be put back where it belonged – her way of saying “don’t switch it on now”
 
Role playing
At Christmas my dad made a fun vacuum out of wooden construction pieces, which she still often talks about.  So we did some pretend vacuuming.
Seeing how it works
She helped me empty the container. 

I took the different parts of the vacuum out and we investigated them.
I had Luath sprinkle some seeds onto the floor and watch how the vacuum picked them up – she thought this was great and was laughing.  Once the seeds were all gone she wanted the vacuum switched off.
I tried to muffle the sound by wrapping the vacuum in a thick blanket as I think the noise is an aspect in her fear.
Experiment
As her main fear seems to be a thought of getting sucked up I showed it going on my foot, holding the nozzle to my hand.

Results
Luath still is very wary of the vacuum coming out. I think it’ll just take time.  She is very happy to have conversations with our friendly vacuum and even talking to it about being scared of it.

(Luath is 27 months)
 

Paper Boats for Earth Day

The main book we are currently reading has a paper boat in the illustrations.  I tried to make Luath a boat last week but didn’t get further than a paper hat.  I looked up the instructions on an origami site and it is actually very easy.  You make a paper hat and then a few more folds.

We had a few flyers delivered on Earth Day morning which we used to make into boats.  The side that is inside at the start ends up being the main part you see.
     
Our flotilla.  The smaller thicker paper worked best.

We headed out to sail them – Luath wanted to put them in the sea but I persuaded her that a puddle in the woods was a safer place.  It was a very wet windy and cold day.

Especially as it was Earth Day I did try to see the beauty in the rain and be thankfully as it has been a dry March.

We sailed a few boats in a couple of puddles.

We took them home and they joined Luath in the bath.  They didn’t last too long being paper so are all now harboured in the recycling bin.
(Luath is 27 months)

Egg shell fun

Leading up to Easter I had been washing and saving some egg shells.  These have been sitting in a box on our window sill for a while as we didn’t get round to what I had planned.  I decided that it was time they came off the window sill and we would have some fun smashing them up. We had done this with some eggs on Easter Sunday and turned them into a picture. 

To break the egg sometimes you only needed a fingertip other times a full hand and body weight.


I placed some of the slightly broken shells into a bag.  Which we squashed, rolled and hit.

We managed to keep most of the shells on the tray, these we tipped into a small pot to use another day.  The rest we swept and binned – egg shells can go on the compost heap, they are best crushed beforehand.

(Luath is 27 months)

Simple Science – sink or float in a puddle

Luath was very happy to see the return of some big puddles in the woods.  Once she had done quite a few return trips through them all we played a game of sink or float.

We took turns picking up an object and asking sink or float before throwing it into the puddle to discover what it would do.

Luath did say sink for most things – perhaps wishful thinking.  At one point she stamped on some moss to make it sink.

Stones were the only ones to sink.

Everything else floated.
   
(Luath is 27 months)

Outdoors everyday – week 16

We had some sunshine at the start and end of the week with some very wet and windy weather in between.  Some of the things we did while outdoors this week were:
Penguin watching. Learned some new climbing skills.  Did some water painting (Luath initiated this, using different branches).  Puddle splashing.  Crawling under a rope. Popping seaweed.  Hammering our scarecrow together.

   
(Luath is 27 months)

Our beach combed/ beach clean up scarecrow

We live by a sea loch and quite often things are washed up along the shoreline.  We frequently pick things up and either bin, recycle or reuse.  Luath understands that we do this to help keep the wildlife safe and to tidy up.  I decided a little while ago we would see if we could make a scarecrow out of things that we found on the beach. It has been a fun activity to do together and has helped Luath walk a little further on the days she decides that she wants home almost as soon as we are out of the garden gate.  The scarecrow has been made for about a month but he has fallen to pieces a few times so Luath and I tried to make him a bit more solid.

He is put together with two sticks and some rope.  Luath and I added some nails to secure the wood together.

His head is a football and he has a plant pot hat.  We nailed the hat onto the wood and also partly nailed the football onto the wood (with great care using the air pump hole).

He initially had a white hat over the black one but as we are hoping to give him some flower hair, we have stuck with the open based black pot.  We have found some objects for his face but we are having trouble attaching them to the ball.  He now sits with a good view of the garden and awaits any new additions we find.
     
The list of objects we have found so far to use on the scarecrow:
2 bits of wood
1 rope
1 football
2 plant pots
1 welly boot
1 sack (his tunic)
1 tea towel (worn as a cape)
1 piece webbing (his belt)
1 work glove

3 rubber discs (bangles)

Not in picture but for face

half a yellow disc (for smile)

1 pink beaker (nose)

(Luath is 27 months)

 

Shared with Eco Kids via Organic Aspirations

and with Tuesday tots via Rainy Day mum

Book of the week – Jack and the FlumFlum Tree by Julia Donaldson

Jack and the Flumflum Tree is a fun rhyming picture book.  We read it last year and did a boat trip inspired by it.  I hadn’t seen it in the library since but this week when we were choosing books Luath spied it and immediately asked we borrow it.  I have lost counts of the number of times I have read it in the last few days.

Jack’s granny has the moozles and the only cure is the fruit from the flumflum tree.  Jack builds a boat, gets a crew and off they head, taking along a patchwork sack filled with odd bits and pieces.  Each thing in the patchwork sack comes in handy.

David Roberts illustrates the book in a lively movement inspiring way.  He has cunningly added two characters from previous Julia Donaldson books he has illustrated.  Luath spotted one of them on the first reading and loves that it is in the wrong book.
(Luath is 27 months)

A house for a mouse – Tissue box challenge

 
I thought it would be fun to take part in this year’s tissue box challenge hosted by JDaniel 4’s Mom .  We don’t use tissues often but I knew I had a pretty tissue box saved in our craft/junk box.  I asked Luath what we should make from the box.  She suggested a jack in the box – we have made one before.  I spent a day or so thinking and had decided that we would make a house for her flower peg dolls.  However we were reading one of Luath’s library books and she pointed out a mouse hole and I thought “oh we could make a mouse house as the box decoration does look like garish wallpaper”. 

I extended the tissue hole into a traditional mouse hole shape.  Luath immediately started playing with the house

Using one of the flaps from the side and some extra cardboard from a cereal box I made a door.  Partly so it looked a little like a hole in the skirting board but also so we could use it as a door.

The first thing Luath wanted was a bed.  I cut a bed shape at the base of the cereal box and then reduced it (a lot) width and lengthwise.
 
I raided the material upcycle box and used some sweater ribbing for the mattress and a t-shirt for the pillow and sheet.

Luath insisted that we next make a light so the mouse could turn it off when he went to bed,  Using a tin foil cake case we had saved from Christmas mince pies as I thought we would use them for something! I cut it to make the lampshade and then cut a small hole in the foil and pushed a straw through to use as the bulb and stand.

Next on Luath’s list was a table and seat.  I made the table using a milk bottle top, cardboard legs and gave it a sweater ribbing table cloth.  The seat was a cut down bottle top with some material padding.  I added a cardboard plate and straw cup.  These don’t really work with the mouse and they are a little fiddly for Luath, but I made them anyway.

We gave the mouse two books.  The Lion and the mouse, and The Country Mouse and The Town Mouse.

For decoration I added a carpet, again from the sweater.  Cut a picture from a magazine of a house that looks like it has a mouse hole.  I also cut a picture of a dog and added this to the back of the door to help scare any nosey cats.
 
It took us less than an hour and it was ready for the mouse to move in with his large cheese.  Luath added a bath for him.

Luath had fun playing with it for the rest of the morning.
   
Later we read one of our favourite mouse books (The little mouse,the red ripe strawberry and the big hungry bear by Audrey Wood ) and admired his tree trunk house. 
  
We also read  See how they grow – mouse  on we give books which shows that mice live in nests.

(Luath is 27 months)