This weeks theme prompt for play, fun and activities is rainbow.

My kids love drawing rainbows, you can pretty much guarantee in every drawing session Pinky will draw one. This weeks weather seems to be so changeable, I thought this would be a nice choice for a theme to prompt some activities.

10 rainbow themed activities

If you like drawing rainbows like my children, then here is a great idea for some lovely rainbow art via Buggy and Buddy.

I always think it’s a good idea, for kids who are old enough to understand, to show them how to create a rainbow with some simple science. Here’s is a really fun way to demonstrate this via Inner child fun.

I love the look of these bright and colourful rainbow sensory bottles and musical shakers, great for babies and toddlers, but also good for older children to dance around with to some music from My little 3 and me This idea for a rainbow scavenger hunt is a fab idea for toddlers to learn colours from How wee learn.

How about creating a rainbow with some outdoor chalk paint from Learn play imagine.These rainbow cupcakes look delicious and easy to make. I think children would love them from A typical English homeThe Nurture Store has a great post on rainbow themed math activities if you fancy throwing some learning into the mix.

This rainbow spaghetti sensory play from Fun at home with kids is a lovely way to talk about colours at the same time as enjoy some sensory play.I love the idea of making a rainbow necklace, it’s bright, fun, creative and will teach sizes too from Hands on as we growHere is another simple fun craft activity to make rainbows from Happiness is homemade

I must admit, I love the theme this week, it is so bright and colourful, there are so many things you could make and do. It is a fantastic theme to help teach little ones about colours and maybe older children about mixing colours. Or you could use it to teach children about the weather.

I hope you have lots of fun with your rainbow colours this week.

 

 

 

 

My children love painting, it was a lovely day, so we brought the paints outside for a change. We thought we would try something different, so we had a go at salt painting. Pinky and Boo loved it. Here’s how you do it….

Salt painting

For salt painting you need:

1. Paint (we used watered down poster paint)
2. syringes or pipettes (you could use the syringes you get in calpol bottles)
3. pots to put the paint in
4. Card or thick paper
5. PVA glue
6. Salt
7. Tray

First of all place a piece of card in a tray, then draw you picture on the card using the glue.

Next, you pour salt all over the glue, just like you would with glitter.

Tip off the excess salt into the tray and there you are ready to apply the paint.

Use the syringes to squirt (gently) liquid paint (or you could use food colouring in water) onto the salt. The salt absorbs the liquid and it appears quite magical as the colourful liquid slowly gets absorbed along the white line. The children were amazed and kept saying wow! You do have to be fairly gently with the liquid otherwise it just runs everywhere, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well Pinky and Boo managed this. They were totally engrossed, loving it!

Pinky and Boo had a great time salt painting and got quite excited watching the paint and salt mix. I would recommend this as an alternative to ordinary painting, it wasn’t nearly as messy as I though it would be!

Once they had finish with their salt creations, Pinky and Boo still wanted to play with the syringes and paint, so I gave them paper towels to experiment with. It was really interesting for them to see how liquid gets absorbed. It was a great simple experiment!

We all had a lovely afternoon experimenting and getting creative with paint in the garden!

Home is where the heart is……or should it be the ‘kitchen is where the heart is’? It’s definitely true in our case and I think for most people this is more accurate. Why do we all find ourselves congregating in the kitchen at a party? No matter how big or small the kitchen is, you will usually find the majority of people standing, crushed into the corner of your kitchen every time.

We love to have parties for family and friends. We may not be the best cooks in the world or the best hosts, but it doesn’t matter. We love gathering together, having a laugh and creating havoc in our kitchen. It does take us ages to clear up after, as I’m sure it does for everyone, however, using our Fairy Platinum dishwasher tablets eases this pain. Most things get chucked in the dishwasher, even the children can help with this too, just add a Fairy tablet and everything comes out again all sparkly clean, I love it!

Apart from parties, another (more important) reason for the kitchen being the heart of our home, has to be our family meals together. One of the most important times for us is dinner time. Yes, my kids love food and eat almost anything (I know this is very rare), but it’s not just about the food. For us, family meals in our kitchen all seated around the table together is very important. It gives us a chance to share our day, reflect on things together and talk about whatever is relevant, be it school, work or play. I think we have probably covered every emotion round our kitchen table from laughter, smiles and happiness to tears, tantrums and frustrations. It’s all part of the significance of sharing a family meal.

The children have decided they are desperate to help out at dinner, so we have given each child a mealtime to help at and woe betide anyone who changes that rule!! They love their little responsibility of setting the table and helping serve. I think this is wonderful, but they do all take it very seriously!

Aside from partying and eating in our kitchen, we also love to bake and cook together. We have made all sorts of creations, from chocolate cakes, cake pops and marzipan sweets to full on novelty birthday cakes, roast dinners and pizzas. It is not about how well our family creations turn out, it’s about the fun we had making them. I just love this video of my girls washing up after we made cakes together singing the ‘I can cook’ song. It sums up the fun we have.

We also love doing art and crafts, which of course happens in the kitchen, it’s the easiest place to clean up! We have created so many things in our kitchen, from volcano experiments, painting with spaghetti and making indoor snowmen to making concoctions, clean goop and beautiful works of art (as well as not so beautiful works of art) just to mention a few.

When I write this, I look back at all the things we have done in our kitchen and I am amazed at it all, my memories of it are priceless. Yes, our kitchen mealtimes together sums up the most important time we have as a family. However, the other things we get up to in our kitchen together creating, playing, laughing and yes debating and arguing (that’s all part of family life too) has a huge significance to us, I absolutely love it!

“This post is an entry for the ‘My kitchen story’ Linky challenge, sponsored by Fairy Platinum“

Yesterday I wrote our family’s summer activities bucket list which I am really looking forward to working our way through. However, when I heard about Get good summer over at Clarina’s contemplations I wanted to take part. It’s a linky where we set 5 goals for us to complete over the summer. I am hoping it will give me some incentive to work on them.

5 Summer goals

1. Family summer bucket list. I wrote our bucket list yesterday, so of course my first goal has to be to work through that as a family, having lots of fun with the children.
2. Start running. As a mum, it can be very difficult to find the time to keep fit, eat healthily and stay on top of things, especially in the summer holidays when the children are home. However, I started running a little bit last year, then the winter kicked in and it all stopped. I could now give you many many excuses as to why I have not started again, but I won’t bore you with that. All I will say is, my aim is to start again. I may need a little encouragement with this one!
3. Finish the bathroom. We started redoing our bathroom at easter. We ripped everything out and started putting it all back together again, but unfortunately it is still not finished. We can use the sink and toilet, but not the shower. I would really love to have this finished soon, otherwise we will miss he summer spending it all indoors decorating and the children don’t want that!
4. Build the kids den. I say build the children a den, but we have a small old shed tucked around the side of the house, which doesn’t get used much, so I cleared it out to make the children a den. That’s as far as I’ve got. I really want to decorate it and kit it out nicely for them. I’m not sure how water tight it is, so will have to be careful what we put in there, but if anyone has any ideas of how we could make the den nice please let me know.
5. Outdoor fun. I like to get out a lot and love nothing more than seeing the children outside running around having fun, burning off energy, so this has to be one of my goals, to have lots of family time outside together, walks, bike rides, picnics etc.

So there are my 5 goals for the summer. If you have any ideas how I can complete these please get in touch/leave a comment, I would really love some support.

 

Each season I like to write a bucket list for us as a family. I find it helps me plan the school holidays and makes sure I always have something up my sleeve for every occasion. This year I want to make the most out of our last summer before my children are all at school.

Summer bucket list

1. Visit a farm
2. Simple science experiments
3. Swimming
4. Water play in the garden
5. Make a water fall wall outside
6. Decorate our new den
7. Cycling
8. Bug hunt
9. Forest walks/nature walks
10. Visit the beach
11. BBQ with friends
12. Crafting with nature
13. Messy play
14. Junk modelling
15. Cooking
16. Ball games
17. Picnic
18. Bubbles
19. Go on a boat
20. Train ride
21. Bus ride
22. Have a day trip to London
23. Geocaching
24. Playdoh
25. Painting

So there is our family summer bucket list. 25 activities for the whole family, some for the sunshine and some for those rainy days (lets hope there’s not too many rainy days).

Have you got a bucket list? What are you planning for the summer holidays?