Bamm Boo

Happily Ever After

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Beth at Bamm Boo

Sorry i seem to have been on a bit of a blogging break lately – I guess life (and the first book from the Game of Thrones series) has got in the way.

Some of our dear friends got married last week, I was unfortunately unable to attend but Ben hasn’t stopped talking about the food so I think it went well.

Here is a present I made for them. It was inspired by this Christmasy one I put confetti in it instead of bells.

While Ben was away my sister and her three children came over for the afternoon. We foolishly left the 3 toddlers (is a 3 year old still a toddler?) in the living room alone with Eli’s sensory zoo box. We realised something had gone wrong when Eli came in to get his toy hoover!

I was going to take a photo but I didn’t want to encourage them to do it again. Suffice to say I am still finding split peas all over my house.

Posted in Crafts, Home | 3 Comments

Train Play Mat

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Beth at Bamm Boo

This was intended to be part of my Easter Challenge. Oh well I got there in the end!

E has this Thomas the Tank Engine Busy Book which is essentially a big play-mat with 12 cheaply made trains and so on. E loves it, there are quite a few ‘books’ in the range and you can usually get them for around £5 in supermarkets and so on. Although they’re not great quality they’re a good way of getting a lot of little figures on a theme.

Anyway onto the mat. I made E a dinosaur mat like this one for Christmas and I decided to make him a similar sized train play mat. I did various sketches of the best way to fill the space. Then my clever husband reminded me that the track needed to be a complete circuit so the trains could go round and round and round. So I settled on a figure of eight track with a road bridge and a lake at the side (so the trains can fall in and get rescued!)

It’s all made with felt apart from the outside of the tracks which I made by finger knitting brown wool – who knew that skill would come in handy!

For the road bridge I stitched two pieces of felt together to make it stiffer and simply sewed it down either side of the tracks leaving a loop unattached.

I bought a clear plastic pencil case for the trains so the whole thing can be thrown in my bag for playtime out and about.

E loves it. It hasn’t quite stood up to his love – the trains don’t have moveable wheels so they drag on the sleepers, I’m going to have to sew them down more firmly!

Posted in Sewing | 1 Comment

Dinosaurs in ice

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Beth at Bamm Boo

These were inspired by this post.

We didn’t have any balloons so I just used little plastic bowls.

E loved playing with them, he did get a bit frustrated after a while so we gave him a jug of warm water to speed up the melting process.

I think it would make a great science activity for older children but would also be an interesting sensory experience for children even younger than E.

Posted in Pre-school, Sensory play | Leave a comment

Gruffalo and Mouse

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Beth at Bamm Boo

More Hoodies for my nieces – I’m so lucky to have so many little people to make things for.

It’s difficult to find brown hoodies for little ones so I went for a pink and white mouse. It turned out pretty cute I think.

The Gruffalo inspired one is the same as this one. I wrapped it in brown paper tied with purple wool and Eli did a picture to go on top

Other Hoodies I’ve made:

**If you’re interested in commissioning one of these or any hoodie please leave me a comment or email me at beth @ lysozyme.net (without the spaces) Prices start at £15 plus postage and packing for just prickles and £20 plus postage and packing for other designs**

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Sensory Box May – Zoo

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Beth at Bamm Boo

We took Eli to the zoo for the first time at the weekend so this month’s box was an easy choice. It was kind of inspired by this one at Make, Do and Friend. I wanted there to be different different textures in different cages

This picture was taken after it was somewhat mixed together!!

All of the filler came the back of the food cupboard (all very out of date!) The glass beads I bought to use as counters in school and the polished stones to represent the path are the ones I used in the construction box

I also printed out a map and tickets from Early Learning HQ

So far it’s been a big success. Eli loved looking at the map while we were in the zoo so he likes looking at the play one and directing the people around.

Even Woody popped in for a visit.

Watching him play with it has been very interesting. He’s generally taken on the role of the visitor – buying tickets; looking at the map; saying hello to the animals. I doubt he would have been the same if I’d made it for him prior to the visit.

I bought quite a few of the animals and the safari truck while we were at the zoo so this was quite an expensive box – but I’ve convinced myself that I would have bought the animals anyway so it was free!

Other sensory boxes you might be interested in

Construction

Ice Cream Shop

Early Maths

Messy Play and Sensory Tubs Pinterest Board

Posted in Pre-school, Sensory play | 1 Comment