Table Activities

After last week’s whinge about the lack of afternoon nap I’ve been thinking  about the best ways to use our afternoons. I figured that if I was a childminder or teaching a pre-school class, as well as encouraging choice in free play, I would probably set up some activities for the children to access during the session. So I decided to set up daily ‘table activities’

Eli generally uses the dining table for messy play and we have a side table in the living room that doesn’t get much use so I set up an activity to do on both tables for the days when we had nothing else on.

This week there was nothing new, Eli has a lot of toys that haven’t had much of an outing lately so I simply set these out on the tables.

Water colours in a colouring book

Lacing

 

Play dough pizza. He’s played with this a lot this week but there are no action photos for some reason.

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Letter puzzle

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After he’d finished with his puzzle Eli decided that since the table was in the middle of the room he should make himself some pasta on it. I guess moving the furniture is another simple way to encourage play.

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It was a good week, nothing took a massive effort so I wasn’t disappointed if he didn’t fancy it and we’ve played with a better range of toys which makes it more fun for both of us!

 

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Unpicking!

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Nothing to see here,  just unpicking some purple pickles!

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Birthday

So I asked my husband how he thought of buying me a pot of buttons because it’s not something I’d thought of but I really love it (perhaps I shouldn’t admit that – I’m such a geek) and he told me his secret….he put ‘craft supplies’ into amazon search and clicked through until he found something he thought I would like.

I guess I should put ‘random computer stuff’ into an amazon search and see what it suggests for him.

**I’m not being ungrateful he still took the time, he read the reviews and bought me something I hadn’t thought of I just thought it was funny how he went about it**

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Buttons

It was my birthday last week. My lovely husband is brilliant at buying presents. Aren’t I lucky 🙂

He bought me a case for my camera, a copy of Call the Midwife (did anyone else love that show?) and a big pot of buttons. Everything came from amazon which has been par for the course since before amazon started selling more than books and cds – I love books and cds but I’m glad the range has expanded!

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Yesterday I sat and sorted the buttons by colours. I have a weird case of OCD! I love sorting and categorising things but I’ll step over something on the floor rather than actually putting it away.

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These ‘test tubes’ had originally had herbs in them. They look really cute with the buttons in them. There were a lot of black and white buttons and very few blue and green but on the whole it’s a good mix

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and there were some extra special ones!!

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See, I told you I can’t tidy up, this is our dinning table, because there’s no way of faking tidy on my work desk craft table and I didn’t even actually tidy the whole table in advance.

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After a while someone wandered in to see what I was doing

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and had great fun moving everything around and counting them

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and lining them up for photos.

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Mouse Hoodie

My idea with the hoodies is that they are real clothes rather than dressing up clothes. Eli wears his two (dinogruffalo) regularly, they wash well and are practical to wear.

The mouse a custom order for my niece. My sister – who is the eBay queen – spent ages hunting for the perfect hoodie for me to use. She thought this one was no good because it was really heavily lined so too thick for her daughter to wear.

I cut out the white fluffy lining and used it for the details, the sleeves were linned with the brown fleece so I used that for the outer ears and the tail so in fact it was a perfect find. The tail is attached with a press stud so she can take it off if she wants to.

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Doesn’t she look awesome! This is half of the order – can you guess what her brother is going to be?

**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)**

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