Earlier this year I wrote a first ”Penguin Plays…” post (which you can read here) and I mentioned the that I intended to follow that up with more posts on various kinds of play. And here comes a second instalment – about playing with lego! My main reason for wanting to do a series of … More Penguin Plays… with Lego!
As today is National Handwriting Day, I thought it might be suitable to share a couple of the ways that we’re working on handwriting skills. Handwriting is not something that’s been easy for Penguin, and it still isn’t. He’s had to work quite hard on developing his fine motor skills, and there was also a … More Motivating handwriting exercises
Over the last couple of days we’ve been making pom-poms, and added Shaun the Sheep-style faces to them. Pretty cute, don’t you think? Making the pom-poms were a joint effort, while the black felt faces were cut out and fastened (with thread) by me. Penguin then made the eyes, and stuck them on using glue. The … More Shaun the Sheep style Pom-Poms!
Yesterday, we made meringue snowmen, just like they make for Father Christmas in an episode of ‘Big Cook, Little Cook’. This was our first attempt at these, and we may not have payed perfect attention to how much sugar that actually went in, which I suspect is why these fellows turned out slightly more tanned than they … More Meringue Snowmen a la ‘Big Cook, Little Cook’!
Penguin’s been enjoying the playdough mats I made for him recently (here), so the other day I decided it was time to make another one. I’d also been thinking of making some kind of simple phenology wheel, so I made this mat showing a tree, as a base for exploring the four seasons. Penguin generally … More The 4 seasons playdough mats – with free printables!
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s post, about making gingerbread, we went on to decorate some of our cookies with icing the following day. And we made a little gingerbread house, too! The house was a very simple one, just two rectangles leaning on each other (making a tent shape) and triangular end … More Icing on our gingerbread cookies, and a house!
After two days of playing with gingerbread playdough, it was time for the real thing: Making gingerbread! The dough needs to be made a day in advance (or very early in the morning), as it has to rest in the fridge for around 10-12 hours or more, or the consistency won’t be very good for … More Baking gingerbread
For our advent activity no.21, I made these playdough mats for Penguin, to use with the three types of scented playdough that we’d made the previous day. I simply drew the pictures and laminated them. I also got out some beads, pipe cleaners, googly eyes etc, for decorating the playdough motifs. It was good fun … More Christmassy Playdough Mats – Free Printables!
We are still loving the orange-coloured Christmas scented playdough we made earlier this month, but I thought it would be nice to add a few more scents and colours. So for day 20 of our advent activities we made three different ones: Gingerbread (brown), cinnamon (red) and mint (green). All recipes are included at the bottom … More Scented Playdough: Gingerbread, Cinnamon, and Mint!
Phew! As I said at the beginning of this Advent Calendar of Christmas Activities, I’m not a super craftsy person (even though I’m working on becoming one now!), and this little project of making salt dough ornaments really reminded me about my inexperience… To begin with, I hadn’t realised that this activity would need to … More Making & decorating salt dough ornaments
Sensational Learning with Penguin 