Felt Advent Calendar

My friend Lucy put me onto this website as an advent calendar made of felt which you can use every year forever!! Brilliant I thought and have been busy sewing this little beauty for the last few months on and off. It was time consuming but now it's on the wall (for photo purposes of course! I'm not mental!) it looks a-MAZE-ing!!!

See the instructions on this brilliant blog Shannon Makes Stuff: http://shannonmakesstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/felt-advent-calendar.html

Each of the baubles is a little pocket that you can put a treat in, one side has the number and on the reverse is a Christmas image - a real, proper advent calendar!! :)

I love that I've done this in time to make it a Christmas Hughes tradition too, the kids are still so young that this will hopefully be one of those special things that makes Christmas for them and that makes me all warm and fuzzy.

NB. I know the lighting is quite bad but I thought it would make it more atmospheric. I might re-post it with daytime pictures depending how badly these come out!!

A couple of simple ideas to play with marbles.

Today was about marbles. I finally found the marbles I thought I'd lost (seriously).

We made a discovery bottle with red liquid glucose (1 part water to 2 parts sugar which has been brought to boiling point and cooled) and baby oil. We put a few marbles in the bottle too so not only do the colours seperate when you shake it and let it settle but the marbles bump along the ridges of the bottle.

When Katie wasn't watching I put a marble in a balloon and blew it up. Very funny, I'd recommend you do this!! Great fun to play catch with and she's really enjoyed shaking it and spinning the marble around inside the balloon.

 

Sensory Balloons

We made these yesterday, balloons filled with rice or beans/lentils, whatever dried beans you have in your kitchen.

 

Both kids loved this activity, it was really messy but easy enough to clean up on the carpet!

 

Ollie likes to throw these around now, but he does give them a squeeze and a poke first bless him :)

 

Threading game for toddlers

Sieve and pipe cleaners, who knew?? Kept Ollie entertained for ages and later, Katie so easy and from items I had at home. My favourite kinds of activities!

Coloured bead sorting game.

Coloured bead sorting game.

I've made holes in the bottom of an old plastic tub and put different coloured pipe cleaners through. Then I've given Katie a selection of beads which match the colours of the pipe cleaners and she can then match them up and thread them on.

When putting away poke the pipe cleaners back through into the pot, pop the beads in and secure the lid. I've even written instructions on the lid so daddy knows how to play it :)

 

 

Scoop from a bottle!

This was a thin bleach bottle (thoroughly cleaned) as the plastic is quite tough, thought it would make an ideal spade/scoop for playing in a wet sand pit!!! Kids loved it, sand too wet to build castles but still very happy just messing about in it with the new sand scoop. :)