Fine Motor Skills meets Science Sunday: What's inside a pepper?

Take one two-and-a-half year old, one yellow bell pepper and one table knife and let the fun begin.

B loved this activity.  He got to cut the pepper open and explore how it smelt, tasted, felt, sounded and looked inside.  Holding the knife and playing with the small seeds are both fine motor skills activities.  "Yellow" was also the word of the day since it is one colour which he has problems identifying (usually with a yellow object it is "green" to B).  He cut, snapped, broke and (tried to) squish the pepper.  He cut it into ever smaller pieces and counted seeds.  He even noticed that it was wet when we cut it.  Not bad for one small vegetable!
And we even get to save the seeds to germinate with our older kids another time.

Paper Crafts: Kung Fu Panda Wall Masks- update, link no longer valid :(

Our first playdate since moving to Northern Germany.  A is a decided Kung Fu Panda fan since we bought the DVD over the summer and when we collected his playmate he was clutching a cuddly Po so this seemed a brilliant rainy playdate activity.
The free downloadable patterns for these Kung Fu Panda 3-D wall masks are from the HP Activity Centre along with some other nice stuff.

We have made Po and Viper so far but there are five to choose from:  Mantis, Po, Monkey, Viper and Tigress.  The instructions and artwork are available to download separately for each character and work well with the ones we have made so far - although I have to admit we used sticky tape not glue (not as pretty a finish but more instant results).

So if you have a Kung Fu Panda fan in your home (or a fan coming for a playdate) why not give these a go.

hairy maclary game

Using the images from here I made up this simple card game.  I would make a .pdf for download but I have a feeling that this would be a serious breach of copyright.  But here is how I made ours for our own personal use.

The object is for the players to attempt to collect all six dogs featured in the Hairy Maclary story.
Each player has one long card with the pictures of the six dogs.
The remainder of the cards are shuffled and placed face down between the players.
Players take it in turns to take a card from a pile.  If it is a dog they still have to collect then they can add it to their collection.
If not they put it back in the middle.
If it is Scarface Claw then they have to remove one of their cards.
Winner is the first player to collect all six dogs
We made six of each dog for the single picture cards and only three of Scarface.
Let the game begin!

Fine Motor Skills: sticks in a shaker

More fine motor practice using stuff from around the home.

This time using coloured sticks and a shaker from the kitchen gave us an opportunity to practice motor skills and talk about colours as well.

triceratops hat

In the same vein as the giraffe and elephant heads we made earlier this year - here is the original costume inspired by the triceratops in How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? again made from corrugated cardboard and papier mache.

Homemade Ice-cream

We have been having fun with my latest toy - an ice-cream maker.  It was a birthday present and a big surprise.
For years (and I do mean four or five) I have been asking for an ice-cream maker for birthdays and Christmas to no avail.  It had got to the stage where it was:
"What do you want for your birthday?" 
"Well, I would ask for an ice-cream maker but there is no point as I won't get one!"
But now here it is a Proline IMC15 with its own freezer so all you have to do it bung everything in a wait for 60 minutes to have home-made icecream.

Now if your family is anything like mine everybody wants their own flavour so we have had a trip to the store to get some containers and have made two different flavours so far - Chocolate Chip and Banana and Almond.


Apologises that the measurements are in cups - this is what came with the machine!  Of course you could use the recipe without an ice-cream maker - pour into a freezer container and whisk the mixture at intervals to break up the ice crystals as it freezes.


Chocolate Chip Ice-cream (Makes eight 1/2 cup servings)
This was originally supposed to be plain vanilla as our first foray into homemade ice-cream but when we had added all the cream etc. to the maker I discovered that the vanilla essence had not been unpacked yet! We saved the situation by adding a bar of chocolate chopped up to make our own chocolate chips.

1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups double cream
1 bar chocolate chopped

Mix together the milk and sugar in a bowl until the sugar has dissolved.  Add the other ingredients and throw it all into the ice-cream maker.  Turn on and wait to see what happens.  At this point it was impossible to get close as there where three small heads all crowded around the machine.  The mixture, which looked nowhere near enough at the start of the session, began to expand as it froze and looked like it was about to climb out of the bowl!  We held our nerve (and our breathe) and it stopped just at the top of the bucket.
The verdict- well it goes to show that commercial ice-cream doesn't really have that much cream in it!  This was very rich; next time we will have to adjust the proportion of cream to milk (or maybe add some yogurt instead of some of the cream).  Oh and having found the vanilla I am definitely going to add a few drops next time as well as the chocolate chips, sometimes a little thing can make a lot of difference!


Banana and Almond Ice-cream (makes eight 1/2 cup servings)

2 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup almonds, chopped
1 cup milk
1 cup double cream
1/2 cup sugar
3-4 drops vanilla essence

Stir everything together and pour into the ice-cream maker.
60 minutes later this is what we had. Yep at the top of the maker again!

The milk to cream balance was much better this time, much less fatty tasting. It was also very bananary (is that even a word - well you know what I mean!) so could maybe stand 1 banana not 2.  The almonds had a hard time competing against the bananas so maybe a little more of them next time. Oh and to make it perfect some toffee or caramel sauce - yum!

Pre-Maths: Self checking colour grading game.

This is a simple game for preschool or early year students when they are practising terms like light/dark and lightest/darkest when learning about colours.

Use paint colour strips from the local DIY outlet that have shades of the same colour on the strip.
Cut in a strip half length ways.
Keep one half as it is.  Cut the other half into individual colours.

Have the child arrange the single colours from lightest to darkest (or vice versa).  Then they can check the order themselves by comparing it with the intact half.