baker ross - simple craft idea for counting - After school activities

With Bodhi starting school in September i am keen to help him on his learning path, He isn't overly keen on learning and keeps telling me that school is boring and that he doesn't want to go to school so i am trying my best to help him in anyways i can. I set up this simple after school activity for him to help with his numbers & counting. So thing i felt would be simple and he wouldn't see it as learning. 

We used the woodland friends foam stickers for our activity 1st thing i asked Bodhi to do was to sort out the stickers into same groups and to then count out how many of each he had biggest to smallest. This could be done with a range of the stickers from bakers ross the pack we used can in a pack of 100 for £2.99 

Next i showed Bodhi the page with the numbers on and asked to him add the right number of stickers to the numbers, He did this with no problems and taking off the backing sheets was also a great for fine motor skills.

Once finished, Bodhi counted out all of the stickers from the page, We also enjoyed the leaf sand art kits also from Baker ross ( £3.49 ) for a pack of 5 i didn't get a chance to take any photos of this project tho as this was a little bit messy !!! But the out come was lovely and we both enjoyed sitting at the table together and crafting, much better then watching the TV or having iPad time after school if you ask me!

I am a member of the Baker Ross Blogger Network and received this product to review

Paint by numbers

Who would have thought that something as simple as a paint by number kit from good old pound land would give me a chilled out afternoon during the easter holidays , I picked it up on a whim purely down it to being farm related as this is the theme Bodhi is covering this term at nursery school. Body has never done a paint by numbers before but i thought now that he is four and can recognise numbers i thought it would be a nice crafty project.

Bodhi was very keen to get started , He didn't fully understand the idea of only painting the parts with the same number all at the same time ( he is really into making the big old painty mess that then finishes with the black paint covering the LOT ) 

He soon got the hang of it and really enjoyed making his painting match the one on the packaging, the kit came with everything we needed. Paints / brush the paint by number ( on a canvas board ) and even a test sheet printed on paper ( we used this with felt tips after and it went in Bodhi's Easter scrapbook )

I only helped with the sheep feet the rest was all him, I am so proud that he worked all of the numbers and colour matching. I will defiantly be picking up more of these if i can find other designs , Two big thumbs up from us for this Paint by number kit from pound land, It has pride of place hanging in Bodhi's bedroom. Don't be scared to try out new things with your child even if Bodhi had painted the whole thing in green, Who cares?? it was a £1 and i got to drink a cup of tea while it was still hot and reply to some emails without mum guilt. 

simple fake flowers craft project

so mothers day has been and gone and i knew i was working 8-5 on the sunday i wanted to spend some one on one time with Bodhi on the saturday , we had a little think on what we could make and i suggested that we make some fake flowers for mummy to have for mothers day, body seemed keen so i grabbed the bits i needed and off we went !


you will need :

cotton buds
straws
cotton pads
water & paint brushes
water colour paints or felt tip pens
hot glue gun or pva glue
jug / vase
playdoh or clay or something to stick the flowers into !

i also filmed how we made our simple fake flowers so if you'd rather just watch then read please click on the link below

https://youtu.be/GlOA5GBR6SU

so step one! push the cotton buds into the straws around half way down ( but so the straws can still bend )

step two fold the cotton pad in half to make a triangle and wrap around your straw and cotton bud.

you will then need to use your glue to stick the pad and straw together, i did this with a hot glue gun so please do not let you child use a hot glue gun if this is what you are using hot glue guns get VERY hot and the glue will burn you. glue the pad down in the shape shown in the below photo

once you have done these steps ( if you have younger children i would advice that you have already done these steps with out the child ) you can get painting your flowers, i used a water colour paint set that i have had for year, if you don't have water colours use felt tip pens. paint the flowers with clean water first this will then let the paints or felts bleed into the cotton pads

have fun making your flowers all bright and colourful, i think used playdoh to stick the straws into my jug so they didn't move around. i am really pleased with the finished out come and so was bodhi and these flowers will last much much longer then any you'd pick up from the shop. we had all of our supplies already at hand so these didn't cost us anything extra to make and bodhi and i had a lovely time making and painting together.

i hope you have enjoyed this and will give our simple fake flowers craft project a go.

happy crafting.