Valentine crafts: printing, wreath and baking

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Three for the price of one today! My love of love hearts seems to be catching as I’ve noticed B doodling them on her notepads and school folders. Here are three ideas which we love for Valenttine’s crafts.

cookie cutter printing

Cookie Cutter Printing

Have you tired using cookie cutters to print with? I find they’re pretty easy for little fingers to hold on to. You could try using heart cookies of different sizes and simply letting the children stamp away to create their own design. Try sprinkling some glitter over the hearts before the paint dries for added sparkle. The finished designs can be glued onto cards, made into bookmarks or cut into heart shaped bunting.

valentine wreath

Heart Wreath

This heart shaped wreath is made from dyed pistachio shells glued onto a piece of card and you can find my full tutorial over at A Thrifty Mrs. Of course you don’t have to use pistachios – the children could go on a colour hunt through some magazines and make a collage wreath from all the red things they find.

heart cookies

Stained Glass Heart Cookies

And how about some Valentine’s baking. I think these gingerbread hearts with a stained glass window are beautiful, especially hung up in the window where the light can shine through the middle. They’re easy to make to using this stained glass cookie recipe and I’ve found my girls love seeing how the window is made.

What are you crafting for Valentine’s Day?

happily shared with Craft Schooling Sunday and Something for the Weekend and Friday’s Nature Table and ABCand123 and Tot Tuesday and Kids Get Crafty and Upcycled Awesome

Lift the flap love book

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lift the flap love book
It’s so beneficial to get your baby hooked on books, as all the chatting you do as you read together boosts their language and listening skills. Just right for a Valentine’s gift then is this idea for a Lift-the-Flap Love Book.

1. Gather together some pictures of the people, pets and things your baby knows and loves.

2. Stick them on some colourful card to make pages for your book.

3. Make some flaps from coloured card a little bigger than each of your pictures, using contrasting colours to the pages so they catch your babies eye.

4. Make a fold at the top of each flap and use this edge to stick each flap over one of the pictures. You might like to use a strong glue and some tape over the top to make them extra sturdy and able to withstand some handling by little fingers.

5. Fasten all the pages of your book together with treasury tags.

6. Share the book with your baby. You can play peek-a-boo with the flaps, or guess who’s hiding underneath. Encourage your baby to try and lift the flaps themselves and say who they see underneath.

More activities for babies and toddlers

Zero to Two: The Book of Play is full of fun activities for babies and toddlers. Download you copy here!

activities for babies and toddlers 500

Go Play! Showcase: Creative Connections for Kids

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This week’s Go Play! Showcase features Kristi from Creative Connections for Kids. Kristi has been blogging for just five months but has already shared some fabulous ideas with our Play Academy Friday linky party. I’ll let Kristi introduce herself and I hope you’ll pop over to Creative Connections for Kids to say hi and take a look at all her ideas.

Tell us about yourself

I am Kristi from Creative Connections for Kids. I am a parent educator and program coordinator for Parents as Teachers, an early childhood home visitation program for parents who have children from birth to five years. My job is to provide developmental information, activities, and the encouragement that parents need to help their children develop optimally in the early years of life.
The mission of Creative Connections for Kids is to encourage grown-ups to spend time and connect with the children in their life. This blog is for parents, grandparents, early childhood teachers, child care providers, and anyone else who loves children. As a parent educator I frequently give families extra activities and online resources. CCK is a chronicle of that information.

Creative Connections for Kids features simple inexpensive activities to enhance development.This includes art, crafts, book reviews for children and grown ups, games, recipes and other fun stuff! I provide researched based child development information through videos, websites and books as well.

What’s your play philosophy?

My philosophy can be summed up in five words: play, learn, have fun together!
I encourage open ended, child directed play. Let the children lead! It doesn’t take expensive toys to enhance skills and have a good time. You can have a fun learning experience with a big box, crayons, scissors, paper, glue and other simple items that you can find around the house or at the discount store. I encourage parents to talk, read to, and play with their child.
Inspire us!
Great for little fingers have a look at Cutting Up: Fine motor activities to develop scissor skills
Sharing our love for big cardboard boxes  Kristi says Wait! Don’t throw that box away! It could be a…
And just right for this time of year you might like to make a snowman
Please do stop by Creative Connections for Kids and welcome Kristi to our early years community and get some inspiration from her wonderful ideas.
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Would you like to be featured in our Go Play! Showcase? I’d especially love to feature those of you who regularly support us and join in with our Play Academy linky, so please, don’t be shy, drop me an e-mail at cathy (AT) nuturestore.co.uk if you’d like to be included.

Guess how much i love you giveaway

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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the makers of the stage version of the best selling story Guess How Much I Love You have sent me two copies of their DVD to giveaway.

I’m sure most of you will know this book as it’s sold over 20 million copies world wide, so here is the chance to see how it’s been adapted for the stage. We’ve also been sent a copy for B and L to keep and L is watching it as I type – and gives it a two thumbs up!

To enter the giveaway: ask your child what or who they love and leave a comment on this post telling me their answer. Be sure to leave an e-mail address when you add your name to the comment.

The giveaway is open until midnight (GMT) on Tuesday 8th February 2011 and is open to readers with a UK postal address. There is one entry allowed per person. I’ll pick two of you at random (using random.org) and the winners will each receive one copy of the DVD. I’ll contact the winners on Wednesday 9th February to get your address and will post the DVDs off to you as soon as possible, so hopefully they will be with you in time for Valentine’s Day (can’t promise this though).

**************UPDATE**************

Here are the winners:

Winner One is Mermaid

Winner Two is johanna

Congratulations! I’ll e-mail you to get your postal addresses. Hope you enjoy the DVDs.

Do your children watch too much TV?

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I’ve just read the BBC Education article which was published yesterday about a survey into how much TV and screen time children have. It’s reported that the average child in the UK watches more than two and a half hours of T.V. a day. Does this match what happens in your house?

It certainly doesn’t reflect our family. My two didn’t watch any T.V. at all until they were around three and now they’re four and eight they do watch some most days but I’d say for no more than about an hour. I think one of the reasons they’re so creative and playful is because they’ve had the opportunity to have lots of free time rather than screen time.

There are lots of other stats in the report which I find surprising and I’d love to hear your take on it.  Do your children watch T.V. everyday? How much time do they spend on line? Do you have any family rules about what they watch or do you think it’s no big deal? Do you think screen time is part of play nowadays and prepares children for the online world?

3650 nappy changes: make the worst the best

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I read somewhere that you can’t consider yourself a true mummy blogger until you’ve written about poop. So here goes!

By the time your baby is two years old you could have easily changed their nappy 3650 times. That’s a lot of nappies and let’s face it, poopy nappies aren’t one of the perks of being a parent. My suggestion this week, thinking about giving your baby a great start in life, is to re-frame how your view nappy change time. How about having 3650 occasions when you can gaze into your babies eyes and really connect with them? When you have some one-to-one language tuition or help them learn to count?

I think especially when you have more than one child in your family, or when you’re childminding or working in a setting with several other children, changing a baby’s nappy gives you a valuable time to focus solely on them. Here are some ideas you could incorporate into your changing times this week, helping them develop language, maths and more, simply as part of your daily routine.

  • Make eye contact and chat together. Give a running commentary on what you’re doing, ask your baby’s permission before you touch them and pause to give them the opportunity to respond. This helps your baby’s language development and teaches them that you respect them. One day soon they’ll start to answer you back.
  • Count their buttons and poppers as you undo and fasten them, and look forward to the day when they join in with you.
  • Sing a song. Your baby will love the sound of your voice (even if it’s as tuneless as mine!) and the rhythms of traditional nursery rhymes are well suited to learning your spoken language.
  • Pull funny faces as see if you can make them giggle. This encourages them to focus on your face and begin to understand how different expressions convey different meaning.

All of these are such simple ideas and so easy to incorporate in your routine but over those 3650 occasions they can make a real difference. I think adopting this more mindful approach to nappy time makes changing time much nicer for us too, as we are conscious that the care we give to our baby is part of how we educate them too. What are your tips for nappy time?
super baby play ideasOur SUPERbaby play series focuses on simple, playful ideas you can use with the youngest of children to have fun and encourage them to develop important early learning skills. The emphasis is on ideas you can easily fit into a busy week, using materials you’ll have around your home. View all our SUPERbaby ideas here.

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