Our Summer Bucket List - ice dinosaur eggs

Tommy has been obsessed with dinosaurs ever since I can remember, so when I stumbled upon this activity a while ago, I knew we just had to try it. It's an activity that's perfect for doing in the garden on a hot summer's day so it was definitely going to be featuring in our Summer bucket list. It doesn't have to be done with dinosaurs - mini toy cars, small figurines, numbers, letters - whatever you like - can be encased in ice.

To make these eggs, I carefully inserted each dinosaur into an ordinary balloon. I thought water balloons would work best for this but I couldn't get it to work. Water balloons were just far too thin and ripped easily when I tried to insert the dinosaurs. Ordinary balloons were much stronger and didn't rip or puncture. Once the dinosaur was fully inside the balloon, I filled it with water, tied a knot in the end and out it in the freezer overnight. When we were ready to do the activity, I cut the balloons away from the ice and placed them all in a box.

I provided Tommy with chisels and hammers to help break the ice and pipettes and squeezy bottles and a bowl of warm water. He then set to work trying to free each dinosaur from their ice egg. He wore some safety goggles to do this (well swimming goggles actually, but they protected his eyes as he worked nevertheless!)

I was surprised at just how long Tommy sustained concentration during this activity. The good thing about it is that it WILL take them ages to free their items so they will be occupied for quite a while and you can just leave them too it. We'll be sure to repeat this activity again, perhaps with some small figurines. I can only hope it will be as big a hit as it was when we did it the other day!

Farm Small World

We LOVE a small world at our house and I set them up regularly for Tommy and I to play with together or for Tommy to play with independently. They can sometimes take a long time to plan and set up and it can be a bit soul-destroying if your child plays with them for 5 minutes and then becomes disinterested. It makes you not want to bother again. Luckily for us, small worlds are always a hit with our four-year old. It's usually me that ends up begging to put it away after it's been set up for a week and begins to get in the way. A small world is something I can guarantee Tommy will play with for at least an hour at a time. And there are very few of his toys I could say that about. It is something he is very happy to play with, either with an adult or on his own.

We are huge fans of Schleich models in our house and I remember owning many as a child. They're so useful for imaginative play because they are a decent size, realistic and extremely hard-wearing. We already own a good collection of dinosaurs, wild animals and farm animals.

When it comes to small worlds, I try and plan something that makes use of items we already have, rather than buying new things. Because we had a large collection of farm animals and vehicles, it would be easy to create a farm small world.

For the landscape, I pretty much emptied the kitchen cupboards to see what I could find that might look like animal bedding. I eventually settled on porridge oats, red lentils, cornflakes, rice and spaghetti. I also used several shredded wheat for hay bales.

I then added green tissue paper to make fields, Lego fences, buildings and flowers. Several Lego animals also made an appearance too. I cut out a piece of foam and covered it in cling film to make it look like water and placed this in the centre of the tray to look like a pond.finally, I added the farm animals and several vehicle and it was ready! 

This was such a hit with Tommy. He spent a long time feeding the animals and using the vehicles to carry out jobs around the farm. He used the tractors to move the materials around and invented scenarios involving the different animals. He had so much fun with it. 

 

As with so many of our small worlds, we left this out for a few days, so it could be played with again and again. The only downside was that this small world was made out of edible materials; we went out only to come back and find the dog had eaten all of the cornflakes! :(

Forest Floor Small World Play

As you may have guessed, we love a bit of small world play in the Collingwood household. Following on from the success of our rockpool small world, I thought we'd make another one, this time with a forest theme. Whenever you make a small world, I think it's important to already own a lot of the 'stuff' needed to make one. It's no good trying to make a small world farm spontaneously, for instance, and then realise you only have one cow and a sheep. One cow and a sheep does not a farm make. I try and collect things I might find useful as I go, as I see them and this makes things much easier when you eventually do get round to setting a small world up. This is why I chose a forest theme - having a young boy who is fascinated by insects and bugs, we already had a sizeable collection of plastic ones.

To make the 'forest', I used lots of pine cones and twigs, bark and conifer trimmings I collected from the floor of our local maze (yes, really!). I added some toilet roll tube 'logs' and a collection of stones/ rocks from the garden for creatures to hide in and under.

The animals were two sets of Animal Planet plastic animals (an insects/bugs one and a snakes, lizards and frogs one).

 

During our play, we talked about camouflage and the idea of predators and prey, habitats and species. We played hide and seek with the animals, which was really tricky considering the colour of the creatures and their 'habitat.' I'd love to hear your ideas for small world play you've tried.

Rockpool Small World Play

We've really been making the most of the good weather recently and welcomed the lighter nights and school holidays, which have enabled us to get out as a family and spend more quality time together. We feel so lucky to live where we do, in the countryside as well as being five minutes away from the beach. I love nothing more than going for a walk on the beach - it's probably my favourite place to be. I love the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the feel of the soft sand between my toes and the wind brushing my face. It's a place that you can really go to to forget any troubles and relax and unwind.

It's a long time since we've been to the beach and we've had a stressful last  few weeks so I thought we were about due a visit. So I bundled the children and the dog in the car, picked Daddy up from work (earlier than usual!) and we headed to the coast.

When I was a young child, I loved nothing more than to wander up and down the shoreline beachcombing looking for natural treasures. I'd struggle up the beach at the end of a day spent there with a pocketful of shells and stones. I still love to do it now. I never did anything with them, I was just so captured by their beauty that I just wanted to keep and treasure them. So when we all went to the beach that day, naturally we had to take home a few souvenirs. Tommy is really interested in creatures of any kind so he needed no encouragement in helping me search. We found a huge variety of shells, starfish, stones and seaweed that evening and brought them home.

As you can see, they were all very beautiful and I knew I wanted to do something with them but I wasn't sure what. That's when I came up with the idea of using them to make a rockpool in our tuff tray, which we involve regularly in our play.

We simply filled our tuff tray with water, sprinkled some play sand in the bottom and then arranged our treasures on top and added several brightly-coloured (albeit wholly unrealistic-looking) sea creatures!

You wouldn't believe how long Tommy wanted to play with this for - it lasted for an entire afternoon. And every day since, he's asked whether we can "Get that rockpool out." I'm going to try and adapt this later on by buying a few more realistic sea creatures, as our collection was pretty limited this time!