Science Play the 3 1/2 Year Old Way

One of the my daughter's fave concepts to explore in her play is that of Cause and Effect. Most kids love it; think of the tots turning lights on and off, playing with the TV remote, and pressing buttons on the dishwasher, - all are great examples of kiddies testing out cause and effect!
This can also be easily demonstrated with a simple experiment. Mixing bicarb soda and vinegar! As we know, the vinegar makes the soda fizz and bubble. This is because the bicarbonate in the soda and the acid in the vinegar react to create carbonic acid which is unstable and causes the bubbles. Sounds complex and of course, you don't have to go into this explanation with your little ones (I surely didn't!). 

Eden simply found out that mixing the soda and vinegar was FUN!
I put a fair bit of bicarb soda into a brownie tin, and portioned out vingear into some egg cups. I dyed it with food dye ('cause it just looks prettier that way!), gave her some spoons and a medicine dropper, and stood back.

She began by adding drops of the coloured vinegar to the tray and watching the little bubbles burble and pop, quickly progressing to putting whole eggcups in the tray and adding pinches of soda to the eggcups, watching delightedly as they fizzed over!

Valentines Day Playdough Treats

Ah, playdough, is there anything you can't do? As Valentine's Day is just around the corner, I thought that a batch of Valentine's Day playdough was in order (see here for Nurture Store's recipe). To the basic dough mix, we added some rosewater and some silver glitter for that extra special something, and pretty much as soon as the playdough was cool enough to handle, Eden was into it!

Never Too Early To Learn: Washing Clothes

Living in Australia should mean that we enjoy glorious sunshiney summers, but for us Aussies living in Melbourne it actually means that the weather runs the full gamut each and every day. So it was some surprise that we enjoyed a full week of ridiculously gorgeous weather last week. Time to go outside!

Like many of her tot peers, Miss Eden (3) likes to mimic everything I do, and LOVES helping me around the house. So, I thought she may enjoy doing the laundry for her dollies whilst I did the real deal.

The Best Jumper: Activity

Christmas quickly followed by Eden's third birthday meant that we saw the girls' bookshelves swell somewhat with a slew of new titles, one of which is 'The Best Jumper' by Lynne Garner and Sarah Gill. The book tells the story of a little mouse who receives a knitted jumper from his grandmother for his birthday, which he carries with him everywhere. 

I wanted to do an activity relating to the book since it has become a fave of Eden's, and as knitting an actual jumper would not require much of my three year old's involvement, I thought we could make a poster instead!

Moon Sand - Attempt #1

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, our first batch of Moon Sand did not quite turn out as intended. Nevertheless, it was still loads of fun to play with , so I ended up renaming our particular version 'Moon Crumble' (because, as my mum pointed out, it felt more like apple crumble than wet sand). Moon Sand is, of course, meant to feel like wet sand, but it is much more user friendly for those of us who live an hour or so from the beach (like moi!) or those of us who don't otherwise have easy access to sand.

Mrs Honey's Hat: Activity

Since embarking on our 5-a-day-books challenge, I've been wanting to do some sort of game/activity/art that can make a connection with one of the books we've been reading. As always, I have loads of ideas, but have been short on time.

When we actually wrangled some time at home, Eden and I decided to make our own version of Mrs. Honey's Hat, based on the book of the same name by Pam Adams. In the book, Mrs Honey has a new hat with lots of pretty things on it. Each day of the week, she goes somewhere different (the park, a cat show, the beach) and an animal/bug takes one thing off the hat and leaves something else behind (e.g. a hermit crab takes the shell and leaves some seaweed behind). 

Pipecleaner 'Sewing'

I nabbed this little plastic 'canvas' at Riot Art N' Craft the other day, knowing that it's one of those items which will play a myriad of different roles in our art box. The first (and simplest) activity I could think of was 'sewing' with pipecleaners. It's actually as simple as it sounds.


Pipecleaners + Plastic Canvas = Happy Eden