Sticky Marshy Fun!

If you're a frequent flyer here at HLM, you may have heard me wax lyrical about open-ended activities. If not, here's a quick recap: open-ended activities are those with no set purpose in mind which offer your child the opportunity to create their own play/learning experience. For example, giving your child a stack of boxes, tennis balls and rubber bands and seeing what they do with them is an open-ended activity. As is painting, or playing with wooden blocks, or a dress-up box, etc. Crafts are not open-ended. They're great - but just not open-ended.
I am always amazed by what my daughters come up with when I give them these opportunities! I once gave Eden a pile of empty tissue boxes, and she put them on her hands and feet and declared herself Princess Tissue-Box Robot!
In this vein, I set out a tray with a bowl of marshmallows and a handful of toothpicks for Eden, and this is what she did with them:

Lego Rubbings

Do you remember discovering crayon rubbings as a kid? I remember being in Primary School when my teacher gave us all licence to take crayons and paper and do rubbings of whatever we wanted, inside and outside. We loved exploring textures and discovering that some things made interesting rubbings (leaves, concrete, etc) and others... not so much (tabletops, vinyl floor, etc).
With a view to introducing Eden to this same type of texture exploration, I thought I'd introduce her to the world of crayon rubbings with a Lego board.

Paint: Experiment # 1

Eye droppers are handy little things. We've used eye droppers for all sorts of activities in our home (except as an actual eye dropper, oddly enough), and the most recent of these activities was in a watercolour experiment.

Little Miss E. was all set to do some standard watercolour painting whilst Mummy was cooking, until she spied the eye dropper and asked to use it (she loves transferring coloured water with them, see here for an example with a medicine dropper). Everything was already set up for watercolour painting, so I suggested experimenting with the paint using the eye dropper. Oh boy, did she go for it!

Leafy Business

Autumn has arrived in Australia (nearly two months ago, but let's not nitpick) and the trees have shed their leaves and transformed our local parks into bronze and gold wonderlands. If I sound a bit whimsical, I LOVE AUTUMN! True, I say that about every season, but for now, I LOVE AUTUMN!

On a recent stroll through the park, Eden collected a tidy pile of leaves, sticks, bark and gumnuts which she later deposited on our dining table with a proud "There you go, Mummy! It's for our art time!" Naturally, I had to find some sort of activity that would utilise the art provisions to her satisfaction.
Rummaging through my supplies, I stumbled upon some wax paper, and it was decided. We were going to make our own wrapping paper!

Back Soon!

Due to a sickie baby (and birthday girl) and a sickie myself (I know it doesn't make sense grammatically, but just go with it) and an impending blowout first birthday party, this blog is on pause, and will resume posting on Monday 23rd April. Thank you, see you then! ~ Laura

Easter Time, Folks!

EasEaster, Easter, Easter!

So many ideas, so little time. We have managed to squeeze in a few Easter-themed ideas, and here they are...

Blog Awards: Thank You!

O, Happy Day! I'm thrilled that Happy Little Munchkins has two shiny new awards for its proverbial shelf, and I am very grateful to the amazing women who have passed these awards on to me.