Play and Learn Every Day

A House to Play In - Ethan's Jungle Bedroom

14:52

We have well and truly settled into our new house now, just added the finishing touches to Ethan's jungle themed bedroom this week and now we're ready to show it off!

Every time we have guests over Ethan is desperate to give them a tour of the house, with the highlight always being his fabulous bedroom. Of course he usually talks them into staying to play with whichever toy is his current favourite as well (and he does have a lot to choose from!)

We have some wall shelves for a few keepsakes and everyday essentials, as well as Ethan's bookshelf. On top we have an iPod dock (Ethan is a real music lover and we used to put music on to get him to sleep at nap time but now often put it on as we play) as well as his thermometer and GroClock, which ensures that he doesn't get up before 7am (that one's more essential for me!) Then we have all of his bedtime stories on this bookshelf, so they are all options for him to chose to be read to him before he sleeps.

Next we have the toy storage! It may not look that organised, but it is so much better than it was in our old house. Ethan loves being able to see all of his games and puzzles all lined up so that he can easily chose which one he wants next. The larger boxes contain Lego, cars, puppets and dress up clothes which can easily be taken down from a shelf and played with whenever Ethan likes.

The newest addition to Ethan's room is this fantastic activity table from WOW Toys. I can not even tell you how excited he was when this arrived. He can now sit or stand to play with all of his WOW vehicles and people, whizzing them around and making up little stories to go along with them. There's room underneath to store a couple of big storage boxes filled with all of his WOW toys for easy access to play. It also looks really nice in his room and is easy to keep clean. It's the perfect go to toy when I need him to play independently without any set up or clear up time. (Of course Ivy loves it too!)

Now for the themed part of the room, the largest wall is above Ethan's bed and is covered in the most adorable wall stickers that I've ever seen. These cute jungle animals with their big eyes are the baby jungle scene wall stickers set from Vinyl Impressions. They were really easy to apply to the walls and have absolutely stayed put, even with the hot weather and Ethan bouncing around against them. Beside them is the letter lion height chart from Early Learning Centre as well as the safari bunting from Dunelm.

The bed looks fabulous thanks to the safari friends duvet set, fitted sheet, fleece blanket and cushion all from Dunelm (that we've also been using to make blanket forts!) Ethan loves his new bedding and even has a pillow that's nicer than mine, thanks to the premium pillow from Warren Evans! (Afterall if the kids sleep well, then I sleep well too!) It really is the nicest corner of the room and so cosy, Ethan loves to snuggle up on his bed and read stories throughout the day.

An update! Now that Ethan is a bit older and in school we have made some changes to his room, he has a new Simba duvet which is just fantastic at keeping him warm on cold nights and cool on hot nights. We also have a great school night routine for kids that we follow, which includes limiting screen time and eating foods that help to promote a good night's sleep.

I am so glad that both of the children's rooms are completely finished now (take a peek at Ivy's bedroom if you missed it). They are both so happy to play in their rooms now, to be able to easily choose which toys they want next (and to have a place for everything when they're finished!) And best of all to have cosy beds to cuddle up in at night to sleep well and be rested for more playing the next day!

* This post contains review items, we were sent the bedding from Dunelm, the wall stickers from Vinyl Impression, the pillow from Warren Evans and the play table from WOW Toys so that we could use them all and write our honest opinions about them.*

1 year old

Back to School Name Tags

07:30

It's almost time to go back to school and we're starting to get everything ready! Ethan starts at a new preschool in September and Ivy will be starting new play groups and classes. We definitely need to put names on as many of the kids clothes and other items as possible, so we were very excited to see these cute labels from My Nametags.

Image courtesy of My Nametags

Their newest line is of these adorable Hello Kitty name tags, so of course we had to get some of those for Ivy! As well as a wide variety of designs on the labels they also offer different types of labels, some that are stickers and some that are iron ons. For Ivy's Hello Kitty labels I chose to try out the stickers as I knew that we would want to use them on a variety of different items that she takes out with her (and drops in various places!) So first we had to put one on the label of her favourite monkey toy. The sticker stays on so well, even after plenty of cuddles and being thrown around it hasn't budged.

I've also put some of Ivy's labels on her various little snack pots and cups that we take out with us. The stickers are great because they can actually go through the dishwasher without coming off, and now we always know which water bottle is Ivy's when we're out and about with friends.

We also got some fire truck labels for Ethan, and for these I chose the iron on name tags as he has a lot of clothes that need labelling for preschool. The labels are so easy to use, even though I hate ironing even I can manage them! Just iron them straight on, then they stay put through wearing and washing. Ethan loves the fire truck design too, the perfect match to his many fire truck t shirts!

We are loving the Hello Kitty and fire truck labels that we were sent, the stickers and iron ons couldn't be easier to use and stay in place even after washing. Now we're another step closer for being ready to go back to school!

* This is a review post, we were sent the labels from My Nametags so that we could try them out and write and honest review.*

3 1/2 years old

The 3 Little Pigs - Review

07:30

We have just been to see The Three Pigs at The Palace Theatre in the West End, it's just opened this week and we really enjoyed it. It was lovely to be able to bring Ethan to the theatre to see a show that he knows the story of so well. It meant that he was a bit worried about the wolf being scary, but I reminded him of how the story ends and that eased his mind.

Right from the start I knew that we were both really going to enjoy the show, from the very first song we were hooked! The actors are all extremely talented, have fantastic voices and keep the audience captivated right from the first note. Ethan had a favourite pig right from the start (he liked Bee, the girl pig) but I thought that all three were fantastic (and Mummy Pig too of course!)

Image courtesy of The 3 Little Pigs

The Wolf (played by Simon Webbe, of the band Blue) played the villain perfectly. A great combination of scariness and bravado, encouraging the boos from the audience. Even a bit of humour and references to his other work for the adults thrown in.

The sets were fantastic, I loved how they created the three different houses and how they made the wolf blow two of them down. Everything about the set up was really clever and well thought out for children to understand what was going on.

Image courtesy of The 3 Little Pigs

The best part though had to be the songs! Ethan and I both clapped and sang along to the reprise during the curtain call, the songs were so catchy that we already knew the words. We were singing the whole way home, so it's a good thing that we bought the CD on the way out because now we can learn the words and put on our own show at home!

We would highly recommend taking young children to see The 3 Little Pigs, and even the adults won't be bored (even though you know the story so well, you still have to root for those pigs!)

* This is a review post, we were provided with tickets to see The 3 Little Pigs in order to write our honest opinions in this review. *

1 year old

Making Blanket Forts

07:30

Even though it's summer we've still been having quite a few rainy days in, and what better way to spend them then building blanket forts! So when we were challenged by Dunelm to make a fun blanket den for the kids to play in of course we were excited to take part.

We went for a safari theme to make a fun jungle den for the kids and loads of their soft toys to hide inside. We used loads of blankets and other fun stuff from the safari friends range at Dunelm including the fitted sheet, duvet set, fleece blanket, cushion and bunting.

We used the couch as the base of our fort, so we had all of the couch cushions to use as well. It was a challenge to set the fort up because Ivy kept trying to take it all apart as I was putting it together! Ethan wanted to help and happily brought me cushions and planned how we would lay it all out. We tucked the fitted sheet around the couch seats then stacked all of the small cushions on the arms to drape the duvet cover as the roof. Then we arranged the cushion and soft toys around to play with and snuggled up under the fleece blanket (it's so soft!) The bunting made a fabulous decoration for our fort, as well as holding it up! I tied each end to the duvet cover and hooked it over a window handle.

Eventually I ended up using our folded up play tent in the middle of our fort to help keep it up, mostly just because Ivy kept pulling it down on them! They were so cute in there together, hiding and playing games with the toys. The best was when Ethan really got into it and pretended that it was his safari tent, he used his hands as binoculars and was spotting jungle animals going past the tent.

We tried making another fort upstairs in Ethan's bedroom as well, using his bed as the base. We tied the duvet cover and fitted sheet to the headboard and footboard, then used clothespegs to hold both together. We then tied the sheets to big toys (Ethan's trampoline and rocking moose) meaning that the kids could crawl right underneath and lay down right inside their fort. At one point it go so quiet in there that I thought both had fallen asleep in their safari den, but they'd actually just brought some books in there and were sitting and looking through them together. The kids loved their blanket forts, this is definitely going to become a popular rainy day activity for us this summer!

* This post was written in collaboration with Dunelm who sent us all of the bedding that we used to make our blanket forts.*

1 year old

Rainbow Roasted Veggies

07:30

My kids love to eat fruit, but they are not huge vegetable fans. They'll eat the basics like peas and corn but not much more than that. When I made them rainbow fruit they really enjoyed it, so I thought that maybe I would give rainbow veggies a try...let's just say that the results were not as positive!

We started as we did with the fruit by shopping for a variety of colourful vegetables in the grocery store and letting Ethan choose one for each colour of the rainbow. He chose red peppers, orange carrots, yellow potatoes, green courgettes and purple aubergines (we couldn't find anything blue!) Then we came home and chopped up all the vegetables and put them in a tray and roasted them in the oven (just with a bit of olive oil).

I served up the roasted veggies in different ways for each of the kids as it would suit them. I went with a simple meal that I knew that they would like to go with them to guarantee at least a little bit of success. So I made some sausages and couscous to go along with the roasted veggies. For Ethan I served his veggies in cute little cupcake cases on top of the couscous, with the sausages in the middle. I really thought that he would prefer this as he is sometimes fussy about foods being mixed in together.

For Ivy I served hers in a separated plate with the veggies making a rainbow shape, and the couscous and sausages each in their own section. This is better for her as at 18 months she still mostly eats with her hands and I knew that she might struggle with the little pots of separate vegetables.

Unfortunately for me it just did not work for my kids, Ethan looked at his plate and said 'I don't want the things in those pots' then proceeded to eat all of the sausages and dig out the couscous with his spoon. Ivy was even worse, she ate all of the sausages and most of the couscous, then threw her plate on the floor! So for us it was a major fail, all that effort for nothing! So for the next little while we're back to peas and corn, but I'm still looking for creative ways to get the kids to eat more veggies, so I'm up for suggestions. And I still think that trying the rainbow veggies was worthwhile, because you just never know when it might work!

1 year old

Quiet Time Sensory Bin

07:30

The time has come that Ethan is ready to stop napping, at nearly 4 he has decided that he no longer needs an afternoon nap, but he definitely still needs some relaxing activities to wind down after a busy morning. So we'll be looking for lots of quiet time fun that will hopefully make our days a bit less hectic, starting with this quiet time sensory bin.

What says quiet time better than a bit of afternoon tea? Calming teas like camomile and lavender were the inspiration behind this sensory bin. I used rice as a base, some camomile tea, yellow food colouring and lavender flowers.

We started by steeping two bags of camomile tea in a small quantity of boiled water. I left it for quite a while to get as strong as possible and for the water to cool down before pouring it into the bag of rice.

Then I added a few drops of yellow food colouring to the rice, sealed up the bag tightly and let Ethan spend a few minutes smushing it all around to spread out the colour. This could have been a sensory activity in itself, Ethan loved playing with the rice in the bag and watching it change colour.

Next we picked some lavender flowers from the garden, then took the little flowers off the stem and put them into a bowl. Ethan loved this part, the smell of the lavender and picking off the flowers as quickly as he could. It's great for his fine motor control.

We then poured the rice into a container to dry, once it was dry we added the lavender flowers and that was it. We found a tea pot, tea cup, saucer and spoon to play with and we were all set.

I sat Ethan and Ivy outside in the garden and let them quietly explore and play with the rice. Ethan really liked scooping up the rice with their little spoon and stirring it around pretending that he was making tea.

They also both loved filling up the tea pot which had a big enough spout to pour the rice back through. It made a lovely relaxing sound as the rice trickled through and back into the bin. Ivy loved just grabbing handfuls of rice and watching the grains slip through her fingers, she could have done that all afternoon.

It was a really lovely relaxing activity for the kids, and it meant that I was able to get a few things done while they played quietly. Next time I would make them each their own individual sensory bin straight away to avoid any squabbles about sharing, but otherwise it was a definite success!

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