Today we're having a quiet day in and reading our Mickey Mouse books from the Storybook Library that we were sent from Parragon Books.  It's a sweet little set of 6 books that both Ethan and Ivy love to sit and listen to.


They are not too long and tell sweet little stories about Mickey Mouse and his friends. There's Mickey's Dinner,  Mickey the Cowboy, Farmer Mickey (Ivy's favourite), Mickey Goes to Work, Mickey and the Pet Shop and Mickey and the Fire Station (Ethan's favourite.)  Ivy likes to stack them all up and hand me one at a time to read to them.


Ethan's favourite thing to do is to turn all of the books over to make a puzzle!  I didn't even realise that the books were designed that way, until Ethan called me over to show me what he had made.  What a clever little feature to add to the set for extra fun!

* This is a review post, we were sent the Mickey Mouse Storybook Library from Parragon to read and write our honest opinions about.*

Ethan and the Mini Hornit were like love at first sound!  As soon as he found out that there was a way to have a siren on his bike or scooter he was very excited.  The Mini Hornit is much more than just a siren, but it certainly is a great place to start!



It attaches easily to a scooter handle or to the handlebars of a bike.  If you are securing to a bike it even comes with a little remote so that you don't have to reach over to the end of the handlebars whilst cycling and can just use the remote in middle.  We're more of a scooter family though, so Ethan and Ivy take turns attaching the Mini Hornit to their scooters.

We are loving the Mini Hornit on our scooters, it's so much fun making all of the different sounds (especially the siren, but we also love the train sound!) and the lights make it really useful.  I love how easy it is to take on and off, so I can put it in my bag for safekeeping while Ethan's at preschool.  We would highly recommend it, and get asked about it where ever we go, everyone wants one!

* This is a review post, we were sent a Mini Hornit to play with and to write our honest opinions about.*

It's nearly bonfire night and we love fireworks, so we're making all sorts of firework crafts and even making them in our play dough!  It's a busy week after the craziness of Halloween, so it's nice to have a simple way to play, and this little set up is just that.



For more fun Bonfire Night and firework ideas, take a look at our Pinterest board:

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Bonfire / Guy Fawkes / Firework Night Fun for Kids on Pinterest.

We were lucky enough to have an opportunity to go skiing not far from London last week, and we were so excited!  It's not often that you get a fun day in the snow in this part of England, never mind in October.  Ethan and Ivy have only experienced snow a couple of times, but as I'm Canadian it's always been such a big part of my life, so I'll take every chance I can to let them have fun in the snow!  So of course we said yes when Crystal Ski Holidays invited us to a day out at The Snow Centre, and indoor skiing venue just outside London.


We started the day by playing the Snow Garden, with it's slides for sledding down, a place to dig in the snow and even an igloo to play in.  Ethan and Ivy both loved sledding and went over and over again, and had a fun game of hide and seek in and around the igloo.  It was so much fun for me seeing them all dressed up in their snow gear and having so much fun in the snow.  Neither of them complained about being cold once!
















































The best part of the day had to be our skiing lesson though, Ethan skied for the first time and absolutely loved it.  He's just 4 years old, so I wasn't sure if he would be too young to ski, but that seems to be the age that many lessons start.  He was fitted with boots, skis and a helmet and taught how to shuffle along and to sidestep in his skis before going up the little lift and having his first go down the hill.  He was a natural!

We love Bonfire Night, it's a great chance to bundle up warm and bring the kids out when it's dark to watch the fireworks and stand by a bonfire.  Of course we like to extend the fun for a few days with some firework and bonfire themed crafts and activities, here's a few things that we've done in previous years.



Firework Pictures are a classic activity for Bonfire Night, we love to get out the black paper and find different ways of drawing fireworks on it.



We also loved these simple Foil and Pipe Cleaner Fireworks that we made a few years ago as they were really fun to wave around.



These Glowing Firework Rockets that we made last year were a huge hit, Ethan and Ivy love anything that glows and being able to throw these around was a lot of fun!



Bonfire Night is the perfect excuse for any sort of Glow Stick Play which my two absolutely love, they're just mesmerised by the glowing lights and they're much safer than playing with sparklers.

Ethan absolutely loved this Bonfire Night Sensory Box that I made him when he was a baby, so I'll definitely be making one for Ivy this year as well.



We like to read Bonfire Night books like Wheel of Fire that teaches about firework safety and I think we might get this Hovis the Hedgehog one this year, it looks really sweet.

We made a whole Bonfire Night feast of different themed foods a few years ago which was a lot of fun!



And if you are thinking of taking your little one out to their first big fireworks show, here are our Firework Tips for kids.

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For more Bonfire Night and Fireworks fun have a look at our Pinterest board:

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Bonfire / Guy Fawkes / Firework Night Fun for Kids on Pinterest.

I have always wanted to get the kids a kitchen set to play in, Ethan absolutely loves them and plays with them at all the play groups and shops that have them, we often have to tear him away from them to go home!  So when we were offered this George Home Deluxe Wooden Kitchen from ASDA's wooden toy range we jumped at the chance.



We love imaginative kitchen play and already had some play food and cooking sets that we used on their own, but it really took our play to the next level by having this wooden kitchen. There really is something about wooden toys as well, they're such good quality and feel more real than plastic toys.  I've decided now that we need to buy all of the wooden food and cooking equipment to go with it!  This set comes with the 4 serving utensils that you can see hanging up, but you will have to buy the pots and pans separately.

It's November and that means it's time to start thinking about Christmas!  There's always so much going on in December that I find it really helpful to start thinking about gifts that we're making quite early, especially as we have family all around the world so we've got to post our gifts by the beginning of December.  It has become our tradition to make Christmas hand and foot print pictures to give to family.  We make it quite special by using a little canvas for our prints and adding little details to them to make them look Christmassy.



When Ethan was 1 we made foot print Christmas trees by painting his foot green and printing it onto the canvas.  When that had dried I painted a small brown rectangle at the base of the tree and helped Ethan to use a star shaped stamp for the top of the tree.  Then we put a bit of red paint on Ethan's finger and he made some fingerprint Christmas baubles for the tree.  I finish it off by writing his name and the year on the bottom and wrapping it up in brown paper to send off to family members around the world.



When Ethan was 2 we made hand print reindeer by painting his hand with brown paint and printing it onto the canvas.  Then we painted his finger red to do a finger print nose, and black for finger print eyes.



When Ethan was 3 and Ivy was just 10 months old we made footprint polar bears and penguins.  For Ethan's polar bears we painted his foot with light grey paint and printed it onto the canvas.  Then we used the same paint to make finger print ears and to paint on some arms and fingers.  We painted on a blue scarf together and drew on a little face with black paint.  For Ivy's penguin we painted her foot with black paint and printed it onto the canvas.  Then painted on flippers with black paint, painted the penguins middle with white, made a finger print beak with orange paint and black paint for its eyes.



















































This year Ethan is 4 and Ivy is 1 1/2 and I've yet to decide what we're going to do, but I may take inspiration from Meaningful Mama with her Santa hand print, Fun Hand Print Art Blog have this cute sleigh foot print picture, Crafty Morning has a very cute Jesus in a manger hand print craft, Simple Fun for Kids hand print snowmen are absolutely adorable and Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails have these sweet and simple hand print mittens.  That's definitely a good place to start, but we'll have to wait until after Christmas to tell you what we decided on!

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