Oreo Turkeys

Ok so being in England, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving! Now it seems we've acquired all your other holiday's and customs (halloween, fathers day etc.) I'm surprised we haven't stollen this one and made it our own! Obviously we couldn't celebrate the for the reasons you guys do, but certainly the essence of thankfulness is never wasted! Anyway we celebrate Thanksgiving (American in law) and this year made these cute turkey lollies inpiration obtained by googling "oreo turkeys" but I settled on these being the most easy to emulate in large numbers (we had fifty + for dinner). I obviously used white chocolate buttons for feathers because candy corn is too expensive in England (glued in with chocolate icing), liquorice laces for legs (pretzels too fat for my oreos) and half a smartie for beak (oh an a small piece of liquorice for that nose thing). I iced the eyes.

These were last year's turkeys, again inspired by bloggers via google, but using crispy cakes (English twist again) and pretzels for feathers- but these were way toooooo fragile to make a lot of!

Star Button Match

Selection of pairs of felt cut out stars, with buttons sewn to one pair and a slit big enough (but not too big) to accommodate a button. Children find matching stars and button them together. I also made a matching bag but a pretty box would be just as nice. This will supplements; christmas, twinkle twinkle and space themes/ interests, whilst the children develop fine motor skills, matching and explore connecting scheamas.

Journey to Bethlehem

This post was supposed to be on "all play on sunday" but accidently wrote on here, I was going to delte but thought it may be of interest to some of you (check out "all play on sunday" for similar ideas)So todays session was called "Journey to Bethlehem" inspiration given from Tidily Winks Red Book. However only limited aspects of session were used.

For play session we had :

King's Town playmat, (inspired by Filth Wizardry) complete with "The Kings Inn" and stable next door, a farm with sheep fields... get the idea modern day applications of what was around when Jesus was born.

Journey to Bethlehem matching cards (images obtained via google, I will add a link for all the printables at alljoinin.net in week)

Transport sorting, this proved way more popular than I anticipated. We were to use these later in one of the stories.

Nativity desert box (really popular, had some great conversations)

Another activity at the free play time was colouring "tiny" Mary on a donkey pictures. To first of all use in the story and then to complete an journey advent calendar. The donkey and Mary were an edited image available from Activity Village

The children coloured the advent calendar and drew Mary and Joseph in the stable.

After play we sat down in a circle like usual and discussed what we had been playing with as an intro to the story, which went in the direction of we have that story at home (nativity, its baby Jesus), we played with sand and trains... we played with all of it etc. and we focussed in on, on the table with the nativity we were playing with a place in the sand and on the mat we were playing with a place with concrete roads. We talked about the story we were going to think about was about a journey on a road, a sandy road.

I then told our special story from the Bible, from before Jesus was born using the nativity props, sand tray and wooden blocks to create shelters.

I then read this story I created for this week, to tie in the transport theme I was focussing on. (I will post more details of this in the week)

We said the prayer (minor edits) from the tiddlywinks book.

The other craft option was decorating this donkey with fabric and sand (for dust). My crafts this week were rather prescriptive, this was for several 1. lacked inspiration for a simple yet purposeful craft 2. I wanted the children to take something home that showed a real link to session so parents could discuss it further 3. I realised that the children would likely be so engaged in the play they wouldn't want to spend ages engaging in craft (I was correct for some children)

Five Little Monkeys

I have had these resources for some time, and related resources have been available at www.alljoinin.net for sometime, I just thought I'd take this opportunity to show you (need a quick post, been too busy making something/ watching Children in Need). The resources are things I have available for singing the song, but are also what I used to make the resources. There is a printable book, and an interactive powerpoint. Some example power point slides are below:

Wee Wedgits Brilliant buy

Look! What I purchased today from the second hand baby/ child store!!! Wee Wedgits 30 piece set for £10 - Bargain, the cheapest I have found the set new is £33! And they have washed up perfect. I'm sure there will be more posts on these!

In out

About a year ago I posted a similar post on 3d object fitting. I have now added two additional objects and containers, I had lost the box and the cube (but found today)

I will keep them in this box, in keeping with theme although initially not with lid on.

Coaster Baby Toy

Babies love putting things in and out of containers, when I purchased these wooden coasters and container I thought they would make a great infant/ toddler activity. Will finally try them out this week, will post how well it goes!