Dinosaur Fossil Discovery

Dimples has been doing some Dinosaur Activities at preschool so I thought I would extend on this at home.  He has always loved dinosaurs and we have done Dino fossils before but this time I tried to make them more realistic so he can link the fun he has had preschool to the fun he has with his dinosaurs at home.

It was a success, they turned out much better and looked real!

My little master Chef helped mix up a batch of Salt Dough, see the directions below. To make them look as realistic as possible we added some black food colouring, so that they looked like real rock fossils. It worked well, they turned into a dark grey rock colour. We made some extra fossils so he could give them to his preschool group and we did a little palaeontology digging with his favourite ones.

They were so easy to make and Dimples loved pressing his dino toys into the dough and inspecting how they looked, he looked closely at the details and did a few experiments with some foot prints before deciding which ones worked best.

 How to make Realistic Salt Dough Fossils

Ingredients:      
1 cup cooking salt,
2 cups of flour
1 cup hot water,
Food colour or tempura paint (we used black food colouring)

Directions: 

Mix together salt and flour, gradually add the hot water.

If you want to add tempura paint or food colouring to your fossils add it into the water first.

Mix into a dough consistency and then knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth. 

Divide the dough into small rock shapes, make them roughly the same thickness and size so that they bake evenly.

Gather some toys that can be pressed in to form your fossils (plastic animals & dinosaurs feet and body parts work well). We had some skeleton Dinosaurs which worked perfectly and some plastic dinosaurs with realistic feet shapes.

The salt dough can be air dried but for a better quicker result bake it slowly on low heat until rock hard.  We baked them on 120 degrees for an hour and a half but this depends on the size of your fossils. You can double check if they are dried properly by inspecting the bottom, it should be hard and evenly cooked all over without the 'dough' look. 

Once they're cooled  off they can be painted and decorated or left as is.

Play Idea:

Bury them in a sand box to be “discovered” (if you have a large sand box you could put a small flag above where they are buried). 

Then provide your pre-schooler with a small spade, pick and some paint brushes.

Once they find it, they can un-cover it and brush the sand off.
You can ask them to be very careful not to break or damage the fossil and get them to brush around them as a real palaeontologist would.

The discovered fossils can then be added to small world play and put on display.

Note: If the salt dough fossils get wet they will turn back to dough and crumble away.




Happy Adventures

Child-led Baking & Decorating - Easy Christmas Gingermen recipe

For the Silly Season we have a Magic Elf visiting, sent directly from Santa himself.
One night he raided the pantry and pulled out some ingredients. There was a lovely recipe waiting for Dimples when he woke up and all the things he would need to make some Yummy Ginger Bread Men Cookies. He wanted to get stuck right into it so after breakfast he took charge of the kitchen and this was his creation.

With very little help from me, my master Chef in the making mixed all the ingredients, cracked and separated the egg, sprinkled in the sweet smelling spices and make ginger bread dough.
Looking much like play dough he knew exactly what to do, rolling it out evenly and using a gingerbread man, a gingerbread girl and a snow man cookie cutter to make his cookies.

They worked a treat, this recipe is so easy for kids to do them self.
I helped read it to him and made sure the measuring was correct but he more or less baked them himself. Impressive little man. Child led Easy kids cooking is great for building independence in the kitchen, teaching about measurementsand ingredients. Baking with kids, when it is as easy as this is such a wonderful sensory and calm treat.
It was so easy and quick. Only 10 minutes and they were done. Then came the fun part.....
Decorating.

I did one ginger bread women showing Dimples how to smooth the icing first, use the writing icing as 'glue' for the buttons and eyes and decorate them with a smile. Then I gave him the led, he let me decorate another one for my self and told me the rest were for him and daddy.

He loved the freedom!



Dimples took his Head Cookie Decorator role very seriously giving the gingerbread people different clothing objects. The one above needed a beanie and a scarf (as snowmen do) and of course some buttons. Some had pants, shoes, belts, gloves and even buttons to do up their pants.

 They all had eyes but the last gingerbread men, I don't know why, was a tower of writing icing and lots of belly buttons. Look on the "after" photo, he is the one at the bottom. He does have cool shoes though!

Very proud of his Christmas creations he asked for a photo and said how good he is at decorating cookies. He inspected them and got to pick which one he wanted to eat.

Here is the recipe that our Magic Elf left :) Easy ginger bread kids recipe

We have been doing lots of Christmas Activities lately.

Why dont you browse these for some Holiday Fun.

Christmas Bath Time Fun & Learning

Rudolph the Reindeer Craft: How to make a Music shaker

A Snowman Fridge Decoration

A Felt Re-creatable Tree

A Free Printable: The 12 Days of Christmas Counting Game

Easy Sponge Stamping

Witches Brew - Pretend Halloween Cooking

How to Make Witches Brew - Messy Pretend Halloween Cooking.

 

 

Witches Brew Ingredients:

• Intestines (Spaghetti dyed with Orange, black, purple or bright green colouring)
• Poisonous spiders (Orange coloured Ice cubes with Plastic Spiders)
• Trolls Eye Balls
• Magical Halloween Sprinkles
• Bright Green Glitter Dust
• Black Rats
• Table spoon of cooking oil

Dimples spent the morning enjoying the sunshine and mixing up some gruesome witches brew.

He loves pretend cooking so this Halloween Themed Sensory play went well. He particularly loved the bright coloured intestines. He sang his own little song about mixing a spooky witches brew, adding the rats and did a little evil Cackle.

 



Benefits of this type of Messy Play:

• Encourages children to manipulate materials, explore and experiment which in turn equals rich learning experiments.
• Is process driven, not product, so it is the rawest form of sensimotor processing and exploratory learning.
• Helps develop and fine tune Communication, literacy and verbal skills through discussion and "play talk"
• Gross Motor skills such as stirring, mixing, pouring, shaking.
• Everyday life skills such as sharing, turn taking, conversation, cooking skills and using cooking tools.
• Sensory Play builds and strengthens important neural pathways in the brain
• Mathematics through measurement, size, sorting, dividing, counting.
• Scientific concepts such as mass, density, texture, temperature, and processing how materials are work
• & of course Creativity.

 

After adding some water and a squirt of hand wash Dimples watched the colours run into the water and the orange ice. Out of curiousity he decided to smell it.

Dinner is served!
Every time we do pretend cooking Dimples tells me he has cooked me dinner and insisted i 'taste' it.
Below is the restaurant class Witches Brew that he cooked up for me

 

Rainbow Spaghetti & Bug Cooking

Play Invitation:

 Cooked Spaghetti in Rainbow colours with some plastic insects and bugs,

set out with Cooking gear & a play kitchen...

Rainbow coloured spaghetti: Cook your spaghetti, then put it in zip lock bags with a drop of oil (so it doesn't stick) & add your food colouring to dye. Soak for a while - Or ask your little one to squish it around, I did this with Dimples & he enjoyed watching the colours soak through and get vibrantly bright.

With some utensils Dimples prepared a scrumptious looking dish for our dog. Rainbow Spag, shaving cream & bugs. Demon, the dog, actually ate some spaghetti that was thrown in his bowl while Dimples went on stirring the cream through, using tongs to pick up the slippery spaghetti & "cooking" it in the pot & play oven.

Pretend cooking in his play kitchen, Dimples role played Head cook, setting the timer, stirring & mixing, putting his handle to the side, using a towl to get the "hot" food out of the oven, letting it cool before serving it.  My little Master Chef.

You can click HERE to check out my post  "The Benefits of Pretend Play" that was featured on Postiveparentingconnection.net  - This type of pretend play fits well into this post, its fun-messy-imaginative Play...

Benefits of Pretend Play

Recently I had the opportinity to do a guest post @ http://positiveparentingconnection.net which resulted in some great comments. So here is an extended version with some additional ideas, links & pictures for the Captain Underpants fans...

In a busy world with what seems to be tireless amounts of chores, it is easy to fall into a cycle of giving your child the same toys to play with each day, using the TV as a baby sitter or saying "maybe next time", "hold on, I just need to finish this first" each time your child comes running to you with underwear on their head exclaiming that they are Captain Underpants requesting that you come play with them.  As parents it is important for us to acknowledge that for a child "Play" is not just leisure but is how they learn.

Captain Underpants flying through the clouds... 

 Of course there are many forms of play and endless ways to engage in play with your child. Dramatic or Pretend Play is just one way that children benefit from immensely that will also give you a chance to positively enhance their learning experiences, their self-esteem but most importantly it can strengthen your relationship with them.

Here are some of the benefits derived from Dramatic / Pretend Play-

• Pretending:  Just the act of pretending is a learning curve for a child. It grants them with an outlet to role play what they have seen in their world. This helps them learn about how the world works and practice how adults interact.
• Social Play: Pretend play encourages negotiation, cooperation, and role playing different situations. Pretend story lines and characters, turn taking, sharing are all great skills to learn.
• Social interaction: Not only does it help with social skills but it encourages a child to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and be empathetic and considerate of others. This gives them a chance to practice behaviour, manners and language that is needed when they interact in real world situations, as well as what behaviour is acceptable in public.
• Language development: Dramatic Pretend play encourages expressive language that would not otherwise be used by the child.  Often through pretend play withdrawn children can first start to express themselves by acting a certain role.  Further, this gives the parent an opportunity to extend on language skills by paraphrasing what the child has said using more descriptive language and exchanging conversations using expressive language examples.
• Imagination: Pretend Dramatic Play is a great for showing how imaginative children are. Imagination is an important building block for learning.  It is not only important in childhood, imagination is crucial for life. Just imagine a world without it, we would not have scientists making new discoveries, artists making new artworks, Santa traditions, award winning stories like Avatar and we would not be able to cognitively process these possibilities or examples.
• Self-esteem: By giving your child complete control in their pretend world and accepting them as a silly character like Captain Underpants you are enhancing their self-esteem. While they use their own initiative to develop story lines, their creative imagination to expand stories and their own personality to choose a character they enjoy, you are enhancing their self-esteem by allowing them complete power in the world & enjoying it with them.
• Motor skills: Playing is very busy work. While pretending to be adults or role playing your child is also fine tuning their motor skills. Mixing, Pouring, scooping, cooking, squatting, lifting, serving, moving around & remaining active.
• Practice: Practice makes perfect, while they are playing & pretending they are practicing all the skills they are going to need as they grow up into adults in the real world. From simple things like dressing, measuring, serving food, cooking skills, to handling money, grocery shopping, going to the doctor, answering the phone and not to mention practicing appropriate manners, behaviours and etiquette.

 

Pretend Play: Eating out at a cafe

Try to provide some Dramatic Props:

Tea sets,
cooking utensils,



Old cooking pots
outdoor mud station mud-is-good-for-you
play kitchen,



Fresh food Shop with trolley, plastic food, food boxes & Cash register



plastic food,
a cash register,
empty food containers,
Real ingredients  eg: worms-eyeballs-goblin-finger-stew



Pretend cooking with Rainbow Spaghetti.
Doll houses,
Telephone, masks,
Dress up accesories,



Flower Stand. Playdough as mud & flower arranging.

pretend money,
wallets & bags,
a pretend shop stand,


Muffin tin, Shaving Cream & real ingredients. pretend-cooking-wild-berry-muffins

play tools,
toy doctor kit,
bandages,

Doctor mask & toy doctor kit

toy animals,
kids tool bench 
building toys
Costumes pirate-party-dress ups
Make Costumes eg: making-robot-suit
Buried Treasure treasure-hunt

By accepting your child in their make believe world you give them complete control not only over the game, but over the 'world' for that short time, this enhances their self-esteem and gives you a chance to engage in their interests and their blooming personality, share in their enjoyments and it strengthens their trust in you and the world around them.

So next time a screaming Captain underpants runs past you, grab a towel and throw it on as a Super hero cape & go rescue Big Ted from the malicious tornado that’s about to hit your house.

Happy Adventures

Pirate Party Part 3 - The cake & food ideas

Pirate Theme Party for Dimples 3rd Birthday - The Treasure Chest Cake, the food ideas & inspiration.

The Treasure Chest Cake-

The Cake was a Chocolate swirl Cake that I made the night before the Party.  A Treasure Chest Cake!

This where I got the inspiration from Treasure Chest Cake recipe . With a little of my own twist of course. I used a cake board from Spotlight as the base, brown sugar as the sand with some real shells, and a smaller cake board as the base of the lid.

First I made the rectangle cake & sliced the rounded top off, it fit perfectly on top of the lid cake board. That was the first part done easily, a layer of frosting on the board (as glue) to stick on the cake, and then the cake top got covered with frosting. I used licorice as 2 straps over the top & wrote Happy Birthday over the lid then put it to the side while I did the tricky bit. I frosted the bottom of the treasure chest around all the sides and a border around the inside.

The Treasure consisted of gold chocolate coins, small jelly belly jelly beans, baby M&M's, some scull Candy's in bright colours, some candy bracelets and a few lolly rings. Lots of sugar & bright colours.

Then using writing icing I put on a key hole at the front & some more straps from licorice.
The hardest part was the balancing act- Using some skews and tooth picks I placed the lid on top. If you are attempting this my advice is to leave your cake refrigerated over night in separate pieces so that it sets and is harder, it wont work if you have a soft warm cake, then set & balance it right before serving it.

Dimples just wanted to take all the ring lolly pops from the treasure.

Food-
I printed up some black, red and white labels and thought up some Pirate theme names to re-name everything.  Everything seems more interesting when it is renamed into Pirate Jargon.

Shark Jewels fruit salad.
Served in a shark head watermelon with blueberries, grapes and watermelon balls to resemble jewels.

Candy Bar
Pirates teeth; baby marshmellows, caramel popcorn.
Cannon Balls; Maltesser chocolates and red jaffer chocolates.
Sharks Bait; Sour worms and snakes.

NOW, just a quick warning. I didn't take many set photos of the lay out and food although i wish i had have programmed my brain to do this. But after the party had started my blogging senses just flew out the window and then after looking back at pictures, I thought to myself  'why don't I have any pictures of the themed food". I had put a lot of time and effort finding themed food to serve and then, nothing!  So another word of advice to an party throwers, take a photo of everything before its party time & little hands scramble all over the place.

Anyway, I can only explain what my ideas were and show you my inspiration. Here goes,

Ships lost at sea;
These were blue jelly, layered with whipped cream to represent the rough ocean inspired by these and these neat boats  on top were orange slices made of jelly with pirate flags to represent boats (like these stripy-jelly-orange-wedges- )

We had "Sea Water" & "Pirates Punch" in jugs, as well as a blow up Pirate boat full of toddler pops and soda for the adults.

Octopus Dip-
Using the top off a Capsicum stuck in dip, I cut out Octopus eyes and 8 legs, the dip was centred in the middle of the plate and surrounding it was sliced carrot, celery, gherkins, cucumber and crackers.
Inspired by octopus-dip-recipe

Squid-
Little Frankfurt's sliced with "squid" legs, served with tomato sauce to dip in.
like the ones shown here on squidoo.com

Sail away sandwich's-
Shaped from a Pirate boat cookie cutter we had sandwich's
Devon & sauce,
ham & cheese
chicken, cheese & mayo
Vegemite.

Pirates Grub-
On top of this I cooked up some Sea shanties, some curly fries and some calamari rings.

Pretend cooking: wild berry muffins

Pretend Cooking : Wild berry Muffins in the outdoor oven

For some quick fun messy play in the afternoon sun Dimples cooked up a storm in his outdoor kitchen. 

He mixed together Water beads & Shaving foam until bumpy.

Added some red & some blue colour (food colour/water in spray bottles).

 Poured in some blue dessicated coconut.

Then he decided "this needs to be mixed by ARM" & squeezed the mixtures around.

I am not to keen on using real cooking ingredients just for the sake of it, but these were things Id had for a while that would be close to getting tossed anyway :)  The water beads have been used over & over again, the shaving foam... well you can grab it for $1 a can and you only need a few squirts for some fun messy play!

Add nuts & spoon into the muffin tray

Don't forget more colour for extra juiciness!!

Cook in the outdoor oven.  DONE!!! 

Then feed it to the dog  (who happens to be blue on this occasion)

Lots of fun.

Want more pretend cooking ideas?

Add some saucepans and cutlery, some measuring cups and spoons.

a cake tin or muffin tray, mixing bowl. Plates to serve on!

Extra ingredients can be added by raiding your cupboard and looking for end of, near date or never to be used again things. nuts, flour, oats, seeds, cooked pasta or rice. Add shaving foam, hair gel, coloured spray always works well on shaving foam.