Guest Post: Natural, child-led play with babies and toddlers

This post on Natural, child-led play is from Anna at The Imagination Tree. She beat me out for Blogger of the Year at the MADs and a more lovely and deserving person couldn't have won! Her blog has loads of creative play ideas and she's sharing four of her favourite toddler activities here.

Treasure Baskets: Open-ended thinking and learning can be encouraged from a really young age and doesn't require any expensive toys or take up loads of space! It's really easy to make your own treasure basket for a baby to play with as all of the items can be found around the home and are better for baby to play with than brightly coloured, noisy plastic which offers only a couple of different stimuli. Treasure baskets encourage investigation and exploration using the senses of touch, sight and taste. They also help to promote thinking skills and curiosity by challenging the baby to wonder "what should I do with it?" or "what happens if I combine these two materials?" etc. 

Discovery Boxes: These are the term I've given to a toddler version of the baby treasure baskets. Every now and then I collect some simple materials such as cardboard tubes and beans, sellotape and scoops and put them into a large box for the girls to get stuck into! As with the treasure baskets, the idea is to step back and watch them play without interfering or suggesting what they should do, only joining in if asked. I find they can stay engaged with these simple items for so much longer than with their usual toys and they spend a lot of time thinking, collaborating, experimenting and having great fun! I've got a collection of the different items we have put into our Discovery Boxes on my site, if you need some more ideas! 

Musical Instruments:  Following along the same principles as the treasure baskets and discovery boxes, it is so easy to put together some makeshift musical instruments for plenty of hands-on experimenting with noises and sounds! Music making is crucial for building listening skills, distinction and perception and investigating cause and effect. It's also one of the vital building blocks for pre-reading so that one day they will be able to hear and distinguish sounds in words, pick up rhythm and hear intonation. Making "music" is as simple as opening the kitchen cupboards to pull out the pans, wooden spoons and metal utensils! Then have a great bash-a-long to some nursery rhymes or chants! If you want something more "sophisticated" you can make shakers easily using dry rice or pasta in a plastic bottle, stretching a balloon over a tin can for a drum or even make your own rain sticks! 

Messy Play: Last (but probably BEST!) comes the delightful messy, sensory play! Again, no money is really needed for this apart from a few essentials from the kitchen cupboard. Make your own play dough and keep it for 6 months or more, using it to strengthen hand muscles and as a tool for learning letters, numbers and more. Making Goop like Blondie did is cheap and easy, too.  Create sensory tubs filled with dry rice, pasta, lentils, pom poms and allow your little one to investigate with hands, scoops and spoons. (Watch smaller toddlers so that they don't put anything in their mouths.) Other ideas for investigating in deep table trays are water, sand, shaving cream, jelly, wood shavings, beads and lego! Whatever you have on hand will be of interest!

Fruity Freaks and Vegetable Monsters

The fab people at Innocent, who's smoothies are yumtastic by the way, sent us over a fruity freak and vegetable monster making kit so Blondie Boy could enter a creation in  their new Halloween competition.

Blondie Boy is a bit young for carving but he love art projects so we broke out some permanent markers and let him make his very own monster!

An abstract masterpiece right? He had so much fun making it and in case you were wondering his monster is made up, according to him, of stars, hearts, ovals and eyes. You can create your own fruity freak or vegetable monster, too!

Here are the instructions for the competition:

1) Make your fruity freak or vegetable monster from the spookiest looking fruit or veg you can find

2) Give it a name and use your innocent magnets to spell it out (how about 'Terry Able' or 'Aaaaaaaaaalan')

3) Take a picture of your spooky creation and post it in our scary Halloween gallery www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/fruityfreaks and email myfruitandvegmonster@innocentdrinks.co.uk with your flickr name and a postal address.

4) The first 1,000 entries win a set of limited edition glow-in-the-dark Halloween 0-9 number magnets (the perfect addition to our alphabet set)

5) When you're done with your monster why not use any leftover veg to make a soup or whizz any fruit up into a smoothie?

We were sent a box with fruit and veg to take part in this challenge but all opinions are our own!

How to make Goop (Toddler Arts & Crafts Fun)

Today was a miserable and rainy day; not really uncommon in Glasgow but still not nice. NotBlondeHusband had very kindly volunteered to tidy up the living room but that meant Blondie Boy and I needed to find something to do. While BB loves putting things away he also loves pulling things out so not really conducive for a proper tidy up. So arts and crafts it was for us!

I decided to attempt some craftiness and make some Goop. The Goop I'm talking about has nothing to do with Fishsticks Paltrow and is more a slimy, slippery concoction that can be both semi-solid and liquid--basically it's really cool to kids and really messy.

I found a few different recipes online but basically it's just corn starch (corn flour in the UK) and water. A few recipes said equal parts and a few said 2:1 so I just threw in all the corn starch I had and them started with 1/2 that amount of water and added more. I also threw in some flour and baking soda as I didn't have a lot of cornstarch and some purple food colouring to make it fun.

You can see it's liquid but also holds it's shape and basically that means it's fun to play with and a good textural experience for toddlers or something like that. You grab a handful and it immediately turns to liquid and drips down your hands!

Since NBH was already cleaning downstairs I didn't want another mess to clean so we played with our Goop in the tub. In all honesty it's not hard to clean up as when it dries it turns into a chalky powder but playing in the tub meant Blondie Boy had a large canvas to paint and splatter and I could hose him and it down afterwards. I'm glad I added the food colouring as that meant he could also use it like finger paints, too.

It all washed off of both him and the tub with just the power of the hand-held shower head and because I used food colouring it didn't stain him or our tub. It was cheap, easy, messy and fun--everything you need to please a toddler and parent.

What's your favourite cheap and easy toddler craft/art activity?

Dear Lover Give me one last Painful Kiss

I know a lot of people don't like Valentine's Day, but single or taken I've always loved it. Holidays were a reason to dress up, have a special breakfast (pink milk anyone?) and get presents in my house growing up. I looked around for a cute Valentine's Day shirt for Blondie Boy but I literally didn't see one child's Valentine's shirt, so I took matters into my own two hands!

I like to think Blondie Boy's style is as punk rock as a 13 month old boy can get so I immediately thought of putting an edgy twist to a normally pink and fluffy holiday. I love anything with skulls so I drew out a pattern for a heart and crossbones.


I free hand every pattern I make- sometimes it takes a few trys, but it's definitely better to screw up a pattern then to waste fabric. I just use a bit of thick paper (or an ad for DFS in this case) so it pins on nicely to the fabric without ripping and then trace around it and cut out.

Normally I just use fabric glue but I decided to challenge myself and hand-stitch the edging. I was a bit worried since I knew there was no chance of each stitch being even in length and spacing, but I kind of like the kitchy homemade feel it brings. I won't lie it did take me almost an hour and a half to stitch, but I think it was worth it.


I can't wait to try it on Blondie Boy tomorrow maybe with a faux-hawk and a jean jacket and have a photoshoot while he dances around to some Social D.

I also made a rose corsage for Blondie Boy's Grandma as she and her fiancé were kind enough to babysit him while NotBlondeHusband and I went out for a Valentine's date on Saturday. I found the tutorial here and it was slightly time consuming, but really simple to follow. It is for a ring but I just made the circles slightly larger for a corsage.

I hope y'all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Drink your gin and tonica

Happy Chanukah! Chanukah is super early this year; it started on December 1st at sundown and will continue until the 8th. I always loved lighting the candles and I've really looked forward to celebrating Chanukah with Blondie Boy.

I know Chanukah is basically bottom of the list when it comes to important Jewish holidays, but it still is important to me culturally. So when I went looking for a cute Chanukah t-shirt or onesie for Blondie Boy and came up short I decided to make one myself!

I had NBH make me a template so my menorah was roughly symmetrical and I cut out the shape from sparkly blue felt.

I made a template again for my candles so they'd be the same size and cut them out from light blue and white felt and then free-hand cut my flames so they'd be more realistic looking.

Originally I'd planned on using fusible webbing and ironing on my design, but with so many little pieces that was going to be a major pain so instead I used fabric glue. Honestly he's going to wear it once or twice so I'm not super concerned with durability.

You can see the glue in the picture above, but don't worry when it drys the whiteness of the glue goes away and all you see is the colour of your fabric. I was kinda freaking out that I'd ruined it by using too much glue and it would dry all nasty, but it totally didn't. Also if you are like me and like to work all spread out on the floor a Stokke Table Top makes a great craft tray!


I think Blondie Boy looks super cute in his outfit and while he wouldn't exactly sit still for a photoshoot he really like staring at the candles flickering and smiles when I say the Baruch. I can't wait until he's a big enough boy to help light the candles!

Happy Chanukah to Mimi Linda, GG Bess, Auntie Alie and all our Jewish friends and family!