Easy peasy, eco, free, garden teepee

Here is our new garden creation:

A teepee ( well actually it's a garage for cars and trucks at the moment.)

Made from beanpole bamboo sticks, twine and old stems from artichoke plants.

The artichoke tubers not flowers; they grow over 6ft tall!

Some ivy is woven around it, I couldn't find much of it,

however it would look great covered in it.

I was inspired by the willow tunnels and shapes we saw at the Welsh Botanical Gardens.

Apparently you have to plant them by the end of Feb.

When we looked how much the kits cost ( from £60 upwards),

we decided to have a bash at it ourselves.

Total cost: £0

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Remember Cuisenaire?

We are using Cuisenaire Rods...remember these?

It's a different approach to mathematics and can be used alongside other methods.

I bought a basic wooden set from Ebay. 

They are colour coded rods in different lengths from 1cm to 10cm.

The white squares are the basic single units.

We have begun by playing with them and playing matching games.

Does anyone else out there use these?

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Valentines Day Activities #1

We are into the swing of our new theme:

St Valentine's Day, which is celebrated here on the 14th of February.

I cut up different shades of red/pink/purple from an old catalogue and Big Seed stuck them onto a paper heart as a collage.

He has since been cutting up an old catalogue by himself and making more hearts like this.

Little Seed stuck some down onto sticky plastic film.

He isn't ready for this yet but still wants to join in and copy his big brother.

I cut out different sized hearts from scrapbook paper for Big Seed to sort.

Sorting heart beads from Ebay.

Transferring marbles into a heart ice cube tray with a Chinese spoon.

Tray is from Ikea.

Big Seed loves post-it notes. So I gave him some of my pad and also made him

little heart shaped notebooks stapled together 

so he can pull off the sheets.

Big Seed made these counting heart cards.

I bought some shiny sticky 3D hearts from Ebay.

These are lovely to touch when counting.

Simple sentences.

This is a great introduction to reading and writing.

Big Seed drew the people in his family.

I wrote the words for him.

He chooses a person and he makes the sentence and reads it.

This activity isn't Valentines related but it's part of our "Activity Basket"

that we are working on now.

These cards relate to the Pink Series Montessori initial sounds

bought from here

I laminated them and he uses a wipeable pen.

They come with answer cards for self correcting.

This is some of the stuff we are working on this month.
I shall do another post with our other Valentines activities.

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So Simple Scarf !

I haven't got round to knitting him a rainbow scarf this winter

so he made one instead.

Not the best choice of clothing for this shot I know,

but it just goes to prove nothing is planned or set up.

It's a green fleece scarf incase you can't make it out.

Cut out a long piece or fleece,

then fray the edges like this.

So Simple!

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Happy Chinese New Year!

This is the first time we have celebrated Chinese New Year.

We started by looking at an atlas and having a chat about it.

Then the boys made these cards.

Big Seed painted with red watercolours at Christmas so we used these as a base.

I found some chinese writing on google so I wrote "happiness" on one card in pencil

and "peace" on the other.

Big Seed wrote on top in felt tip and Little Seed just liked to copy him with black crayons.

We glued on some gold glitter too.

I downloaded this rabbit template from here

Inspired by this we made a Chinese banner.
I wrote some words in pencil and some random letters
and Big Seed painted on top in watercolour.

We put everything up on our mantelpiece.
Then had Chinese Takeaway for dinner...of course!

Happy New Year !

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