Rainbow Cake

First of all whip up a batch of basic cake mixture and divide between six bowls.


250g butter
250g caster sugar
250g self raising flour
4 eggs
tbsp milk
drop of vanilla (or flavoring of your choice)


Beat together the butter and caster sugar. Add the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Sieve the flour into the mixture and stir.

Add a few drops of red, yellow, and blue food dye to the first three bowls. This is also a good chance to talk about primary colours.

Then use the remaining three bowls to mix the colours together to make a green, orange and purple mixture. 

Using a different spoon for each different colour put a blob of mixture into a cupcake case, layering the colours on top of each other. 

Pop them in a preheated oven at 180 degrees and cook for about 10-15 minutes. 

Omnomnom

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From Rags to Telescopes

In honor of International Womens day we looked at a famous Astronomer who truly lived a Cinderella fairy tale. She was rescued from her prince of a brother who changed her life from rags to telescopes and gave her her fairy tale ending.

Once upon of time there was a girl called Caroline Herschel. She lived in Germany with her Mother, Father and her nine brothers and sisters. Caroline had scars on her face and was very short. Her family didn't think anyone would want to marry her so she stayed at home and worked as a house maid looking after her family and doing all the chores.

Meanwhile Caroline's brother William was living a fairy tale life. He had moved to England and had become a musician. Caroline felt like Cinderella trapped in her home, held back from all her hopes and dreams.

One day something happened to Caroline that changed her life forever. She escaped her life of misery and chores and went to live with William in England. Caroline worked hard as Williams house keeper and he learnt her how to sing. 

By night William loved to watch the stars in the sky. He wanted to learn more so he built powerful telescopes to help him to see deeper in to space. He loved it so much he  left his job as a musician and became an Astronomer. William became well known for his work and went to work for the king.

We decorated tubes to use as Telescopes

Caroline helped her brother and became his apprentice. She loved studying the sky and worked along side her brother discovering  the mysteries of the skies.

We  made our own Constellations :)  

William gave Caroline a telescope as a gift and Caroline started making discoveries of her own. She discovered eight comets, eleven nebulae, and updated a book on the position of the stars.  Caroline became the First  lady of Astronomy

Hand Print Comets :) 

Not only did she discover eight comets but she showed that even with the odds stacked against her she could get her fairy tale ending and be an inspiration to astronomers and people all over the world. 

Comet Collage :) 

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We Love... Greedy Gorilla

Encourage healthier eating in a fun way. Use the healthy food cards to create nutritious meals and post the junk food into the gorilla's mouth to make him burp, but don;t forget to say "Excuse me!"

Greedy Gorilla is a lotto game based around healthy eating. Each player starts with a menu board showing pictures and the word for six ingredients they need to find to make their nutritious meal. The use of pictures and words is great for language development and spelling. The pictures are also great for younger players. Drew is 30 months old and gets really excited when he can match a tile to his menu board. 

There are 24 healthy food tiles and 8 Junk food tiles.  The cards are jumbled up and placed faced down on the table. Each player takes in turns to pick up a tile and try match it to their board. The first player to fill their board is the winner. 

If a player picks up a junk food tile they have to feed it to the greedy gorilla to make him burp.  This is a big hit with the kids they get really excited and squeal with delight when they get to feed the gorilla. When the greedy gorilla burps the children have to shout excuse me. 

Orchard Toys recommends this game for 4 - 8 year old which is about the right age to be able to play without any help. My boy has been playing this since he was 2 and he loves it. He needs a little help but it does not disrupt the game. He understands he needs to wait his turn and he can match the tiles to the images on his board but sometimes needs prompting.  Sometimes he will go on greedy gorilla duty. He will turn the cards looking for the junk food to feed to the gorilla. Other time we use the tiles as flashcards and we will say what item of food is on the tile and then feed it to the gorilla. This not only expands his vocabulary but helps him easily distinguish tiles when playing the full game. 

My daughter is 4 and she also adores this game. She can play with no help at all and has a good understanding of healthy and junk food. She sometimes relates her own food to the game. If she has a ice cream she says I cant have too many mammy because I will be a greedy gorilla.

Googly Leaf People

Oh we had lots of fun with this activity. There is nothing better than playing with gloopy glue and googly eyes.   The best thing is it is soo simple and can be fit into busy routines. We collected the leaves on our way back from school and then got stuck in making our little leaf people whilst waiting for tea to cook. The children found the leaf people highly amusing and were smiling and giggling and really enthusiastic and proud of there pictures.

Oxygen experiment

 Oxygen comes from plants. Like us plants need food to give them energy. The  plants use sunlight, water. and air to make a sugar. They use this sugar to give them energy to help them grow. This is called photosynthesis.  Once they have finished making their food there is some oxygen left over. They release this oxygen so we can breathe it in. This little activity will let you see the oxygen that is released from the leaf.


We cut a healthy leaf from a plant and placed it in a glass of water and placed it in a sunny spot. 

After a hour we could see lots of little oxygen bubbles all over the leaf and the glass

We observed our leaf every few hours by the end of the day there was a lot of bubbles around the edge of the glass. We gave it a little shake and watched them float around.

Check out my blog on Joseph Priestley to find out more activities on oxygen and air.

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Rainbow Celery

This experiment is pretty awesome. Rainbow celery  is a fun visual experiment to show children how plants absorb water through their roots through a process called Osmosis.

Select the shorter sticks of celery that has lots of leaves for the best results. Chop around a cm off the bottom (the bit that is white) and place them in a glass with water and food dye.  I have found that blue and red seem to work the best. Over the next 24 hours we observed the colour of the leaves.

1hr later

One hour later and we can already see a tinge of blue on the tips of the leaves.

2hrs later

Playing In The Rain

I  watched the rain bounce of my window while my children put on their wellies. I felt gloomy about having to venture to the shops. The rain had come down fairly heavy earlier and there were some quite big puddles en route. I watched my two children jump around in the puddles, spinning around to catch the rain. Macey turned to me grinning from ear to ear. Mammy this is the greatest day ever. Both their faces were beaming. They looked so happy and here I was rushing to get home. I couldn't bear to spoil the fun so I dropped my shopping off at home and took them back out to play.

Splashing in puddles

 It got me thinking. Why do we have such a negative attitude towards the rain? We always use phrases such as I think there is a huge rain cloud hanging above my head to show we are having a bad day. Nursery Rhymes such as rain rain go away are sang to show dislike to the rain. Literature uses rain to depict sorrow and madness. Our adventure in the rain was the stark opposite. I for one will never forget the raw emotion of happiness on my daughters face when she told me it was the greatest day ever and my little boys beaming smiles as he played. It really touched me. I no longer felt gloomy. For the first time I was soaked through (my children were better dressed for the occasion then I) and was having a fabulous time.

Catching the rain

Pasta Beads

My daughter keeps asking for bead bracelet making sets but after last years trip to A&E because she got a bead stuck up her nose I have been even more reluctant to buy them.

However it is a pretty awesome activity and is great for fine motor skills so as an alternative we painted some penne pasta and threaded them on to some wool. This is fab for preschool children because the holes are large enough for them to be able to join in. My 2 year old boy was over the moon and brimming with pride with his bracelet he made. 

Drews bracelet :) 

I used Tesco's Value penne pasta  which is 30p for a 500g bag. Bargain!

We mixed some colours on a plate and painted the pasta. We made bright and pastel colour palettes 

Macey put out the bright colours 

 mixing pastel colours

Drew painting his pasta

Our pasta beads :) 

I tied the wool around a piece of pasta to stop them dropping off and I used a plastic needle (optional) to make threading a little easier for my youngest. 

pasta and needle tied to each end

threading the pasta.

 I tied the wool  about a cm away from the starting pasta we tied the wool to at the start and chopped the starting pasta and needle off.

chop the starting pasta and needle off

Macey's bracelet

Macey's necklace :)

Shape Pictures

My daughter tends to draw everything in circles and lines so I have been trying to encourage her to use other shapes to draw more recognisable pictures.


I used coloured paper to cut out triangles, circles, rectangles, and squares. I made a variety of sizes.

I then cut a few sheets of white A4 paper in half and encouraged her to make a few different pictures using the shapes. Here is what she came up with.

Flower and butterfly 

Go Kart 

Chu Chu Train

Pirate ship 

Clown face

Fairy

Bar of chocolate

Snowman

Owl

robot

Dog

Car by Drew aged 2 :) 

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